Duncan Lewis Solicitors

Family and Child Care

Harriet is a family and child care solicitor at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, based in the Birmingham office. She has experience handling a wide range of family and child care legal matters.

Primarily, she represents parents whose children are the subject of care order, supervision order, and placement order applications. She manages care cases on a day-to-day basis and represents clients who have difficulties with mental health, substance misuse, and anger management. She also represents parents who have learning difficulties and tailors her representation to ensure that they clearly understand the proceedings that they are involved in. She has experience of representing parents in cases that concern allegations of non-accidental injuries towards their children, as well as assisting parents when social services initially become involved in respect of their children to work to prevent care proceedings being issued.

Harriet's expertise extends to Section 8 Child Arrangement Order proceedings where she represents clients in applications to vary and enforce existing Child Arrangements Orders. She also handles applications for prohibited steps orders and specific issue orders, for instance in applications to take the children on holiday to Non-Hague Convention countries which are dealt with in the High Court. She has had conduct of two complex Child Arrangements matters in the High Court where allegations of radicalisation were made. Additionally, she represents clients in applications for non-molestation orders and in applications to extend existing non-molestation orders. This often involves dealing with vulnerable clients who have experienced significant trauma and whose cultural background can impact on their need for protection.

Harriet joined Duncan Lewis in 2016 and was admitted as a solicitor in 2018.

Legal Practice Course (LPC) - University of Law Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) - University of Law French Studies Upper Second Class BA Hons - University of Warwick