Solicitors acting for children have spoken out this week about the dire quality of representation that some – by no means all – firms acting for parents are offering. I’ve been told stories of parents’ cases being handled by staff who are clearly not qualified for the job – in the most extreme instances, a receptionist and a secretary, but also frequently paralegals who are not experienced in family work.

I have also been told about qualified solicitors who have taken on parents’ cases and then done absolutely no work on the case, not even responding to correspondence from the children’s lawyer.

Children’s lawyers are increasingly encountering cases where no written evidence has been submitted at all on behalf of the parent, and a barrister has not even been instructed.

With such poor representation for parents, why do these cases not unravel? The answer is that children’s lawyers are stepping in to fill the gaps – for example, by instructing counsel themselves where a parent’s representative has failed to do so. From what I have been told, the courts are increasingly coming to rely on the goodwill of children’s lawyers – who are all accredited members of the Law Society’s Children Panel – to shoulder the burden.

And are they getting paid for this extra work? Far from it. The irony is that their fixed fee is actually lower than that which the parent’s adviser will receive: £2,761 compared with £3,589.

You might wonder why children’s lawyers are prepared to shoulder this extra burden. The truth is that solicitors in this field are unlikely to be in it for the money. It’s vocational work, and everyone knows it. They would rather spend their evenings and weekends at their desk for no reward than see a child separated from its parents and taken into care without a full and fair hearing in which everyone was properly represented.

With so much expected of them for so little financial reward, however, it is small wonder that there is a shortage of younger lawyers moving into this complex field of work.

This growing problem of poor representation for parents cannot be allowed to continue. It’s unfair on the children’s lawyers who are shouldering the burden, it’s unfair on the parents, but most of all it is not fair on the children who could find themselves growing up in local authority care when they should be at home with their family.