Children’s Advocacy

Your Voice Matters

All professionals are invaluable in seeking out the views of the young people they are working closely with. However, there are times when additional support, from someone independent of care and support providers is needed to ensure a child’s wishes and views are understood and represented.

It is essential that children have access to someone independent who can ensure their voice is heard and raise concerns on their behalf. The experience of advocacy can be empowering for children and young people.

Children and young people often feel more confident to express their wishes and their entitlements when they have experienced an advocate doing so on their behalf.

Your Voice Matters

Supporting children to have their wishes and feelings heard (and attending meetings with them where necessary).

• Making sure children understand what is being said
• Helping to make a complaint
• Provide information and advice on rights and useful websites
• Speaking with the people who are making decisions to ensure that children are involved in any plans about their lives

An advocate can also help with:

• Child protection meetings and child care reviews
  • The advocate can help by preparing the child/young person if they are attending any meetings or reviews. The advocate can also meet with the child/young person to record their views and wishes to share at any meetings, support them to attend, or attend on their behalf
• Making sure a child/young person is ok when changes happen, we will always offer to speak to a child/young person if they moves address
  • The advocate will meet with a child when they are going through big changes- for example when they move address or leave home or care. The advocate will make sure any information that might help us to improve services and support other young people is shared with managers
  • When a child lives out of the North Lincolnshire area, or is living with agency foster carers, an advocate will visit the child regularly if that’s what they would like.
• Supporting a child/young person to make a complaint, we will go through it all and explain the process. A complaint can be made without us supporting too if that’s what a child/young person would prefer

Please use the complaint’s form or contact us for an alternative version, we have different ones that might suit you better.

Email Myvoicemattes@northlincs.gov.uk or telephone 01724 298505.

• Anyone can make the initial referral and many children and young people self refer. As it is a child-led service, we will only commence advocacy related support when the child has agreed to it so it is important to get their consent
• We recognise the importance of advocacy in ensuring a child’s voice is heard. A child or young person may be offered the support of an advocate proactively during different life events in response to our local offer

Call or email us anytime for a chat if you’re not sure about anything, we look forward to hearing from you 😊

Contact the team by email on myvoicematters@northlincs.gov.uk or by telephone on 01724 298505.

English is not the child’s first language?

• We use an interpreting service so that we can communicate with the child, no matter what language they speak. We can also get information translated into other languages

The child has a disability?

• We can explore the best way to work with the child/young person, which may mean working alongside someone they know and trust

The child doesn’t want to talk to an advocate?

• Whilst children are encouraged to speak to an advocate, it is their choice. We do try and use fun and creative methods when we meet with a child or young person

The child discloses concerns about their safety?

• Confidentiality is a key part of the advocacy relationship and is important for establishing trust. Advocacy services also have safeguarding responsibilities to children and young people and these are made clear at the start of the advocacy relationship
• If anything is said by the child that raises concerns about their own or other people’s safety, the advocate will inform all relevant professionals of this issue. The advocate will explain to the young person who this information needs to be shared with

We offer interactive, value based training internally and to support partners, please email childrensworkforce@northlincs.gov.uk for dates.

Overview-

• Introduces the concept of advocacy and the value of independence
• Provides an overview of the core offer of advocacy in North Lincolnshire
• Outlines children’s rights in relation to the complaints process
• Offers valuable feedback from children and young people in relation to responses and provides opportunity for reflection and future planning
• Provides an overview of principles that underpin good practice in relation to the value of the child’s voice, outcomes and impact
• Demonstrates our ‘You Said’ ‘We did’ recording framework

We also offer bespoke interactive training for professionals at no cost.

Please get in touch to discuss further. Contact the team by email on myvoicematters@northlincs.gov.uk or by telephone on 01724 298505.

The standards are informed by Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the Human Rights Act 1998. The Convention sets out a wide range of measures to safeguard and to promote the physical, mental, emotional, social and behavioural development of children. In short, the UNCRC recognises that children are not merely ‘adults in training’ but people who are able to form and express opinions, to participate in decision-making processes and to influence solutions.

Children and young people using advocacy services have actively contributed to the development of the standards and to the following core principles:

• Advocates should work for children and young people and no one else
• Advocates should value and respect children and young people as individuals and challenge all types of unlawful discrimination
• Advocates should work to make sure that children and young people in care can understand what is happening to them, can make their views known and, where possible, exercise choice when decisions about them are being made
• Advocates should help children and young people to raise issues and concerns about things they are unhappy about. This includes making informal and formal complaints under section 26 of the Children Act 1989

Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states the rights that all children and young people have to express themselves and have their views heard. The benefits of involving children and young people in policy and service development, as well as in decisions about their own care, are now widely recognised. Services can become more sensitive to and effective towards meeting children and young people’s needs if they consult and involve them at all levels of decision-making.