Guest post by Alia Lewis, partner and head of public law children at TV Edwards Solicitors and co-founder of Family Law Advice for the Neurodivergent Community
Lewis: We need to raise awareness
At least one in five people in society are neurodivergent. However, this statistic is based on diagnosed rates and is therefore likely a lot higher.
The term ‘neurodivergence’ encompasses conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia and Tourette’s.
Despite the prevalence, society’s awareness and understanding of neurodivergence remains poor, which can have serious consequences when legal professionals fail to recognise and understand the presentation and needs of neurodivergent individuals.
My learning journey as mum to an autistic son with profound additional needs completely changed the way in which I work as a child protection lawyer and shone a light on how frequently neurodivergence is missed or misunderstood within family court proceedings.
The impact of this can be serious and includes:
- Poor care planning and decision making;
- Failure to make reasonable adjustments;
- Trauma for families, affecting their ability to trust professionals;
- Formation of unfair narratives and wrongful parental blame;
- Children with complex profiles being placed in highly inappropriate foster placements where their needs are not fully understood or met; and
- Infringements of article 6 and 8 rights, limiting opportunities for families to stay together
A simple example of how misunderstandings can arise is a scenario that occurs all too often in my family cases. I have lost count of the times that parents are characterised as argumentative, obstructive, aggressive, unable to take on board advice or consistently implement advice or criticised for ‘self-medicating’ with cannabis.
On the face of it, the parent lacks parenting skills and demonstrates behaviour that could be considered a risk to their child.
However, if that parent is neurodivergent, it might be that they process information differently. They may respond better to information being presented to them visually rather than orally, they may struggle with retaining information unless it is written down or recorded in some way so that it can be reviewed.
They may present with impulsive behaviour, but this could be a response to sensory stimuli or overwhelm. A parent who has ADHD may require medication. They may or may not be aware of their neurodivergence, they may use cannabis to help them cope.
Understanding the individual profile enables professionals to make reasonable adjustments both to the environment (such as in offices and court) and also to the way in which they work, that are conducive to an individual’s needs.
Feeling understood can help an individual to have the confidence to address maladaptive coping strategies. A picture begins to emerge from this example that, with the right understanding of human behaviour, a better outcome might be achieved.
I find that many of my neurodivergent clients present with ‘Systems Generated Trauma’ (SGT) which is the severe psychological distress and harm caused by the policies and practices of the public services that disabled children and their families are required to navigate.
This was highlighted by a major research study undertaken by Professor Luke Clements in 2025 for Cerebra, the charity for children with brain conditions and reinforced by other research studies.
So, how do we address these issues as legal professionals?
Before we touch upon the details of a case, it is imperative that we understand our client and how they function.
In my view, we do this by going back to basics and ensuring we understand human behaviour and what message that behaviour is communicating. Regardless of the area of law one practices in, our first job is to create rapport which ultimately helps to build trust within the working relationship.
I would argue the importance of building trust is heightened when we are supporting clients who have experienced SGT. Once we understand our client, we can then do our best to advocate for them.
Looking through a neurodivergent lens can completely change the landscape of a case, and therefore the outcome.
The first step is to achieve awareness across all areas of the legal profession. As they say, ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ and I certainly didn’t understand how important it was to have an awareness of neurodivergence before I had my son.
Once professionals are aware, they can take steps to understand and once understanding is there, it provides a basis upon which lawyers can tailor their practice to meet the needs of their neurodivergent clients and ensure they are treated fairly within proceedings.
This is why we have developed our specialist neurodiversity aware family law team at TV Edwards, comprised of lawyers who are committed to providing tailored support to our neurodivergent clients with a trauma-informed approach.
Our understanding stems from additional training combined with personal and professional experience, with some of us having undertaken a Level 2 qualification in understanding autism.
What makes us unique is that we are taking a two-pronged approach to addressing the problems we’ve identified – the way in which we manage our cases and support our clients daily and also by working on crucial improvements within family justice, non-court dispute resolution and child protection when it comes to how we deal with cases that involve neurodivergent families.
With other lawyers I have co-founded a non-profit, cross firm working group called Family Law Advice for the Neurodivergent Community (FLANC), through which we are working to achieve:
- Mandatory training on neurodivergence for all professionals working within family justice and child protection, which we are doing in collaboration with the Anna Freud Centre;
- Best practice guidance; and
- Various systemic changes, such as ‘all about me’ documents, to help understand a neurodivergent individual’s unique needs, communication styles and triggers; a neuroinclusive NCDR (non-court dispute resolution) toolkit to support neurodivergent clients in mediation, arbitration and negotiation; and a professionals meeting toolkit to help professionals plan productive, neuroinclusive multi-agency meetings.
In a groundbreaking move, the Family Justice Council also published excellent best practice guidance on neurodiversity for practitioners in January last year, which is the first of its kind and universally applicable to other areas of law.
So, changes are happening within the industry but, ultimately, legal professionals need training on neurodivergence to achieve a unified approach to cases and to achieve the best outcomes for the individuals we represent.
Through FLANC, our specialist team at TV Edwards are now working in earnest to achieve this for family justice professionals, and it is hoped this will be the catalyst to encourage similar training to emerge for other areas of our profession.
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