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.
Kinship carers are wider family and friends – including grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters – who step up for children when they cannot stay at home. It’s estimated that 180,000 children in the UK are being raised by kinship carers. Many would otherwise be raised by strangers within a children’s social care system which is in crisis.
To enable kinship carers to step forward and to ensure every child gets the support they need to thrive, the national strategy should deliver on the following six areas. Action to address inequalities, including on race and disability, should run throughout.
Cathy Ashley, Chief Executive of Family Rights Group, said: “Kinship care is very often the best option for children who cannot stay at home, and yet has been consistently overlooked and undervalued by successive governments despite the worsening crisis in children’s social care.
“The first national kinship care strategy is an opportunity to address this injustice and deliver for tens of thousands of children and their carers. Our six tests set out what children and families say the Government needs to commit to in the strategy.”
In February, Gillian Keegan MP, the Education Secretary pledged to “unlock the potential of kinship care” so that “children who cannot stay with their parents are cared for by people who know and love them already”.
With David Johnston OBE taking on the job of Children’s Minister last week, this is the Government’s opportunity to rise to the scale of the challenge facing the children’s social care sector. This must involve Departments across government taking kinship care seriously.
If the Government’s strategy were to address these six areas of concern for kinship families, it would help ensure that kinship arrangements remain viable for families across the country who take on responsibility for children in need, often at great personal cost.
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