During Family Rights Group’s Young Parents Project, we were able to provide free, indirect advocacy support to 180 young parents (up to the age of 30) who have a child who is, or has been, involved with children’s services. This indirect advocacy support allowed for a short term piece of work lasting up to 5 hours to be carried out and often included:
- Offering the young parent detailed advice in an email
- Providing a template letter for the young parent to amend and send to children’s services
- Negotiating with children’s services by letter, email or telephone on behalf of the young parent.
Young parents finding this service helpful included those who had:
- Been in the care system
- Had a child removed before
- Found it difficult to work with services and professionals at times, and/or
- Felt that their age was being viewed as a risk factor by children’s services.
The indirect advocacy support as part of the Young Parents’ Project has now come to an end. If you are a young parent and you need help and advice you can still:
- Look through the information available on this Young Parents Advice website
- Call the Family Rights Group free advice line on 0808 801 0366 which is open between 9.30am and 3.00pm Mondays to Fridays (excluding bank holidays)
- Find out more about advocacy, by taking a look at the information on the Working with an advocate page
- Look at the other organisations that may be able to provide help and support which are listed on the Further information page.
If you are a social worker (or other practitioner) looking to arrange and fund direct advocacy support for a young parent, you will find information about Family Rights Group’s advocacy service here.
