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.
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.
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.
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 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.
The information that we ask for
When you contact us for advice by phone, webchat, email or online enquiry form we will ask you for information that is relevant to the situation that you are contacting us about. The lawful basis on which we will seek to collect this information from you is ‘legitimate interest’. However, if when describing the situation that you need help with, you share with an adviser relevant but especially sensitive information (e.g. about your health, race, ethnic origin, religion – known as ‘special category data’) then we will usually be processing this information on the basis of ‘social protection’ unless the information shared indicates an immediate threat to life and limb, in which case the basis will be the ‘vital interest’.
The information that an adviser may ask you for will include:
We keep this information in a case record. We will explain this to you at an early stage of your enquiry and ask you to confirm if you agree to a record being created (there is further information about how we use case records in the ‘if we are concerned about your safety or the safety of someone else’ tab below).
We will only ask for the personal information that we need and we will:
If there is certain information that you don’t want to give to us, you don’t have to. For example, if you inform us that you want to stay anonymous we’ll only record information about the problem you are contacting us about and make sure you’re not identified.
When you contact us for advice we will usually also ask you for some additional monitoring information. Collecting this monitoring information helps us to understand more about who is using our advice service. If there is certain information you don’t want to give us, then you do not have to share this with us and can state that you ‘prefer not to say’ when we asked you any monitoring question.
The lawful basis on which we collect and use monitoring information is ‘legitimate interest’. If, however, the monitoring information being sought is about whether you have a disability, or is about your ethnicity, this is a more sensitive type of information. It is known as ‘special category data’.
The lawful basis on which we collect and use that kind of more sensitive information is ‘explicit consent’. We will ask, and formally record, whether you consent to us collecting and recording that information about you. It is up to you whether you give your consent or not. You do not have to.
We will also usually ask you for some additional monitoring information about the child/ren whose situation you have contacted us about.
The information about the child/ren that we may ask for is their:
Information about a child’s ethnicity and disability is considered especially sensitive. It is known as ‘special category data’. Collecting this kind of sensitive data helps us to understand more about which children it is that social workers become involved with. The lawful basis on which we collect and use this information is ‘legitimate interest’ and on the condition of ‘substantial public interest – equality of opportunity or treatment.’
If there is certain information that you do not want to give us about the child or children, then you do not have to share this with the adviser.
How we use your information
The main reason we ask for your information is to help us to provide the most accurate information and advice to help you with your situation.
This information is always anonymised. This means you can’t be identified. In order to anonymise your information we process it under the basis of legitimate interests. We may share this anonymous information with funders and government departments. And publicly in Family Rights Group reports, articles and presentations, press releases, social media and blogs. The statistics also inform our policy research, campaigns, or other media work.
Sharing information to help you further with your situation
If we are providing you with advice as part of a specific indirect or self-advocacy project that Family Rights Group is running, then we might also need to share some of your information with other organisations.
We would only share your information in this way if you have given your permission for this to happen.
Any organisation we share your data with must store and use your data in line with data protection law.
Storing your information
During an advice telephone call, advisers may take notes to assist in the conversation. These notes are shredded afterwards.
When you receive advice and information from us by telephone, webchat, letter or email our adviser will enter information about your situation and the help you need into our secure case management system. We will keep the information you provide to us and be able to see:
Doing this helps us to provide accurate information and advice and support to you including if you receive advice from us on a number of occasions.
Some of your information might also be kept within our secure email and IT systems.
Monitoring the quality of our service
With your permission, we may contact you so that you can provide feedback on our service, for example via a survey.
When you call our national telephone advice line, from time to time another member of the advice service team (e.g. a manager) or representative of an external accreditation body may listen in to a call. This is for training or quality assurance purposes.
Very occasionally external representatives from funder or policy organisations are invited to listen in to calls to the advice line. This is to promote the work we do, and influence policy and funding decisions to meet the needs of the families we work with.
You will always be informed if someone wants to listen in to your call. You will be told about this before any personal data collection takes place. Listening in to a call will then only happen if you give your permission.
From time to time, an adviser may ask you if you agree to your call being recorded. This is for the purposes of induction and training of a new adviser. You will always be informed if an adviser wants to record your call. And you will be told about this before any personal data collection takes place. Recording a call will then only happen if you give your permission.
If we are concerned about your safety or the safety of someone else
You can find full information about this in our Confidentiality and Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults Policy.
If you make a complaint
If you make a complaint, we collect personal information from you so we can help deal with your complaint. We collect your information from you via phone, email, online form or letter – depending on how you complain. For further information about making a complaint and how we deal with complaints please see our Complaints, Comments and Compliments Policy.
Your rights
Email: office@frg.org.uk
Telephone: 020 7923 2628
Post: Family Rights Group, 101 Pentonville Road, London N1 9LG.
If you are not happy with the way we have handled your data, and are unable to resolve the issue with us personally, you can complain to the Information Commissioners Office.
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