News & Events
Honorary Membership - Sheri Holland
21 April 2009
At its meeting on 17th April 2009 the NEC resolved unanimously to confer honorary membership upon Sheri Holland following her retirement from Leicestershire County Council.
The resolution was proposed by Philip Thomson (Company Secretary) who was Sheri’s predeccesor as Chair of SLG’s Child Care Lawyers Group.
A valediction was provided by David Morgan (Head of Legal Services, Leicestershire County Council):
"Her contribution to child protection work locally and nationally has been huge. I know of no-one in local government with greater commitment to their area of work.
Sheri has been in many very complex and very difficult cases over the years. Working in this area requires mental toughness and emotional resilience. Sheri needed all her resources in handling one of the largest child sexual abuse cases of the 1980s and 1990s in the High Court including at one stage as many as 33 children, 16 of whom were made Wards of Court.
Despite undertaking such gruelling work, Sheri’s commitment remained undiminished and, since then, she has been a leading figure nationally in child protection work in local government. Briefly, significant points in her career including the following:
*Qualified as a solicitor in 1974
*Became the first female solicitor practising regularly in courts in Loughborough and one of the few in Leicestershire
*Joined Leicestershire County Council in 1986
*Became Assistant Head of Legal Services in 1996
*Served for many years on the Solicitors in Local Government Child Care Lawyers Group, becoming Chairman of that group
*Has for some years been the Lead Professional in child care work for Solicitors in Local Government
*Has served as a member of the Law Society Children Law Subcommittee over a number of years
*Has served on occasion as a member of the Law Society Family Law Committee
*Has been a member of the Local Family Court Committees and Court User Groups for many years.
There have been many occasions on which the quality of her work and of the team she leads has been recognised, unofficially by the judiciary and, occasionally, in judgements given by the courts.”
