Family Rights Group - Charity Partner
Family Rights Group (FRG) is a national charity working to ensure the child welfare and family justice systems support children to live safely and thrive within their family, while strengthening the family and community networks of those children who cannot live at home. We campaign for families to have their voices heard, be treated fairly and get help early.
We run a free, specialist, independent advice service in England, staffed by experienced lawyers, social workers, and advocates. The service advises parents, grandparents, relatives and friends, including kinship carers, about their rights and options when social workers or courts make decisions about their children’s welfare.
We find innovative family-led ways to improve child welfare. We designed the Lifelong Links approach which supports children and young people in care to build a network of lasting relationships who they can turn to for practical and emotional support. We also introduced the Family Group Conference (FGC) model to the UK from New Zealand so families are supported to take the lead in making safe plans for a child at risk. We work with local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales to establish FGC and Lifelong Links services.
FRG is the national policy and legal authority on kinship care. We provide legal and policy support to the Kinship Care Alliance and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Kinship Care. We have a history of securing changes in law and practice. Recent successes include securing: an exemption for kinship children from the two-child tax-credit limitation; changes to Covid regulations to allow children to meet with potential kinship carers; and Government commitments to extend the scope of legal aid to special guardianship in private law.
We promote families’ voices so children and families with experience of the child welfare and family justice system help shape it, at local and national level. Our panels of parents and kinship carers with experience of the child welfare system are integral to that.
frg.org.uk
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NFM helps families in conflict, especially those divorcing or separating. Established in 1982, NFM was the founder of the concept and practice of family mediation, and its network of accredited services now delivers in over 500 locations. NFM is a founder member of the Family Mediation Council, the regulator of family mediation.
The charity supports legal professionals by managing the emotions and conflict surrounding divorce and separation, enabling them to focus on the legal issues that arise for their clients. NFM understands that mediation works best when it is supported by expert legal advice on the options that have been developed in mediation. By working in partnership with the legal profession, NFM delivers positive outcomes for families.
The charity’s strapline: ‘Finances. Family. Future’ captures the offer made by the charity’s unique approach to family mediation. As well as addressing all-important money and property issues, NFM mediators focus on the future wellbeing of all family members, especially the children. It means that NFM mediators work to provide lasting solutions for separated families whilst preserving family relationships, and manage the emotions and conflicts that arise during an often-tumultuous separation or divorce. Whatever the issues, NFM’s expertise helps settle them.
NFM has a network of affiliated members, each of which is a not-for-profit family mediation provider. Collectively the charity delivers family mediation in over 500 locations across England and Wales, delivering some 16,000 mediations per year.
As the leading provider of family mediation training and accreditation, NFM organises numerous development courses that are open to legal professionals. In addition to providing full foundation courses for people wishing to become family mediators, they also include development programmes focusing on child-inclusive mediation, skills-based training, and providing refresher courses for those who have had a break from practising mediation.
By contributing, you will help National Family Mediation to provide:
- Free sessions for children to have their voices heard in mediation
- Fact sheets going direct to parents and grandparents experiencing divorce and related conflict issues
- Provision of information videos shared through social media to help inform parents of the value of mediation
- Development of training workshops for professionals to better support families they work with
- Access to interpreters for families unable to effectively communicate issues in English.