Advocacy

Saira and Darren's short stories are good examples of how Reconstruct advocates support children and young people . You may also find our FAQ's page a useful link to visit.

Saira's Story (Child Protection Advocacy)

I am thirteen years old and l live with my mum and two younger sisters in south west London. A year ago I told my best friend at school about what my Dad had been doing to me since I was 11 years old. My friend told my teacher, and she told social services and they got the police involved. It was a nightmare, at first I wished I’d never told my friend and I was so angry with her for telling the teacher without my permission. I feel different now, but at the time I had visits from different social workers and there were lots of meetings. The police video interviewed me and I had to see some doctor at the hospital for an examination. My Mum kept crying and talking about the shame brought on the family, but when my dad was charged by the police she then believed me and with social services made him leave home.

During all the confusion I had an advocate and they helped me make sense of what was going on and what social services were doing, especially with the child protection case conferences. I was lucky my second social worker was friendly and ok. I liked her but I knew she was very busy and had lots of other kids to visit and her job seemed to involve doing lots of different things. My Mum was not much help to me then as she seemed to be in shock and just wasn't dealing with what Dad had done, to the family and me.

That's when the advocate was really helpful because they just supported me to deal with the case conference. With my advocates help I managed to go to the meeting and say a few things about what I thought and what I wanted, but it was difficult with lots of strangers sitting around a big table and talking about my personal business. But with the advocate supporting me it seemed to help the adults understand better and make them listen properly to what I was saying. The advocate also helped explain to me what all the strange social services words that I'd never heard before meant, like 'case conference', and 'risk indicators'. At the end of the day I knew my advocate was there just for me and she helped me deal with a difficult situation.

Darren's Story (Advocacy)

My name is Darren and I am 16 years old. I have lived in foster care since I was 11, as my Mum died and nobody could look after me. I have now had four different foster placements in nearly five years, but the last ones were not very good and they did not treat me very well. I now understand that even though they did not like me I didn't want to say anything as I thought I would have to move again. In the end I was asked to leave, but I am now pleased as I am finally living with some good carers that I get on with.

Now I have left the bad foster carers I felt able to contact the reconstruct advocacy project using their free phone number for young people, because I don't think that my previous carers should be allowed to get away with treating me like they did or any other children that might live with them. I wish that I had rang reconstruct sooner when I was living in that foster home, as I should not have had to put up with the way they treated me.

After I had spoken with someone at reconstruct it was only a couple of weeks before I met with a person who called themselves an advocate ( and they did explain what it meant). It meant that they would stick up for me and say what I wanted to say, but they are totally separate from social services and social workers. During one of the advocate's visits to see me they helped me put my complaint into a letter and we sent it to the social services complaints officer. My complaint was then investigated properly and when people from social services wanted to meet with me, my advocate came with me to support me and help me say what I wanted to say about where I used to live.

I was pleased with the result, as my complaint was upheld and I have now got a letter of apology. There were a couple of points that could not be proved either way, but they believed me and social services now know that what I said was true. I was also told that the foster carers now have to go to the 'foster panel' and that they will have to make changes to how they foster if they want to have any more children live with them. That made me feel good about myself, knowing that what I had done might have helped make someone else's life a bit easier, because it is hard enough being in care anyway, without bad carers making it harder.