Enhanced Advocacy at Parents Advocacy and Rights (PAR): Standing Up for Parents and Children in Scotland

At Parents Advocacy and Rights (PAR), we believe that every parent deserves to be heard, respected, and supported — especially when family life gets complicated. Families involved in Scotland’s child-welfare systems often find themselves navigating a maze: GIRFEC, disability needs assessments, child protection, the Children’s Hearings System, and sometimes the family courts. For many, these challenges don’t happen in isolation. Poverty, poor housing, disability, racism, coercive control, and immigration insecurity often collide — forming what Luke Clements (2020) calls 'clusters of injustice. 'That’s where Enhanced Advocacy comes in. It’s not just about giving parents a voice — it’s about combining professional expertise, rights knowledge, and lived experience with advocacy to ensure families are treated fairly, safely, and with dignity.

What Is Enhanced Advocacy?

Enhanced Advocacy was first developed in Scotland in the early 2000s through the Lothian Domestic Violence Probation Project (DVPP) by justice social workers Catriona Grant and Anna Mitchell, who co-authored the original women’s and children’s manuals for the Caledonian System (Grant & Mitchell, 2010; 2018).Originally a rights-based approach to supporting women experiencing domestic abuse, it has since evolved. Today, PAR uses Enhanced Advocacy to support parents navigating Scotland’s child-welfare systems — bringing together advocacy expertise, professional knowledge, and a focus on strengths and rights for parents who are often overwhelmed by these systems. Unlike traditional advocacy, Enhanced Advocacy adds deep understanding of systems, law, child protection, and disability. Enhanced Advocates are usually experienced practitioners from fields such as social work, health, education, psychology, or law.  The practitioner not only ensures the voice of the parent(s) or carer is heard, they also promote their human rights.  The practitioner may offer support, advice and guidance and on occasions intervene to ensure the human rights of the parents/carers are upheld.

Why It Matters

For many families, conventional advocacy isn’t enough. Systems can be intimidating and, at times, unsafe — especially when professionals misunderstand risk or blame non-abusive parents in cases of domestic abuse (Humphreys & Absler, 2011; Hester, 2011), or when approaches become deficit-focused and parent-blaming (Clements, 2025) or when services are denied in relation to disability or disability is ignored particularly in child welfare cases (Clements & Aiello, 2025).Enhanced Advocacy bridges that gap. It helps parents prepare for meetings and hearings, understand their rights, and challenge unfair or unsafe decisions — while keeping children’s safety, human rights and family unity at the centre.

Enhanced Advocacy at PAR

When resources allow, PAR provides three levels of advocacy and support:

• Collective advocacy and peer support — so parents can work together for change with others who share lived experience.

• Rights-informed casework — helping families prepare for meetings, understand plans, and take part meaningfully.

• Enhanced Advocacy — a time-limited, risk-led service for complex cases involving domestic abuse, disability, or children in or on the edge of care.

Enhanced Advocacy at PAR includes preparation and debriefing for meetings, mapping risks, translating GIRFEC into action, coordinating with agencies, and challenging parent-blaming and discrimination.

Domestic Abuse and Safe & Together

Domestic abuse remains one of the main reasons children appear on Scotland’s Child Protection Register. Many mothers supported by PAR have experienced abuse and, in some cases, been separated from their children because perpetrators have manipulated systems to present themselves as the 'protective' parent. When domestic abuse is a feature, PAR works only with the non-abusive parent — usually the mother — and all our group work is female-only. PAR aligns with the Safe & Together Model (Mandel, 2014; Iriss, 2019; Safe & Together Institute, 2021), which promotes three core principles:

1. Keep children safe and together with the non-abusive parent wherever possible.

2. Partner with the survivor parent and recognize their protective strengths.

3. Hold the perpetrator accountable for patterns of coercion, control, and harm.

PAR extends this good practice beyond domestic abuse, supporting children and parents to stay together whenever it is safe to do so. We advocate for the services and resources that make this possible. We partner with parents, offering support and solidarity to build their resilience and strength, and we believe that those causing harm must be held accountable. We also believe that children — especially babies — should remain with their mothers wherever possible. Mothers and infants should be assessed together unless it is demonstrably unsafe to do so. When a child is removed, a rehabilitation plan should be put in place immediately to reunite the child with their parent(s), and before there are any plans for permanence for children to live somewhere other than with their parent(s), the strength of the rehabilitation plan should be exhausted.

A Rights-Based Approach

Enhanced Advocacy is grounded in Scotland’s legal and human-rights frameworks, including the UNCRC (1989, incorporated 2024), CEDAW (1979), Human Rights Act (1998), Istanbul Convention (2011), Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018, Equality Act 2010, and GIRFEC (2014).

