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Child Abduction Solicitors

Child Abduction Solicitors based in Sheffield, Barnsley & Rotherham

If you are concerned that your child may be at risk of abduction, contact us immediately. If you suspect that your child may have already been abducted, contact us immediately. Do not hesitate.

Contact our team

Legal advice will never remove the worry you’ll always feel for your children, but it can help you do your best to protect them. That’s why our Children Law specialists use the full force of the law and the resources available to us to take urgent and effective action.

We work with the police, the Courts, the Child Abduction Unit within the Ministry of Justice, Interpol and a raft of specialist organisations globally to either prevent abduction in the first place or to secure the safe return of your child.

Are you Eligible for Legal Aid?

Legal aid is available in a wide variety of circumstances for family members when social care are involved with children.

On your initial contact, we can assess your circumstances and advise you as to your eligibility for legal aid. Our Children Law solicitors can help give advice, explain the Public Law Outline Process (PLO), offer confidential legal advice, and they can represent you in Care Proceedings at Court. We can also support you if you receive a letter before proceedings to help explain concerns social services may have and attend at the PLO Meeting with you.

Contact us or call us on 0114 2496693 to book your appointment today and we will be happy to assess you and advise you as to your eligibility of legal aid.

How We Can Help

If you are concerned that there is a real and imminent risk that your child may be removed unlawfully from the UK, we can take a number of steps:

Application for a Prohibited Steps order, Residence order, Specific Issue order and/or Parental Responsibility order, preventing the removal of the child from the UK and the possible surrender of the child’s passport
Placing restrictions on contact or travel
Alerting the Passport Agency and Embassy to prevent the issuing of new passports or visas
Alerting ports, airports and border agents and circulating a picture and details of the child at risk

Where abduction is already suspected we can respond appropriately according to the circumstances:

If your child has been taken to a country within the European Union, a country that has signed up to the Hague Convention or that has entered into an agreement with the UK, we can liaise with the appropriate organisations including the International Child Abduction and Contact Unit to seek that your child is returned.
If your child has been taken to a country where no such legislative safeguards exist, we can make an application for an order for Wardship. We can then seek various orders to try to locate your child and secure your child’s return, such as the High Court Tipstaff being appointed, foreign Embassies being invited to assist, an order for passports to be seized on re-entry to the country, freezing of assets, declarations of habitual residence and wrongful removal etc.

How can we help? Contact us today

Contact us on 0114 2496693 and one of our advisors will be in touch to discuss your situation. We will take some initial information and if we can help, we will book you in for a consultation with a legal professional.

Legal Aid Funding

Legal aid is available in a wide variety of circumstances for family members when social care are involved with children. Contact us or call us on 0114 2496693 to book your appointment today and we will be happy to assess you and advise you as to your eligibility of legal aid.

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Our Children Law specialists can support with:

Children Law Articles

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Care Proceedings – Step by Step Process

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Care proceedings are court proceedings started by a local authority’s social services. They happen when there is suspected harm or a risk of harm to a child. A care proceedings flow chart outlines the stages of the care proceedings, from...

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What Are Care Proceedings?

Howells Solicitors

Care proceedings are a type of court proceedings that are instigated by a local authority’s social service department. If social services have reached out to you about your child, it’s normal to feel upset. You may want to know your...

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Who Would Look After Your Children if You Died?

29 Jun , 2021

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We know that it’s a hard and uneasy thought to have, but also one which many parents do think about. Do you know who would look after your children if you died? If you have shared parental responsibility and one...

Request a Call back

The Howells Solicitors law team are compassionate, down-to-earth and professional, offering you the best expert advice. Get in touch with solicitors in Sheffield, Rotherham, and Barnsley to see how we can help. Fill in the form or give us a call at:

0114 249 66 66 Sheffield
01709 364 000 Rotherham
01226 805 190 Barnsley

Please provide as much information as possible so that your enquiry can be directed to the most appropriate department. Your enquiry will be treated in confidence, however we take the safety of your personal information serious, therefore please refrain from sending confidential information, such as full names of 3rd parties involved, address details etc.

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The Child Abduction team

The Howells Children Law team is one of the best in the country and one of the largest in the north of England. The team have been consistently highly ranked for family work in the north from the Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners. They also have many positive client reviews, and are one of the top rated law firm in the UK on Review Solicitors for family law solicitors.

The children law team are part of the Howells family law team, who are supervised by our family law solicitor and director John Clegg. John is a family law specialist and covers all aspects of family law including divorce, civil partnership and cohabitation breakdown, financial matters arising on separation and divorce, pre and post-nuptial agreements and protection from domestic abuse. John is also accredited as one of the top solicitors in the UK by the prestigious Chambers and Partners.

The children law team are managed by senior solicitor and head of children law Charlotte Curbishley who deals with all children law matters, specialising in advising and representing parents, children, and family members at public law proceedings. Charlotte is also on Law Society Children Panel.

Chambers UK
Howells was highly ranked as a law firm for Family Law by Chambers UK 2018. The prestigious guide said Howells is “Increasingly active in dealing with high net worth cases and child abduction cases over the past year. Bolstered by a designated mediation and collaborative law group.”

Legal 500
The Legal 500 2018 ranks the Family department highly and states that “Howells handles the full spectrum of matrimonial work and children law matters. Alyson Siddall is ‘hugely experienced but always still keen to learn’, and heads the department which benefits from individuals based across Sheffield, Rotherham and Barnsley. Siddall is regularly instructed in complex financial arrangements and has additional expertise in private children matters and collaborative law.”

Charlotte Curbishley

0114 249 6693

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Deborah Thompson

01226 805 190

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Emily Shaw

0114 249 6693

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Ryan Marsh

01709 364000

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Laura Hill

Family Law

0114 249 6638

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Stephanie Cundy

Children Law

01226 805 190

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Child Abduction Solicitors