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Home chevron_right Children, families, and safeguarding chevron_right Children in care chevron_right Going into care chevron_right While you're in care chevron_right Keeping in touch with family and friends

While you're in care

Keeping in touch with family and friends

If you're in care, you won't see and talk to your family every day like you're used to. So when you do, we give it a special name, which is 'contact'. Contact can mean seeing people, or it can mean calling, writing, messaging, or emailing them.

We still want you to have contact with your family, unless we think it would be really bad for you. To make sure everyone knows who you can speak to from your family and how often, it'll be written in your care plan.

If you have brothers and sisters who aren't in foster care or the children's home with you, we'll make sure you get to see them too.

It's important for us to know how you feel about having contact with your family, so you can be honest with your social worker about it. If you want to see your family more often, or less often, we'll do our best to make that happen.

Sometimes we worry that a child might be at risk of being harmed by someone in their family. If that happens, it'll be written in your care plan that we think you shouldn't have contact with that person. And if there's someone in your family who you really don't want to see, tell your social worker as soon as you can. They can make sure that's put in your care plan too.