Coram Voice

Who we are

Coram Voice are part of Coram, a vibrant group of specialist charities and organisations, supporting hundreds of thousands of children, young people and families every year. Coram is committed to improving the lives of the UK’s most vulnerable children and young people. We support children and young people from birth to independence, creating a change that lasts a lifetime. Coram is the UK’s oldest children’s charity founded by Thomas Coram in London helping vulnerable children and young people since 1739. Today, the Coram group helps more than one million children, young people, families and professionals every year by providing access to the skills and opportunities they need to thrive.  We provide:  A National Helpline to provide access for children and young people to advocacy and advice, with access to legal advice and links with other national helplines such as Child Line. Advocacy services direct to children and young people in care, in need, and to care leavers and children and young people with severe and complex mental health problems. Advocates around the country support children and young people to get their voice heard in decisions about their lives. This may be through the telephone helpline or through an advocate working directly with a child, for instance, to support them at a review meeting or to help them make a complaint about their care. Coram Voice provides visiting advocacy services to most of the secure units nationally, these include Secure Training Centres, psychiatric hospitals, residential special schools and children’s homes.  Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA) to advocate for young people as qualifying patients under the Mental Health Act, in order to fully support them to get their views heard in matters relating to their mental health.  Independent services: Coram Voice is a major national provider of independent person services for complaints by children, and for reviewing whether children should be locked up in secure units on welfare grounds.  Independent Visitors services providing volunteer befrienders to children and young people in care.  Participation services to ensure children and young people have a voice in the development and delivery of services and campaigns, and through the process, provide the opportunity to develop relevant skills, which will be of benefit to them in their future lives.  Policy and campaigning to create a better system for all children and young people looked after by the state, for their care to be more childcentred and to give young people a greater say in decisions about their lives.  Training, development and information for young people, advocates and child care workers, we offer courses in advocacy, children’s rights and child-centred practice across a range of areas including the new National Advocacy Qualification. 

Our culture and values

Coram Voice exists to enable and equip children and young people to hold to account the system responsible for their care, to challenge and support it to do its job properly and to uphold the rights of children and young people to actively participate, in shaping their own lives. Coram Voice strives for a society which recognises and willingly accepts its responsibilities to children and young people, where the inequalities and discrimination they currently face have been eradicated; where those children and young people are fully engaged in all decisions that are made about their lives; where the views, needs and feelings that they express are at the core of those decisions. We are child driven; always asking what children would want us to do. By engaging them at all levels of our work, their views and experiences are central to shaping all our plans. We are tenacious and passionate champions of children’s rights and we will not be distracted in our determination to do the right thing for children and young people. Second only to our dedication to children is our dedication to each other. Our work is defined and inspired by meaningful, supportive, mutually empowering relationships with and between children and young people, colleagues and partners. These relationships are powerful because they are authentic and human, where every contribution is equally valued and respected. We create a sharing and supportive working environment where work can and should be fun. We recognise that happy people perform at their best, and that people performing at their best are happier in their work. We celebrate our successes together and are open about our concerns and mistakes, supporting each other to grow and learn from them. We work flexibly, supporting each other in times of high workload or when life gets difficult.  We accept personal responsibility for our work and we are accountable for delivering results against those responsibilities. Managers empower their people to take ownership of and make decisions on their areas of responsibility, ensuring that workload is manageable, that people are treated fairly, that they are supported and challenged to succeed. Everyone at Coram Voice is committed to modelling and championing these values, and managers have a particular responsibility for bringing them to life. 

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

Coram is an equal opportunities employer and we believe a diverse workforce enables us to improve the services to the children and families we help. We are genuinely committed to encouraging candidates from all sections of the community we seek to support. This includes those from, Asian, African, Caribbean and other minority ethnic backgrounds, those that identify as LGBQT+, those with disabilities, those with lived experience of care, those with neuro-diversity, and those from other groups who are underrepresented at Coram.

If applicants feel comfortable, we would encourage them to draw on lived experience as well as professional experience as part of their application.