Welcome To Wirral

Name of Organisation: National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS)

Contact: Elena Fowler, Chief Executive

Address:
Egerton House
Tower Road
Birkenhead
Wirral
CH41 1FN

Telephone: 0151 649 8700
Fax: 0151 649 8701
e-mail: main@nyas.net
Website: www.nyas.net

Brief description of service:

The National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS) was the first children's charity to obtain its own Legal Aid Franchise and to become a Community Legal Service Help-Point. It offers an unusual range of preventative inter-disciplinary welfare and legal services of information, consultation, support and representation to children and young people in England and Wales aged 0-25. It has a team of in-house lawyers and a sessional workforce of more than 200 children's advocates and caseworkers, who include some of the most experienced welfare professionals in the country.

NYAS has a record of developing innovative new services and has made a particular contribution to the provision of advocacy services for looked after children, those in secure units and young offender institutions and to the development of private law representation for children and young people involved in private law residence and contact disputes. Here the combination of NYAS caseworker and legal representative working together on behalf of the child to reduce conflict and the need for costly and distressing court proceedings has been particularly welcomed by judges involved in intractable and long running contact disputes.