The Children’s Commissioner’s office is a national, independent organisation with statutory powers and regulations. The Commissioner has a legal duty to promote and protect the rights of all children in England in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
The Children and Families Act 2014 gives her special responsibility for the rights of children who are in or leaving care, living away from home or receiving social care services (section 8A). The Commissioner’s Advice Line must be made available to looked after children and is required in the relevant guidance. The Commissioner’s Advice Line is here to support vulnerable children who are:
We provide advice, assistance and representation on behalf of children and young people. We aim to involve the young person directly wherever possible, but will take enquiries from adults phoning in on their behalf, including parents/carers, professionals and others working with the young person.
A member of staff will listen to your concerns and ask further details to ensure that we fully understand the child or young person’s situation. We will provide advice, information and signposting about rights, entitlements, complaints against a local authority or other organisation, and suggest ways forward to ensure that the matter is resolved in accordance with the UNCRC, national guidelines and standards.
We provide assistance in helping young people access local advocacy so that they can be directly supported to voice their concerns. Unfortunately we do not have the capacity to take on long term work on behalf of young people, so we will always aim to link them to local support if this is what they would like.
We will consider whether the Office of the Children’s Commissioner needs to make representations to those responsible for decision making on behalf of the young person to try and ensure that the matter is resolved.
Phone us free on
0800 528 0731If you’re a child in care or a care leaver, fill in your details below and we’ll call or email you back as soon as we can.
Help at Hand’s inbox is not monitored outside of our standard working hours (Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm) so if you need urgent help, please contact childline on 0800 1111
Our service is free and confidential. We make sure we keep the information you share with us private, unless we think you or another child or young person is unsafe – we then may share the information with other organisations that can help protect you. If we need to share the information with other people who could help, we’ll tell you what we’re doing and why we’ve decided to do it.