Scotland legal aid: children and care leavers, 1 June
Scotland has updated its legal aid rules for children and care‑experienced young people. The Legal Aid and Advice and Assistance (Miscellaneous Amendment) (Scotland) Regulations 2026 were made on 19 February 2026 and take effect on 1 June 2026, after approval by the Scottish Parliament, according to legislation.gov.uk (SSI 2026/117).
Here’s the headline change: from 1 June 2026, any child involved in proceedings under the Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011 can receive Assistance by Way of Representation (ABWOR) without a means test and without a merits test. The new financial limits and ABWOR rules apply where advice, assistance or representation is made available on or after 1 June 2026.
If you are new to the term, ABWOR is the legal aid route that lets a solicitor represent you quickly at a hearing and handle the early, urgent work that comes with it. It is different from full civil legal aid, which is used for longer cases and more detailed court processes.
The spending limits for this early help are set clearly for children’s matters. Advice and assistance is limited to £135. ABWOR is limited to £550. The same regulations also replace the £500 figure in regulation 3(c)(xvii) of the 1993 Financial Limit Regulations with £550, increasing the headroom available before the Scottish Legal Aid Board (SLAB) needs to sign off extra work.
One ABWOR approval can now follow a child through several linked steps under the 2011 Act. This covers urgent child protection order applications, the children’s hearings that review a place of safety or a non‑removal order, later applications to vary or end an order, and the first hearing held within eight working days after a protection order. The single approval lasts until a decision is made about a compulsory supervision order.
Within the ABWOR regulations, a child is now defined simply as someone under 18. That clarity should help professionals and families apply the same test without exceptions or guesswork.
Money paid as a care leaver payment is protected. The regulations define this as ‘care experience assistance’ under section 93A of the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, and they tell SLAB not to count it as income or as capital when checking eligibility. It is also excluded so that fees and outlays are not taken from it if property is recovered or preserved in proceedings.
Civil legal aid rules are updated in the same way. The carer’s allowance supplement and the care‑experienced students’ bursary are listed, alongside care leaver payments, as amounts that do not count towards disposable income. Care leaver payments are also excluded from disposable capital. The list of payments that must not be used to meet legal costs is updated to include care leaver payments, with technical date corrections made to 2025 in the exception list.
When the rules talk about disposable income and disposable capital, think of the money left after essential costs and the savings or assets in your name. By excluding care leaver payments from both calculations, the Scottish Government aims to make sure this support does what it is meant to do: help young people leaving care, not fund legal bills.
If you work in a school, college or social work team, the change should reduce delay. From 1 June 2026, solicitors can step in for a child at a hearing without waiting on means or merits checks, and they can do more initial work within the higher limits before seeking further approval.
If you are a parent, carer or young person, the practical takeaway is straightforward. Ask your solicitor about ABWOR for children’s hearings. Tell them if you receive a care leaver payment, a carer’s allowance supplement or a care‑experienced students’ bursary, because those payments should not affect eligibility and should not be used to pay legal costs.
These changes were authorised by Scottish Ministers and signed at St Andrew’s House on 19 February 2026 by Siobhian Brown. For classroom use, this is a clear case study in how regulations can remove barriers to representation and protect targeted social security payments. The full text is available on legislation.gov.uk if you want to read the detail.