Family Rights Group advice service secures £350,000 from Department for Education

Family Rights Group is pleased to announce that it has secured funding from the Department for Education to continue to provide its free telephone and on-line legal advice service to parents whose children are in need, at risk or are in the care system and wider family raising children who cannot live at home.

Family Rights Group has run a free specialist telephone and digital child welfare and legal advice service for many years. It enables families to understand their rights and options and is proven to prevent the unnecessary escalation of child protection procedures and children avoidably going into care.

Demand for the advice service has grown significantly in recent years, reflecting the significant rise in families involved in the child welfare system - the number of children in care is at the highest level since 1985.  This funding will enable us to answer more than 5,500 enquiries in the next 12 months whilst we anticipate that visitors to the parents’ and kinship carers’ digital discussion boards and website will exceed 600,000.

Cathy Ashley, Family Rights Group's Chief Executive comments:

"We are delighted that the Department for Education has continued to fund Family Rights Group’s advice service. It demonstrates significant confidence in the great work that our advice staff do.

"The service last year received calls from 17,000 parents and wider family members, even with this funding, we will only be able to answer a third of callers. We will therefore continue to seek further ways to secure funding to ensure that we can support as many families as possible who need our advice."