Me & My Family

When you are looked after by Children’s Social Care, you are usually still able to see your family and they may come and visit you.  How this happens will depend on your age and the reason for you coming into care.

Staying in touch is also called “contact”.  Contact may mean frequent visits, visits during holidays, or letters, phone calls and cards.  Contact may also mean how you stay in touch with friends, not just family.

If you are accommodated by voluntary agreement, then visits and contact with your parents and other relatives will be worked out and agreed with you, your parents, your carers, social workers and other people who are involved.

If you are on a Care Order, the court will have also thought about how you should stay in touch with your family and friends.  Children's Social Care must make sure that you have the contact as agreed in court.  This is your right.  The court will want to know about these contact arrangements whenever it hears about your case.  Children's Social Care may sometimes feel that it would be better for you if you did not have visits or letters or calls from someone in particular - especially if they think that you are at risk from harm.

There may be someone who wants to have contact with you and they can ask the court for contact at any time.  If you want contact with someone important to you, you can apply to the courts in the same way.

All contact arrangements are discussed at your reviews and are one of the things included in your care plan.  It is important that you let someone know what you want, how contact is going or if anything is upsetting you about contact, so the right arrangements can be made.