By phone or email
To speak to an adviser, please call our free and confidential advice line 0808 801 0366 (Monday to Friday 9.30am to 3pm, excluding Bank Holidays). Or you can ask us a question via email using our advice enquiry form.
Get Help and Advice
Free, independent and confidential advice for families
Our Advice and Advocacy Service is for parents, kinship carers, relatives and friends of children who are involved with children’s services in England or need their help. We support families to understand the law and child welfare processes when social workers or courts are making decisions about their children.
Our service includes:
- Online advice – start with our Who?, What?, Why? advice pages. Or see our A-Z, advice sheets, top tips and template letters
- Online forums where families can receive advice, discuss issues and find support from others
- A free telephone advice line open Monday to Friday between 9.30am and 3pm (excluding Bank Holidays) on 0808 801 0366. We offer a language line facility if you need an interpreter
- Self-advocacy support to callers to our advice line
- A webchat service where families can chat online to an adviser and get information and advice.
In these videos parents and kinship carers talk about their experience of using our advice line. They talk about how callers can choose to remain anonymous and our non-judgemental approach.
Frequently Asked Questions
Contact us for advice
If you need advice, you can contact us by phone, webchat and our online forums. Or ask us a question using our advice enquiry form.
Quick Links
Our easy to use Who? pages aim to help families better understand their rights and options when children’s services or the family courts make decisions about children’s welfare. Tailored information is available for mothers, fathers, young parents, parents to be and kinship carers.
Parents
Our parent pages provide easy to follow information and advice for parents to be, young parents, mothers and fathers.
Kinship care
Kinship carers are relatives or friends raising children unable to live with their parents. Read on for helpful advice about different kinship care arrangements and the support available.
Find out more
Parents to be
This page explains the support expectant parents can seek from children’s services and others. And what happens where there are concerns a new-born baby may be at risk of harm.
Young parents
Our young parents advice hub provides legal and practical information to help more young mothers, fathers and young parents-to-be keep their children safely with them.
Mothers
Mothers who are struggling and need extra support or whose children are involved with children’s services, need to understand their rights and options. These pages can help.
Fathers
Sometimes fathers can be overlooked or excluded when children’s services are involved with their children. These pages aim to help fathers understand their rights and options.
The What? pages of our website explain how children’s services work in England. And the different ways they can become involved with children and their families. The pages provide easy to follow information about the law and child welfare processes families may come across.
Children’s services
Every local authority has a children’s services department responsible for supporting families and protecting children. Children’s services used to be known as ‘social services’.
Family group conferences: advice for families
A family group conference is a family-led decision-making meeting. It brings together the whole family, and others who are important to the child. Together, they make a plan for the child.
Early help
Early help is about giving support to a child and their family as soon as a problem emerges, and providing help to stop things getting worse.
Child in need
Disabled children and children assessed as having significant or complex needs will be classed as ‘in need’ and may get extra help from children’s services.
Child protection
Child protection is the actions, policies and procedures children’s services and other organisations put in place to protect children from significant harm, including abuse and neglect.
Pre-proceedings
Pre-proceedings refers to the period of time and formal process where children’s services are thinking about starting care proceedings in the Family Court.
Care (and related) proceedings
Care proceedings is the Family Court process children’s services can initiate to protect a child who they think is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm.
Children in the care system under voluntary arrangements (section 20)
When children are ‘looked after’ by children’s services but no court order is in place, they are described as being in voluntary accommodation or a ‘voluntary arrangement’.
Children in care under a court order
Some children are looked after in the care system under court orders including emergency protection orders and interim and final care orders.
Kinship care: children living with relatives or friends
Where children cannot safely live with a parent, the priority is to see if they can be cared for in kinship care by relatives or friends.
Adoption
Adoption is the legal process of a child becoming a permanent member of a new family. It ends a child’s legal connection with their birth family.
Complaints
The law sets out how families can bring challenge and make complaints if they have concerns about the actions or decisions of children’s services and social workers.
Children’s services may become involved with children and families for a range of different reasons. Our Why? pages aim to provide information about some of the most common reasons. Topics include domestic abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, adult mental ill-health and many more.
Domestic abuse
Domestic abuse is controlling, coercive, threatening or violent, behaviour between partners, ex-partners, or family members. It is a common reason why children’s services become involved with families.
Drug and alcohol misuse
Using drugs or excessive amounts of alcohol can negatively affect a parent’s ability to meet their child’s needs and make sure their child kept safe and well.
Adult mental ill-health
In England, one in four adults experience mental ill-health each year. Some will be parents and carers who need some extra support to raise their child.
Emotional abuse
It can be difficult for families to understand exactly what practitioners mean when they talk about emotional abuse. This page explains emotional abuse and provides some examples.
Neglect
Neglect occurs when a child’s basic needs are continually not met to the point that their health or development is negatively affected.
Adult learning difficulties and disabilities
Like many families, parents with learning disabilities or difficulties may need to draw on a range of services and receive some extra help to raise their children.
Adult physical disabilities or ill-health
Where an adult has a physical health need or a disability it is important that they and their child receive any help and support they may need.
Children with disabilities and children with special educational needs
There a range of important duties on local councils, including their children’s services departments, to help and support children with disabilities and those with special educational needs.
Child mental ill-health
Children with mental ill-health, and their families, may need additional help and support. This may come from children’s services and specialist mental health agencies.
Physical abuse
Physical abuse is harm caused to a child through hitting, shaking, burning or other acts. It may also include an adult deliberately causing illness in a child.
Sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse is where a child is forced or tricked into sexual activity.
Child exploitation
Where a person or group forces or manipulates a child into doing something for them such as selling drugs, this is child exploitation.
Radicalisation
Radicalisation is the process through which someone comes to support or be involved in extremist beliefs.
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