Why help us

Our purpose is to enable children to live safely and thrive within their family and community.

We were founded in 1974 by social workers, lawyers and families in response to the injustices experienced by many parents involved with children’s services and the unnecessary separation of children from their families.

We promote a fairer child welfare and family justice system, in which children’s and families’ voices and experiences are central to decision making. We do this through:

• providing free, independent and confidential advice to help parents and kinship carers understand the law, child welfare processes, their rights and options;
• creating and championing innovative family-led solutions, including family group conferences and
  Lifelong Links;
• promoting families’ voices, expertise and insights in all our work, and supporting mothers,
  fathers, kinship carers and care-experienced young people to be heard by policy-makers, practitioners and the public;
• leading campaigns to achieve changes in law, policy and practice, informed by research
  and the perspectives of those with lived experience.

We have had a significant impact in influencing legislation, including the Children Act 1989.

These achievements are due to us consistently bringing evidence of injustices to the attention of politicians, practitioners and the media, and putting forward workable solutions.

However, more could be done to prevent children from being taken into care in the first place and parents need to get the early help to stop problems escalating into a crisis.

There are more than 200,000 children in the UK raised by family and kinship carers. These children have suffered similar adversities to those in the care system, yet the support they receive bears little if any relationship to their needs.