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.
Family Rights Group’s ‘angel in disguise’ honoured by King
Beverley Campbell, Family Rights Group’s family participation officer and adviser receives MBE in His Majesty’s New Years Honours 2025.
Family Rights Group is a leading national charity working to improve the child welfare system so children can live safely and thrive in their family.
Beverley joined Family Rights Group in 2008 as an adviser and advocate. The child welfare system is complex for families to navigate, especially when they are facing a crisis. The charity’s free national advice service supports parents and wider family and friends including kinship carers to understand their rights and options when involved with children’s services.
Brought up in kinship care by her grandparents, Beverley was 17 years old when her grandmother had a stroke. Beverley has cared for her ever since.
Services to children and families
The importance of family, care and kinship has run through Beverley’s life and is visible in her work. Beverley has advised thousands of callers to the charity’s advice line over the last 16 years. Family Rights Group constantly receives amazing feedback from callers. One mother, whose child was returned to her from care following Beverley’s advice, described Beverley as “an angel in disguise.”
Beverley has also been instrumental in the founding and development of the charity’s flourishing panels of parents and kinship carers with lived experience of the child welfare system. Under her direction, Family Rights Group’s family panels have been cited as best practice exemplars. They were regularly consulted as part of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, have informed the Government’s kinship care strategy, as well as reforms to bring more transparency to the Family Court.
Celebrating Beverley’s award, Angela Frazer-Wicks MBE, Chair of the charity’s board of trustees and member of the parents’ panel, said:
“Beverley ensures that every single one of us is supported, valued and empowered in a way that allows us to retain control of our own narrative. She gives us the confidence to speak out whilst minimising the trauma caused to us.”
Jody-Lee, a kinship carer panel member described Beverley, as:
“a fairy god-mother, who is always there for us, encouraging us and advising us as needed, so we can help improve the system for other families.”
Cathy Ashley, Chief Executive of Family Rights Group said:
“Beverley is an extraordinary woman who has left a lasting impression on families, as well as all who work with her. An experienced lawyer and talented adviser with a deep well of empathy, she mobilises her expert legal knowledge and her personal experience of caring, to support families without judgment to get help for the benefit of their children. Families repeatedly tell me about how Beverley has transformed their lives, by making them feel valued, by believing in them and by going the extra mile.
“There are record numbers of children in the care system, many isolated living far away from family and friends and not having their needs met. Families are struggling to get help early before a crisis emerges, too often subject to assessment and judgement when they need support.
“Beverley’s work as an adviser and in facilitating our family panels is fundamental to Family Rights Group’s work ensuring that the voices and experiences of children and families drive decisions at every level of the child welfare system.”
Beverley said:
“I am grateful and proud to receive an honour from His Majesty. My grandmother is also thrilled, and is expecting her own letter from the palace in February, in the form of a one hundredth birthday card. It is lovely that generations of care are being recognised in her centenary year.
“I like to say that attendance is an achievement, just turning up, and being in the room. So, to be recognised for turning up for children and families is really special.
“Our parents and kinship carers panel members are the beating heart of Family Rights Group. They bring to the light the experiences of families, to improve outcomes for children. It is a privilege to work with, facilitate and support families, and so I gladly share this honour with them.”
Alongside her work for Family Rights Group and caring for her family, Beverley writes poetry and is a spoken word poet, performing recently at Lambeth Council’s 75th Windrush anniversary event. She also serves as a trustee for the charity The Right Course which seeks to transform prison staff canteens into restaurants to teach valuable hospitality skills and provide sustainable employment opportunities for prisoners upon their release.
Our funding means we can currently only help 4 in 10 people
Your donation will help more families access expert legal advice and support from Family Rights Group.
Donate Now