Your Voice - Children's Out of Home Care Advocacy Service

Your Voice - Children's Out of Home Care Advocacy Service (Your Voice) is a free, independent legal service for young people in out of home care. We are committed to listening to young people in care and helping to find solutions to problems. We are committed to ensuring that young people are at the centre of decisions that are being made about them. We will work with young people to understand their rights in care and advocate for their needs. We have lawyers and a wellbeing team which includes an Aboriginal Field Officer. We are independent and separate from the Department of Communities Justice (DCJ). 

We can help children and young people in out of home care.

We focus on:

• young people in High-Cost Emergency Arrangements (HCEA) across NSW
• young people in residential Intensive Therapeutic Care (ITC) placements in the Blacktown, Central Coast and Hunter Regions.

We may be able to help other young people in out of home care, subject to service capacity, on a case-by-case basis. 

We can talk with young people about what is going on and explore how we might be able to assist them. Some of the things we can help young people with include:

• arrangements for spending time with family including siblings and kin
• planning for when a young person turns 18 or leaves care
• problems in a child or young person's accommodation or placement
• making and/or following up with complaints
• issues with school
• connecting with cultural identity, community and country
• discussing choices which are available for children and young people to make 
• helping children and young people understand their rights and entitlements, including Centrelink and the NDIS, and
• supporting young people who are parents.

Services our lawyers provide include:

• legal advice, by appointment
• casework assistance in a range of legal matters including care and protection, family and civil law matters
• referrals to other legal and non-legal help. 

Services our Aboriginal Field Officer and caseworkers provide:

• connecting with cultural identity, community and country
• safety planning and risk assessments
• non-legal advocacy with NSW Police, Housing NSW, Centrelink, banks and other services
• preparing for court and court support
• referrals to appropriate services for counselling, housing, financial support/vouchers, courses, for example, parenting after separation, behaviour change, and to meet other identified client needs
• other practical support.

If you have any enquiries, you can contact our service directly by:

• email: YourVoiceAdvocacyService@legalaid.nsw.gov.au
• phone: (02) 9068 1789.