Advice & Support
Your Voice, Your Choice, Your Life
The Advice and Support service is free and confidential. It’s there as a source of help and support if children and young people or those who care for them feel that a child’s been treated unfairly.
So if you feel like you are trying to be heard and nobody’s listening to you, then our Investigations and Advice Officers may be able to help. Our officers can either point you in the right direction to another organisation that’s best placed to help or we’ve got the power to look at individual complaints.
Important information
The laws which set up the Commissioner’s office means we can only provide advice and support to a child or young person:
- up to the age of 18 or 25 in certain circumstances
- usually living in Wales or who is placed in England by a Welsh local authority
- who has a complaint or wants to make representation to a service provider (such as a registered child minder) or certain organisations (including any county council or health authority in Wales). A full list of these services and organisations is available here and here.
These laws also mean there are things we cannot do. We cannot:
- become involved with any legal proceedings, including court cases and decisions made by CAFCASS Cymru
- offer an emergency service
- offer a counselling service ourselves
We always make sure we treat ever child and young person with respect. We also make sure we keep the information you share with us private unless we think you or another child or young person is unsafe – we then share the information with other organisations that can help protect you. If we need to share the information with other people that could help then we will tell you what we are doing and why we have decided to do it.
Our Investigation and Advice Officers follow the advice given in the All Wales Child Protection Procedures 2008 which you can read here.
Contact details
Tel: 01792 765600
Email: advice@childcomwales.org.uk
Write: Children’s Commissioner for Wales
Freepost RRGL XLYC BHGC
Swansea
SA7 9FS
Open Monday to Friday except Bank Holidays from 9am – 5pm
Learning Lessons
If you are ever unhappy with something we’ve done we want to listen. To make sure we work well as a team we want to listen carefully to any complaints you may have about our work. We will handle your complaint in an open and honest way. There’s a brief guide to our Complaints Policy here.
Complaints Leaflet
Many of the calls we get are from children and young people asking us for advice about how to make a complaint. We have listed below some links to the ‘How to Complain’ leaflets we send out to children, young people and adults who call us.
Independent Police Complaints Commission Leaflet
Welsh Government
Your Rights to Complain: A quick guide to complaints procedures for adults using social services