How to contact us for advice
We provide advice to parents, grandparents, relatives, friends and kinship carers who are involved with children’s services in England or need their help. We can help you understand processes and options when social workers or courts are making decisions about your child’s welfare.
Our advice service is free, independent and confidential.
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). For Textphone dial 18001 followed by the advice line number. Or you can ask us a question via email using our advice enquiry form.
Our online advice forums are an anonymous space where parents and kinship carers (also known as family and friends carers) can get legal and practical advice, build a support network and learn from other people’s experiences.
Our get help and advice section describes the processes that you and your family are likely to go through, so that you know what to expect. Our webchat service can help you find the information and advice on our website which will help you understand the law and your rights.
Free, independent and confidential advice for families
Our Advice and Advocacy Service is for parents, grandparents, relatives, friends and kinship carers 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.
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.
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.
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.
Our parent pages provide easy to follow information and advice for parents to be, young parents, mothers and fathers.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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’.
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 is about giving support to a child and their family as soon as a problem emerges, and providing help to stop things getting worse.
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 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 refers to the period of time and formal process where children’s services are thinking about starting care proceedings in the Family Court.
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.
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’.
Some children are looked after in the care system under court orders including emergency protection orders and interim and final care orders.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 occurs when a child’s basic needs are continually not met to the point that their health or development is negatively affected.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Child sexual abuse is where a child is forced or tricked into sexual activity.
Where a person or group forces or manipulates a child into doing something for them such as selling drugs, this is child exploitation.
Radicalisation is the process through which someone comes to support or be involved in extremist beliefs.
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