Youth Legal is part of the GLA Family Financial Resilience Partnership (FFRP), a partnership which supports local advice providers to deliver social welfare advice for parents and carers. The advice covers a range of issues including benefit entitlement, debt, housing, childcare, disability, immigration advice and referrals for employment support. We offer specialist Community Care support and expert legal advice through this partnership.
Advice is delivered in Best Start Family Hubs and children’s centres and their wider community networks (including specialist advice providers such as Youth Legal) for parents and carers of children aged up to 19, or 25 for those with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND). The partnership helps families on low incomes to access good quality, free and independent advice which can help prevent or alleviate financial hardship.
Through this partnership, families will be able to receive advice in the following London boroughs:
- Barking and Dagenham
- Brent
- Croydon
- Ealing
- Enfield
- Greenwich
- Hackney
- Haringey
- Lewisham
- Newham
- Southwark
- Tower Hamlets
We support cases that go beyond generalist advice and require specialist Community Care legal expertise, particularly where statutory duties are not being met and informal resolution has not worked.
Our expertise
Community Care covers the legal duties owed by local authorities and public bodies to care leavers or people with care, support or disability needs. This includes duties relating to:
- Assessments of need
- Provision of care, support and accommodation
- Safeguarding welfare and wellbeing
- Transition from children’s services to adult services
- Age assessment challenges
- Section 17 Children Act 1989 (local authority duty to CiN including NRPF) and Section 20 Children Act 1989 (duty to accommodate children who cannot live with their parents).
A core part of our work for the FFRP includes supporting children and young people with Special Educational Needs (SEN). We can assist where there are concerns such as: - Failure or delay in carrying out care, support or SEN-related assessments
- Support or provision being reduced, withdrawn or not implemented
- Problems at key transition points, for example if changing school or turning 18
- Situations where inadequate support is impacting safety, dignity or daily living
Get Community Care Support
If you want support through the Family Financial Resilience Partnership there are many ways to access support through the services available to you.