About Family Rights Group#
Family Rights Group (registered as FRG Ltd) gives free, independent and confidential advice to parents, kinship carers, relatives and friends of children who are involved with children's services in England, or who need their help, and it campaigns on family justice and kinship care. Its advice helps families work with social workers and understand the law, their rights and their options. It is registered as a charity in England and Wales and in Scotland, though its advice pages describe the law in England.
Its advice line, chat and forums#
The get help and advice page lists a free advice line on weekdays (not bank holidays), a web chat, an enquiry form answered by email, and two online forums, one for parents and one for kinship carers, where advisers answer and families support each other. It also has advice sheets, template letters and an easy-read guide to the service. The charity says its funding lets it help about four in ten of the people who contact it, so the written advice is often the quickest place to start. The site has a cover your tracks page and an exit button.
Surnames under special guardianship and 'lives with' orders#
Family Rights Group publishes no deed poll guide, and a search of its site for "surname" finds four pages, all about court orders. Two of them carry the point that matters for a name change.
On special guardianship orders, it explains that a special guardian has enhanced parental responsibility and makes most decisions about the child's upbringing, but that the child's parents keep parental responsibility, and some things still need their agreement. Changing the child's surname is one, as is taking the child abroad for more than three months: both need the written consent of everyone with parental responsibility.
On "lives with" child arrangements orders, it says the kinship carer holds parental responsibility while the order lasts, but may not change the child's surname, or take the child abroad for more than a month, unless the others with parental responsibility agree.
Why the consent rule matters#
The rule behind the special guardianship page is section 14C of the Children Act 1989: while the order is in force, no one may cause the child to be known by a new surname without either the written consent of every person with parental responsibility or the court's permission. So a special guardian who cannot get the parents' agreement can ask the court, which decides on the child's welfare; a change made without either can be challenged.
Where the parents do agree, the change is made like any other child's: a deed poll for the child, signed with everyone's written consent, or an enrolled deed poll, which GOV.UK lists at £53.05 and publishes in The Gazette.
Read next#
- Can grandparents, guardians or the council change a child's name?: who holds parental responsibility under each order.
- Changing a child's name after adoption or under special guardianship: the consent, the court and the passport.
- Kinship: the kinship care charity's advice on passports under an SGO.
- Charities for care leavers, adoptive and kinship families.
This page describes what Family Rights Group publishes on its own website, read on 26 October 2026. Family Rights Group has not reviewed it, and listing a charity here does not mean it recommends this handbook or any deed poll service.
