Originally Posted by
AK lawyer
An "expert witness" is someone who is recognized by the court to be an expert. Opinion testimony is in general only received by a court if the witness is an "expert". You should be able to find, for example, a person with training and experience in social work who is willing, for a fee, to testify in your behalf. This person would testify, on the basis of his or her training and experience, that the Section 7 report is wrong. In the U.S. it's customary to pay expert witnesses; I don't know if that is allowed in the U.K. or not.
To help illustrate what I mean by an expert witness, let me give you an example. Say you were suing a surgeon because, during an appendectomy operation she removed your pancreas instead. You would have an expert witness, in my example, another surgeon, testify that, in the expert's opinion, taking out the pancreas would be unacceptable and negligent.