We are proud to offer a full-time, qualified independent children's advocate to provide advocacy support to our children and young people.
Our children's advocate is a specially trained professional who works separately from social work teams and works to ensure that the voices of children and young people are heard and taken into account in all aspects of their lives.
Who is the advocacy service for
Our children's advocate can support children and young people:
- who are between 7 and 25 years old
- when a child protection conference is taking place
- when a child protection plan is being made
- cared for by the council
- who are care experienced.
By providing this support, we make sure children and young people can have a say in the decisions that impact their lives and make certain that their rights and interests are protected.
Our advocacy efforts were successful in providing support to 61 children and young people.
Last year, our advocacy team received 75 requests for support and helped 61 children and young people. This has increased from the year before when we supported 25 children and young people.
Our core values
Dignity
Advocates respect the equal worth and dignity of every child.
Personal power
Advocates help to build up children's personal power.
Your pace
Advocates work at the individual's pace and follow their instructions.
Influence
Advocates do whatever they can to help children make and influence decisions.
Trust
Advocates earn children's trust.
Results
Advocacy should achieve results. The child is the judge of whether having an advocate has helped, or not.
Improve
Advocacy services are designed for and with children. They learn from children's views and ideas to constantly improve.
From the Children's Commissioner's Children's Advocacy report 2019.
What children and young people used advocacy for
The advocate was highly sought after by young people (44%) who needed support with attending children looked after review meetings. By prioritising the young person's voice, the advocate ensured their thoughts, feelings, and views were central to the meeting.
Of the young people who used the service, 23% sought support with housing issues. Most of these requests came from care experienced young people who needed guidance when making crucial decisions about their accommodation.
The advocate was successful in assisting 6 young people (12%) in using the formal complaint process to challenge a decision that they were unhappy with.
The advocate was able to support 11% of young people with voicing their concerns about their foster placement or residential home. The advocate used mediation, which means bringing the young person, social worker and carer together to agree on a way forward they are all happy with.
Giving power to the young person's voice by helping them understand their rights and entitlements is an important aspect of advocacy. 3% of requests came from care experienced young people who returned to Children's services and with the advocate's help, requested additional support from the service.
What did children and young people say?
Thank you so much for your help. Your support kept me going and makes me want to keep taking things as far as I can.
Basically great, I loved you being my advocate, like I honestly haven’t had an advocate or someone that’s helped out except for family – so basically you can see my rating – all the stars ***********
Thank you, I would definitely use this service again if I was able to.
The service was super helpful. My advocate saw my email that I sent asking for help and got back to me quickly. I had regular contact with my advocate for updates and general wellbeing checks.
Having an advocate speak on my behalf helped me get housing which I have been fighting for years so it was helpful and has changed my life. I would like to thank my advocate for helping me through my journey and keeping pushing me.
My experience with the advocate has been really great. She has really helped me understand everything I’m going through and the best approach for everything.
She has believed everything I have said and has advocated for me always. She has understood everything I have said and has helped me to process my thoughts and ideas very clearly.
Improvements made
To improve the advocacy service, several steps were taken:
- since October 2022 we've had a full time advocate, making it easier for children and young people to get support from the Children's Advocacy service
- the advocate completed specialist training to make sure they can advocate for more children and young people including Disabled children and young people
- information about our Children's Advocacy service was added to the national advocacy database run by Coram Voice and is updated annually
- the H&F council website was updated to include information on how to contact the advocacy service
- the advocacy service was actively promoted across Children's services to the social work teams
- more children and young people had support from the children's advocate at child protection conferences and family group conferences.
The future
Looking ahead, we plan to:
- make sure there are different ways that we can contact children and young people who live outside the borough
- make sure that Disabled children and young people get more support by regularly visiting The Haven residential home for children with disabilities
- develop a statement that explains that the advocate works separately from the social work teams to represent the child or young person's voice
- strengthen links with special solicitors to support children's rights.
Progress made in 2022 to 2023
- The advocate is supporting more children and young people to prepare for child protection conferences.
- The advocate is making regular visits to the Haven children's home to make sure our children with disabilities get advocacy support.
- The advocate has done project work with the participation officer and looked after children social work teams to get feedback from our children and young people cared for by the council.
- We offered a work experience placement with a care-experienced young person. This young person has helped us update and develop new advocacy resources.
- We developed an independence statement to be shared with young people which is on our website and is included in the advocacy emails.
- We have opened communication links with solicitors at Coram Children's Legal Centre to support children's rights when needed.
Young person's experience of advocacy
We have changed the young person's name and some information has changed to keep their identity anonymous.
Khalid
Khalid, a 14-year-old cared for by the council, was living in a foster home with foster carers and felt his views were not being heard by the professional network around him.
He gave consent for his virtual school teacher to make a referral for advocacy. Khalid felt that his needs were not being met by his foster carers and his new social worker did not fully understand him and his needs.
Khalid met with his advocate and outlined a list of issues he had with his care in the foster home and shared just how unhappy and stressed this was making him feel. His advocate raised these issues with his social worker who was not aware of all of his concerns.
Communication had broken down between Khalid and his foster carers with both reporting to be unhappy. This had started to affect Khalid's attendance at school and after-school activities.
A stability meeting was arranged with the advocate attending to represent Khalid's views. The meeting also raised the issue of cultural differences between Khalid and his foster carers, and it was clear that there had been miscommunication between them.
The issues raised by Khalid were accepted and work was done by the foster carers' supervising social worker to help them better understand Khalid's needs and wishes. There was an opportunity for the foster carers to learn more about Khalid's culture and respect his cultural choices around food and lifestyle.
A clear plan was put in place to address Khalid's needs in the foster home and his financial entitlements. Khalid felt that his voice had been central to formulating the plan which was important.
The plan was communicated to Khalid and his carers and was agreed by both. The plan was then monitored by the social worker and supervising social worker to ensure it was kept to.
Khalid reported improvements at home, and he chose to stay with his foster carers. He was able to thank his advocate for always listening to him and helping him through a particularly stressful time.