The Children's Legal Centre works with the Community Legal Advice Line to provide free legal advice and information on education matters. The CLA can also provide advice on benefits, tax credits, debt, employment, housing and family issues.
If you are looking for advice on education call an advisor on 0845 345 4345 and follow the instructions.
The advice line is open from 9.00am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday.
Most of the calls concern admission appeals, attendance, bullying, complaints about the school or local education authority (LEA), exclusions, special educational needs (SEN) and uniform disputes.
Click here to view some typical case examples
If the information you are looking for is not covered within this section please contact the Community Legal Advice Line.
Information About Helplines
Caller Privacy and Exceptional Circumstances
The Children's Legal Centre offers a confidential service. The caller may be asked some questions such as where they heard about the advice line, where in the UK they are calling from and what their ethnic origin is. This is to analyse caller trends.
If the caller provides the Children’s Legal Centre with their name, address or phone number it will remain confidential and is not passed onto third parties.
If the Children’s Legal Centre is informed of information that suggests a person is at serious risk of harm and the Children’s Legal Centre has personal details, then a breach of confidentiality may be necessary in order to protect that person.
Call Recording
Please note that all calls to and from the Children’s Legal Centre are recorded.
The purpose of this is firstly to ensure that the highest quality of call handling is maintained.
Further, our calls are recorded to establish the existence of fact in the event of any doubt and will be admissible in court.
In the interest of confidentiality, these records will only be accessible by the Children’s Legal Centre management unless further action needs to be taken and the record produced to a third party.
All records will be destroyed after three months unless still in use.
Cost of Calls
The Community Legal Advice Line calls can cost up to 4 pence per minute peak rate, networks and mobile charges may vary.
Communication
If you find it difficult to speak English, call us to connect to an interpreter. We have access to interpreters in 150 languages through Language Line.
We welcome calls from textphone users via Typetalk.
