Black Country Advocacy Service

Location

Programme manager: Simon Cottingham

Black Country Advocacy Service provides independent, confidential services to children and young people who are in care, leaving care or who have a social worker. The programme also offers advocacy for disabled children and disabled looked-after young people. It operates in Dudley, Sandwell, Wolverhampton and Walsall.

The service covers several important areas:

• Listening carefully to children who need to get their views and feelings across.
• Giving children a voice in decisions that affect their lives.
• Ensuring young people’s rights are respected and that they are treated fairly.
• Helping them solve problems in ways that feel comfortable to them.
• Advocacy for children with complex communication needs, severe learning difficulties and children without speech.
• Non-instructed advocacy for children with severe communication impairments (where the advocate gains information from those who know the child well and gauges what the child’s views are by observing their behaviour).

Find out more about our Black Country Advocacy Service:

Young people’s leaflet about our Black Country Advocacy Service

Leaflet on advocacy for disabled children