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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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Independent Care Review for England 2021

In January 2021, the government launched the ‘independent review of children’s social care in England’. The Review set out to ‘provide a once in a generation opportunity to transform the children’s social care system and provide children with loving, safe and stable families’. The Review published its final report in May 2022.

Family Rights Group believe that the Care Review has been an important opportunity to influence proposals for change across the child welfare system in England. We engaged with the Review, seeking to influence its recommendations, including through contributing evidence and sharing insight from our services and legal and policy experience.  We held a series of policy seminars which fed into the Review. We also worked to ensure the Review hears the voices and experiences of mothers, fathers and kinship carers involved with the child welfare system.

In February 2023, the Government published their response to the Review’s recommendations in an implementation strategy document called Stable Homes, Built on Love. See our response to that here

Our submissions:

#TimeToDefine – A proposal for a clear and simple legal framework for kinship care – April 2022

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Family Rights Group’s response to the Review’s ‘Call for Ideas’ – December 2021

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Evidence from Family Rights Group’s Advice Service – May 2021

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Family Rights Group’s response to the Review’s Call for Evidence – March 2021

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Engagement events:

  • April 2021 – Family Rights Group’s parents’ and kinship carers’ panels met with the Care Review engagement team.
  • May 2021 – Family Rights Group hosted a workshop for mothers, fathers and kinship carers with experience of the child welfare system to share their experiences and ideas with the Care Review engagement team.
  • July 2021 – Family Rights Group’s parents’ and kinship carers’ panels met with the Review’s engagement team to share their thoughts on the Review’s Case for Change.
  • September 2021 – Family Rights Group hosted a second online workshop for mothers, fathers, kinship carers and people raised in kinship care to respond to the Review’s Case for Change and to share with the Review their ideas for solutions to improve children’s social care so that it works for children and families.
  • November 2021 – Family Rights Group hosted two policy seminars exploring what reforms are needed, particularly within our child welfare and family justice system, so more children can live safely and thrive within their families and communities. The Review team attended and Chair, Josh MacAlister, spoke at our first event which was about working in partnership with families. Watch them here.
  • May 2022 – Angela Frazer-Wicks – Family Rights Group’s Chair, member of our parents’ panel and member of the Review’s Experts by Experience group – spoke about her experience as a birth mum to two children who were adopted, first at a Downing Street reception with the Education Secretary and Children’s Minister, and then with the Leader of the Labour Party, Shadow Education Secretary and Shadow Children’s Minister. See here for more information.
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