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.
A family who is struggling to meet their child’s basic needs can request help and support. This could be early help.
Early help aims for agencies to work together to provide support as soon as problems emerge. This is because tackling a problem early can stop things getting worse. Education (schools, nurseries), housing, and health services are all examples of agencies. Early Help can be given to a family with a child up to age 18. So the child may be a baby, toddler, at primary school or a teenager.
Social workers are not involved in early help assessments or providing early help services. But sometimes, they ask early help services to provide assistance to children and families they are working with.
See our Early help page for more information about early help services.
There is a general legal duty on children’s services departments to work to keep children safe, well cared for and, at home unless this would place them at risk. To help achieve this, children’s services must provide a range and level of services in their local area to help children ‘in need’ and their families (see see section 17(1) Children Act 1989).
A child in need is a child who needs extra support or services to help them achieve or maintain ‘a reasonable standard of health or development’ (see section 17(10) Children Act 1989).
If children’s services think a child or family may need extra support, they should carry out a child in need assessment. This aims to work out if a child is in need or not. And to find out what extra help and services the child and their family need. Local children’s services departments have their own measures for deciding which children are ‘in need’ enough to get services.
See our Child in need page for important information about how to request a child in need assessment and what is involved.
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