MORE than 300 Dorset youngsters have reached out for help from the county’s advocacy service for children in the first ten months of this year.

The figures are more than 50 up on the previous year with more than a month still to go.

Many of those who contact the service are youngsters in the care of Dorset Council with the majority of them raising concerns about contact with their families, home life, their future plans and relationships.

Action for Children run the service with the aim of ensuring young people have their views heard when decisions are being made about them – or when they want support to make a complaint about services which affect them.

Lynn Giles, head of the service, told Dorset councillors that her teams also had contact with children in the care of the council who were living outside of the county and during the year advocates had worked with youngsters in a variety of places including Wales, Kent, Sheffield, Blackpool, Derbyshire, the Isle of Wight and Warrington.

She said that the majority of young people, over 80 per cent, who had used the service said they felt listened to and knew more about their rights as a result of using the service.

The group also runs an independent visitor service with carefully recruited, screened and trained volunteers who are matched with children in care, typically meeting every 3-4 weeks, often over a period of years.

Forty children have used the service since it started with more volunteers being recruited during the year to bring their numbers up to 33.

More than 90 per cent of young people who have an independent visitor say they were happy, or very happy, with the service, some describing their visitor as the aunt or uncle they never had.

Ms Giles said despite the pandemic the service had managed to continue meetings online and between April and June had experienced a 10 per cent increase in referrals.

She said the challenge for the service now was to maintain or improve contacts while at the same time suffering a 11.5% reduction in funding as a result of local council organisation.

Dorchester Cllr Stella Jones, who used to be an independent visitor, said she could not underestimate the importance of the meetings: “It really is worthwhile. You are the only people who turn up without a notepad. You are not there to assess them for anything, you’re there just to have fun with them, to chat with them and help them relax without having to think about whether or not they are saying the right thing…I would encourage anyone to do it, I am sure if we had more funding we would have more of them.”