Dorothy joined Essex County Council in 1995 as a Principal Solicitor to bring the child care in the south east of the county back in-house. She then joined Southend Borough Council in 1998 to form the Social Care & Education Legal Team for the new unitary authority before returning to Essex County Council in 2000 to consolidate the now county wide Children Legal Team.

Following this outstanding achievement, Dorothy moved to Hertfordshire County Council in 2004 to become the Assistant Chief Legal Officer and Deputy Monitoring Officer and then went on to join the London Borough of Haringey in 2009 to implement the learning from the Baby Peter Serious Case Reviews as the Assistant Head of Legal (Social Care).

Dorothy is currently appointed to a joint post of Children and Education Legal Services Manager in ELS and Group Manager of the Social Care and Education Legal Team in Southend Borough Council.

Dorothy has  been a Social Care advocate and an Adoption Agency legal adviser from 1991. She is a legal adviser to the Local Safeguarding Children Board and to the People and Health Scrutiny Committee. Dorothy is currently the Chair of the Law Society’s Children Law Sub-Committee and sits on the NSPCC external expert advisory group on neglect.

Dorothy was also the writer for the Independent Management Review in four Serious Case Reviews involving local authority legal services graded by Ofsted as two outstanding and two good.

Dorothy’s depth and breadth of specialist knowledge and experience are real assets for our clients in both the health and social care sectors.

Relevant experience :

• Health and Social Care.
• Judicial review.
• Coroners’ inquests relating to health and social care.
• Education law.
• Child protection and safeguarding.
• Regulatory and Advisory (all aspects of childcare, education and health).
• Information Governance (DPA, FOI and confidentiality matters).
• Corporate Governance.
• Local Government Ombudsman matters.

Memberships of external advisory groups:

• Law Society’s Children Law Sub-Committee.
• Lawyers in Local Government Eastern Region Child Care Special Interest Area Group.
• Lawyers in Local Government Child Care Lawyers’ Group (national group).
• NSPCC’s neglect external advisory group.
• Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) neglect critical friends’ reference group.
• Department for Education expert panel on residential assessments study.