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.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Kinship Care has today issued a new report – ‘Lost in the Legal Labyrinth’ – which found that prospective kinship carers do not have access to the legal advice and representation they need, with sometimes devastating consequences for them and the children.
There are more children now in the care system in England and Wales, than at any time since 1985, and the system has been described as in crisis. Yet the APPG heard from hundreds of kinship carers across England and Wales, and found evidence of instances where, rather than supporting family and friends who wanted to give children a safe and loving home, the system made the process so confusing and stressful it seemed designed to actively discourage them.
The inquiry, launched in January 2022, also heard from leading legal practitioners and organisations in child and family law, and from non-for-profit advice services. The evidence received points to a broken child welfare and family justice system that does not sufficiently support relatives and friends to step in to prevent children entering the care system and be cared for by strangers.
“The process is incredibly stressful and highly emotional, and the child welfare and family justice system should be working in partnership with children and their families every step of the way. Instead, it is left to charities like Family Rights Group’s advice service, or to solicitors working pro bono, to help kinship carers to understand the law and their rights and options. But advice services are running at full capacity and many prospective kinship carers do not have legal representation in court or find themselves side-lined in proceedings.”
“This report sends a strong message from kinship carers and from the sector about the importance of supporting children to remain safely in their family and friends’ network when they cannot remain at home. I hope the Government will consider the APPG’s findings and any recommendations that The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in England will be making, so that we can ensure the best outcomes for children across England and Wales.” Said Mr Gwynne.
“Kinship carers should not have to spend hundreds and thousands of pounds of their own money, sometimes leaving them in significant debt, to give a child in their family network a safe home and to secure the support the child and their carer needs. Decisions made in court can have a lasting impact throughout the child’s life so carers must be able to understand their rights and options, be supported to make informed decisions and effectively participate in any proceedings. Instead of freeing kinship carers up to focus on the needs of the children they are caring for, often in times of acute crisis, the current system draws them ever deeper into a confusing and costly legal labyrinth. Reform cannot come soon enough.”
“Being assessed was a frightening experience, having never been involved with children’s ser-vices. I was a working mother but did not have enough money to approach a solicitor privately. There was also a level of mistrust within our family as we knew the local authority had our de-tails on file and had not sought to approach us… I was too frightened to challenge the local au-thority because I thought that they might give me a negative assessment and that my niece could be lost to adoption.
“When I first attended court, I was so worried as I did not know what to do and how to do it. However, I met a duty solicitor at court that day. She advised me that I needed legal representation as the local authority had successfully assessed me and was concerned that I did not know anything about the proceedings or the order I was seeking to apply for… The solicitor agreed to represent me for that hearing.”
The APPG’s work follows some welcome but currently undelivered commitments, made by the Ministry of Justice in 2019, to expand the scope of legal aid to cover kinship carers applying for special guardianship orders in private law. The APPG has called on the government to implement those proposals urgently and urged them to go further by mirroring the provision in public law and without means testing. The Ministry of Justice has recently published proposals to reform the means test but the APPG says the new thresholds will still exclude many impoverished carers.
For further information, please contact: Cathy Ashley, cashley@frg.org.uk, 07931 570149
Download the full report: ‘Lost in the legal labyrinth: How a lack of legal aid and advice is undermining kinship care’
More information about the APPG and its inquiry can be found on the Group’s website here.
The APPG on Kinship Care is a cross party group of MPs and Peers who share a common interest in championing kinship care and improving support for kinship carers. The APPG seeks to raise awareness of kinship care and to promote policy and practice which supports more children to live safely within their family and friends network, when they cannot live with their parents.
Family Rights Group is a national charity that promotes policies and practices that keep children safe within their family and strengthen the family and community networks of those children who cannot live at home. The charity works with parents whose children are in need, at risk or are in the care system and with wider family members and friends who are raising children (known as kinship
carers). They run a free, independent and confidential child welfare practice and legally-based advice service for parents, grandparents, relatives and friends about their rights and options when social workers or courts make decisions about their children’s welfare. Advice line 0808 801 0366 Mon-Friday 9.30am-3pm
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