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Our advice service

Are you a parent, kinship carer relative or friend of a child who is involved with, or who needs the help of, children’s services in England? 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.

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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.

Discuss on our forums

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.

Advice on our website

Our get help and advice section has template letters, advice sheets and resources about legal and social care processes. On Monday and Wednesday afternoons, you can use our webchat service to chat online to an adviser.

 

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Lifelong Links news

Lifelong Links is an approach which evolves and adapts as it is tested and expanded. Here you can find the latest Lifelong Links news and developments.

What we are working on now

Here you will find the latest news on our current projects.

How can Lifelong Links work for young people who have been adopted?

In collaboration with Adoption England, Family Rights Group are looking at developing the use of Lifelong Links for young people who have been adopted and are living with their adopted family.

Adapting the approach

We needed to adapt the Lifelong Links approach for children in the care system to make it work for children who are adopted. Over the last few months, we consulted those with lived experience including young people and members of birth and adoptive families. Because of the complexity of the legal framework, our legal advisers devoted significant time to considering the challenges and implications. We also sought additional specialist legal advice.

Consultation

Ongoing discussions and focus groups confirmed the importance of approaching the workstream with care, and understanding the ways in which the work will differ from Lifelong Links with young people in the care system.

This initial consultation phase provided ample insight and clarity, while being extremely positive about the potential for Lifelong Links to support adopted young people to safely connect with or learn more about members of their birth family and others who cared about them.

We are grateful for the time and energy of those who have participated so far. They enabled us to understand the skills that coordinators will need and the additional processes to be navigated.

Next steps

Work is underway in collaboration with Regional Adoption Agencies and Lifelong Links services to hone and implement the offer. Practitioners in Coventry, North East Lincolnshire, Hertfordshire & Tower Hamlets are working alongside us to refine our ideas. They will then offer Lifelong Links to a small number of adopted young people. A trial phase began in September 2024, which aims to see 10 adopted young people receive a Lifelong Links service within a year.

This work will be independently evaluated by the University of Sussex and will inform our guidance and recommendations for offering Lifelong Links to adopted young people. We know from discussions that many services are keen to explore this area of work locally and ask for patience as we undertake this work, we look forward to sharing our findings and guidance.

National Lottery Community Fund: children and young people in children’s homes

The National Lottery Community Fund logo - with a graphic image of crossed fingersIn 2023, Family Rights Group successfully applied to the Big Lottery’s Reaching Communities fund. The funding provided will help support the expansion of Lifelong Links, with a particular focus on increasing the number of children and young people in residential care who are able to benefit from the approach.

Work is now underway that involves the following:

  • Engaging with existing Lifelong Links services to expand their current referral criteria to include children and young people in residential care.
  • Supporting local authorities without Lifelong Links services to implement and sustain one by providing consultancy and training at no cost.
  • Developing bespoke practice guidance for Lifelong Links with children and young people in residential care.
  • Collaborating with the University of Sussex to conduct an evaluation.

Over the next three years, our aim is to support services to offer Lifelong Links to over 100 children and young people up to the age of 18 who are living within residential children’s homes within or outside of the local authority boundaries.

Lifelong Links: London

Lifelong Links: London is a London focused project supported by a renowned musician and producer. His generous support will allow Family Rights Group to work with a number of local authorities in London to implement Lifelong Links and make it available to all care leavers in their local authority. We hope that this movement spreads. We want all care leavers in London to have the opportunity to connect with family, friends and others who are important to them, as well as to find out more about their personal history and identity.

Family Rights Group will work closely with the Care Leaver Covenant and the Care Leaver Compact to add an additional element to the work. The Care Leaver Covenant is a national charity which helps support care leavers to live independently, providing employment and training opportunities and help on issues ranging from mental and physical health, to financial.

The Pan London Care Leavers Compact provides a framework for developing consistency, breadth and quality in the support offered to London’s care leavers. Their key delivery partners include the London Children in Care Council, Partnership for Young London, and the Greater London Authority (GLA).

How we got here

The timeline below sets out the key milestones of the Lifelong Links journey:

January 2025

People pie chart

Our funding means we can currently only help 4 in 10 people

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