Where a death occurs in custody or in state care, an Article 2 inquest examines not only how the person died but whether systems failed them. Risk assessment, inter-agency communication and record keeping are usually where the answers lie.
Families are frequently at a disadvantage in the early stages, when disclosure is incomplete and the institutions involved are already represented. Getting the family's questions written down, and the requests for disclosure made in proper form, materially changes what the inquest is able to examine.
We assist families with that preparatory stage and with the correspondence that precedes it. Representation at the inquest itself is a matter for counsel, and we help families instruct a barrister when it reaches that point.