Six Principles of Enhanced Advocacy

1. Parent- and child-centred collaboration (when safe to do so).2. Perpetrator-pattern focus (when needed).3. Evidence-based decision-making.4. Equality and accessibility.5. System navigation and constructive challenge.6. Learning and accountability.

Challenges and Opportunities

PAR recognises that Enhanced Advocacy can feel uncomfortable for professionals when a skilled and qualified practitioner partners with a parent in ways that challenge power dynamics. When this happens, it is important to recognise where power lies — not with the parent who feels overwhelmed and fearful, but with the system (Devine, 2025).Statutory social work represents the state, which creates a power imbalance. There is often disagreement about what the 'problem' is, whose concerns are legitimate, and what services are needed. As Lady Hale observed in 1989:'The aspiration of developing a partnership between children’s services and families with children in need proved very difficult to achieve… The trouble is that, if efforts to work with families run into difficulties, the local authority can always go to care proceedings — and families know that.'It is not only in child protection that power imbalances are felt. Families with disabled children often experience cuts to care packages, lack of resources, or outright denials of support. Enhanced Advocacy aims to level the field for families who face these 'clusters of injustice' (Clements, 2020).PAR also recognises that children in care are not always best looked after in care. The Child Abuse Inquiry (Radford et al., 2015) and the Scottish Care Review (2019) both noted that being in care can itself bring risks. Likewise, the Family Courts do not always protect mothers and children from ongoing abuse. Many mothers report to PAR that perpetrators have manipulated child-protection and court processes to remove children from their care. 

PAR also has through its Enhanced Advocacy has helped parents use their legal rights to return children to families from care particularly residential care of autistic children which in the long term saves the local authorities 100 of £1000s.

What Needs to Happen Next

• Apply a perpetrator-pattern lens in all child-welfare assessments.• Make reasonable adjustments for disabled parents and children a core duty.• Strengthen UNCRC participation duties — children’s views must be freely given, and their right to live safely from abuse respected.• Commission Enhanced Advocacy as standard in complex family cases whilst remaining independent from the local authorities.

·        Enhanced advocates should be allowed to advocate in the Family Courts

Conclusion

Enhanced Advocacy at PAR turns Scotland’s human-rights commitments into everyday reality. It helps families stay safe, connected, and respected. With proper funding, training, and commissioning, Enhanced Advocacy can make Scotland’s child-welfare system fairer, safer, and more compassionate — ensuring that no family faces the system alone.

Bibliography

·        Clements, L. (2020). Clustered Injustice and the Level Green. London: Legal Action Group.

·        Clements, L & Aiello, A. (2025) Putting the Record Straight

·        Council of Europe (2011). Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention). Strasbourg: Council of Europe.

·        Davies, J. (2009). Advocacy Beyond Leaving: Helping Battered Women in Contact with Current or Former Partners. San Francisco: Futures Without Violence.

·        Davies, J. & Lyon, E. (1998). Safety Planning with Battered Women: Complex Lives/Difficult Choices. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

·        Devine, R. (2025). Reframing social work – expectations, reality and change, Research in Practice

·        Grant, C. & Mitchell, A. (2010). The Caledonian System: Women’s Worker Manuals. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

·        Grant, C. (2018). Getting it Right for Every Child in the Caledonian System. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

·        Hester, M. (2011). The Three Planet Model. British Journal of Social Work, 41(5), 837–853.

·        Humphreys, C. & Absler, D. (2011). History Repeating: Child Protection Responses to Domestic Violence. Child & Family Social Work, 16(4), 464–473.

·        Humphreys, C. & Thiara, R. (2003). Mental Health and Domestic Violence: 'I Call it Symptoms of Abuse.' British Journal of Social Work, 33(2), 209–226.

·        Iriss (2019). Safe & Together: Practice Briefing. Glasgow: Iriss.

·        Mandel, D. (2014). The Safe & Together Model: A Perpetrator Pattern-Based Approach to Child Protection and Domestic Violence. Connecticut: Safe & Together Institute.

·        Radford, L. et al. (2015). Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse: University of Edinburgh

·        Safe & Together Institute (2021). Overview of the Safe & Together Model. Connecticut: Safe & Together Institute.

·        Scottish Government (2019). The Promise: Scottish Care Review. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

·        Stark, E. (2007). Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. New York: Oxford University Press.

·        United Nations (1979). Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). New York: United Nations.

·        United Nations (1989/2024). Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). New York: United Nations.