The Children's Legal Centre

 

Free factsheets and FAQs

All of the guides on this page are free, but we have has also produced a wide range of more detailed publications which are available to purchase from our online shop.

If you can't find the answer you're looking for, why not try our glossary or contact one of our free legal helplines. If you are a young person in need of information, check out our sister website or try our free bilingual guides or videos. Click on the topics below to read our FAQs or download our legal guides on:

• Abduction
• Accommodation for under 16's
• Advocacy
• Age assessments for asylum-seeking children
• Bullying leaflet download
• Changing a child's surname
• Child employment
• Child protection
• Child witnesses
• Contact FAQs or Contact case study Q&As
• Detention, asylum-seeking and migrant children
• Direct payments
• Duties of local authorities
• Education under 16 for asylum-seeking and migrant children
• Family mediation
• Forced marriage
• Further and Higher Education for asylum-seeking and migrant children
• Healthcare for asylum-seeking and migrant children
• Home Office and Government Policy on asylum-seeking and migrant children
• Kinship care
• Leaving children home alone
• Parental responsibility FAQs or Parental Responsibility case study Q&As
• Private fostering
• Residence FAQs or Residence case study Q&As
• School admissions and appeals
• School exclusions
• Separated or unaccompanied asylum seeking children
• Services for children leaving care
• Smacking
• Special Educational Needs
• Special guardianship
• Support for separated children
• Support for children in families
• The rights of asylum-seekers when they turn 18
• Trafficking
• Types of school
• Work and training for asylum-seeking and migrant children
• Young people and medical treatment

Check out our free publications:

• Seeking Support - A guide to the rights and entitlements of separated refugee and asylum seeking children
• The Right to Education in England
• At what age can I...? 2010 Sample copy
• Mapping the provision of education and social services for refugee and asylum seeker children: Lessons from the Eastern Region
• Complaints from Children: The new police complaints procedure

If you still haven't found the answer you're looking for, try the Migrant Children's Project, or contact one of our free helplines.

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UNICEF UK: Report Card 9 Reflects UK Children Left Behind

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A new UNICEF report on child inequality in 24 developed countries has shown that income poverty has the greatest impact on child inequality in the UK. UK levels of income poverty push the most disadvantaged children further behind compared to similar countries, such as France and Germany.

UNICEF UK’s Executive Director David Bull said, ‘Tackling income poverty should remain the number one priority for Government to reduce child inequality in the UK. At a time of austerity we must not widen this gap. Children living in poverty must not pay the price for reducing the deficit and should be the first to be protected. Household income must be central to next year’s child poverty strategy.’

Singling out the importance of income, the report comments that ‘one of the most disturbing aspects of changed economic times’ is that ‘full time employment no longer guarantees a life lived above the poverty line.’

Report Card 9, ‘Children Left Behind’, uses a new method of measuring how far the most disadvantaged children have been allowed to fall behind those at the median level in health, educational and material well-being. The report then ranks all 24 countries according to the size of this gap.

The UK is ranked alongside countries such as Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the bottom two fifths of countries. Government spending has prevented many children from falling into poverty, but the UK has a particularly high level of inequality in access to basic educational resources at home.

In response to the report UNICEF UK is calling on the Government to:

• Set ambitious interim targets in next year’s child poverty strategy that must include benefits and income.
• Apply a ‘fairness’ test to all proposed changes to the benefit, tax, health and education systems to ensure that new policies do not increase inequality between children.
• Design the new universal credit to ensure that no family with children has to live on less than a living wage.
• Promote the living wage.

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• Let's widen the debate around poverty and parenting | Rachel Tonkin (guardian.co.uk)
• Why a rise in poverty will humiliate Cameron (newstatesman.com)
• Rights of the Child - FACT SHEET (UNICEF) (michellelanthony.wordpress.com)