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Advocacy for
Unaccompanied Refugee and Asylum seeking Children
Tros
Gynnal Plant is currently developing a national participation
network project aimed at giving Unaccompanied Refugee and Asylum
seeking children and young people an opportunity to share their
experiences and develop a means of collectively informing service
providers of their needs and support requirements.
A
clear message from the children and young people we are engaged
with is that they feel that they would benefit from the support of
an advocate at a very early stage in their engagement and
discussions with authorities and service providers.
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Safeguarding
children and young people in Independent Residential Units and
Schools through a Visiting Advocacy Service
A
child or young person placed in an Independent Residential Unit or
School may be placed in a county within Wales other than the
child’s home county and in some instances this can mean a
great distance from their home area. Those Welsh children placed in
a Unit or School in another county in Wales can expect to access
their home area advocacy service and to be visited by their social
worker at scheduled intervals.
However, some
children placed at these Units or schools are placed by local
authorities who are at a great distance from the Unit or school,
quite often from areas of England and the availability of the home
area advocacy service or the regularity of visits from social
workers can prove problematic. It was this lack of regular
independent contact that prompted the recommendations in
‘Lost in Care’ that children placed away from home
should have regular access to an independent person such as an
advocate.
Some
Residential Units in Wales, in recognition of these facts and in an
attempt to further provide their young people with an independent
source to share their concerns with, commission an independent
Visiting Advocacy service to visit the Unit or school on a regular
basis.
The
young people are able to confidently approach the visiting advocate
to raise concerns or issues about the unit/school management or to
ask that the advocate help with contacting their social worker from
their home area in order to resolve issues regarding their care
plan.
However, the
commissioning of this service is not mandatory and this vital
safeguarding element is left to each individual provider to decide
whether or not they wish to secure a service for their children and
young people.
The
committee should consider whether the provision of such a service
could be stipulated as a condition of registration of the
residential unit or school.
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National Approach
to Statutory Advocacy for Children and Young People (Review its
implementation and effectiveness)
During
the last two years Welsh Government Ministers have invited local
government to produce a model for the consistent delivery of
statutory advocacy for children and young people. This was in
response to a number of reports from the Children’s
Commissioner under the title ‘Missing Voices’ as well
as some extensive work undertaken by the CYPE committee that also
produced recommendations improving advocacy services.
That
work was recently completed and local government are beginning to
implement the National Approach. It would therefore be timely for
the committee to revisit the issue towards the end of the year to
gauge how well the Approach meets the recommendations made by the
committee and commitments made by Ministers.
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