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Services for Looked After Children and Vulnerable Children in Milton Keynes

VoiceAbility provides an Advocacy service to Looked After Children and vulnerable children up to the age of 18 across the UK, where their care is paid for by Milton Keynes Council.

The Advocacy service will be offered to all Looked After Children, and any child subject to a child protection order or court proceedings.

Advocacy

VoiceAbility provides a confidential advocacy service that is open to any Looked After Children in Milton Keynes, or across the UK.

The service is independent, so Looked After Children do not need to feel worried if they need to talk to someone about a problem that regards their home or a service from an organisation such as the Local Authority.

VoiceAbility exists to represent the best interests of the service user, in this case Looked After Children and vulnerable children, and does not offer advice – it is the voice of the child that counts.

What can an Advocate do?

• Listen carefully to what each child tells us
• Communicate the views of each child to other people
• Support each child to understand their rights and make sure they are respected
• Work with a child to increase their confidence to speak up for themselves
• Support each child to work through options if they have a decision to make
• Work with them until their views have been listened to

Why Young People might want to talk to us

• They want support at a child care review meeting (or another decision making meeting)
• They want to understand what services they can use
• They want information about processes that they may be going through
• They have a letter or email to write and they’re not sure how to start
• They feel nobody is listening to them
• They want to make some change in their life

The wider picture

We collate information about the issues that Looked After Children and vulnerable children bring to us and report to the Council (the confidentiality of the service users is maintained at all times). We hope that this will enable the Council and Social Care staff to learn more about the issues affecting Looked After Children and vulnerable children so that they can change the way they work and improve the service provided in the future.

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Referrals

Children and young people can contact the service themselves to discuss how VoiceAbility might be able to help. Even where VoiceAbility may not be able to help we might be able to support the child or young person to find help from somewhere else.

Other referral routes will be

• Social workers
• Foster Carers
• Family Group Conference Co-ordinators