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Charities have come into much sharper legal focus due to significant changes in legislation and the increasing role they are playing in the delivery of public services. Ensuring good governance and legal adherence in the charity’s operations is of key concern to trustees.
We have an in depth knowledge of the public and charities sectors, we understand the market in which our clients operate, the complex regulatory framework and the wider reputational ramifications which can follow a serious incident. We work with a number of charitable organisations including national heritage, drug and dependency, children’s care and elderly care organisations as well as those who help people with specific needs such as challenging behaviour arising out of brain injuries, or dementia care.
We are experts in all aspects of personal injury, social care law and human rights. We have our own teams of barristers and advocates in the civil and criminal courts, as well as our own costs, intelligence and counter fraud teams.
We understand the particular issues that impact charitable policyholders and we know that the strategy for dealing with a claim must be consistent with the ethos of the charity itself.
They always have the right solicitor for the claim. I trust their judgement, they're excellent.
Their staff are friendly and engaging and they consistently demonstrate a tenacity to defend claims where there is an important principle at stake.
We have also advised on fostering issues where the charity provides cover for the foster carer on their register, this has included a claim for damage to a foster carer’s home and a claim for injury to a fostered child under the care of a registered carer.
Hadlow v Peterborough City Council (2011) CA (Civ Div). We represented the defendant local authority in this case where the claimant worked as a teacher at a secure unit for young women, and was inadvertently left alone with three residents - a violation of a policy requiring more than one member of staff to be present. There was no threat or demonstration of violence by the residents but the claimant was sufficiently concerned about being alone that she made for the classroom exit. As she walked towards the door, she collided with a chair suffering injury. At first instance, the court found in favour of the claimant but the local authority appealed and claimed that she had injured herself in a way which was not reasonably foreseeable and that the ‘novus actus’ broke the chain of causation. The Court of Appeal rejected this argument finding that there was no requirement for the precise chain of circumstances leading to the accident to be foreseeable – the claimant was injured as a result of her reasonable actions to avoid the potential risk.
We have acted on behalf of a number of registered charities operating in the social welfare arena, including in the fostering and specialist child care fields. We have advised on a number of catastrophic incidents involving service users harming members of staff and agency workers. We have also advised on a number of fatalities and advised on the coroner’s inquests and HSE investigations.
Head of Insurance and Public Risk