Accountability
Ask services to explain decisions and answer the point actually being raised.
About In Your Corner
Built because being heard should not depend on knowing the system.
In Your Corner is an independent, volunteer-led parent advocacy project serving Kent & Medway and building towards a more formally governed charitable structure.
Why it exists
Sometimes the process becomes the barrier.
Parents can be handed referral pathways, waiting-list rules, school processes, EHCP paperwork, complaint procedures and professional jargon at the exact point their family is already under pressure.
In Your Corner exists to help make that manageable: understand the decision, organise the evidence, identify the right route and work out the next action.
We don't manufacture arguments. We find the evidence, understand the process and make services answer the actual question.
Our mission
To help parents and carers in Kent and Medway understand their options, make their voices heard and secure fair consideration of their children’s needs through clear information, practical advocacy and evidence.
What drives us
Families should not need to become experts in education, health and public-service systems just to explain what their child needs. Navigating those systems can become a second job at precisely the point a family has the least time and energy to spare.
We help turn concerns, paperwork and unanswered questions into a clearer picture and a practical next step. We are driven by fairness, accountability and the belief that children’s needs deserve to be understood. That means listening carefully, being honest about the evidence and challenging decisions constructively where challenge is needed.
Support should respond to identified need, not diagnosis alone. A diagnosis can add important evidence, but a child’s needs do not begin on the date it is confirmed.
Our Approach: Evidence, Accountability and Action
The standard isn't whatever they're willing to offer. It's what they're actually required to deliver.
At In Your Corner, we believe effective advocacy starts with evidence, clear questions and accountability.
We don't simply challenge decisions because we disagree with them. We examine the evidence, identify the relevant duties, policies and standards, and ask services to explain how their decisions have been reached.
Our approach is straightforward:
Evidence-led:
Building a clear picture of individual needs using relevant records, professional advice and supporting evidence.
Accountability-driven:
Asking clear, informed questions and seeking proper explanations for decisions.
Holding services to their standards:
Identifying the duties and standards that apply and challenging decisions where those requirements may not have been met.
Multi-agency working:
Encouraging communication and coordination between education, health, social care and other relevant services.
Focused on outcomes:
Helping families navigate processes, identify appropriate routes forward and pursue the support they need.
We recognise that services operate within policies, procedures and resource constraints. Our role is not to create unnecessary conflict, but to ensure that individual needs are properly considered and decisions are supported by evidence.
Where an explanation is inadequate or a decision does not adequately address the available evidence, we help families seek clarification and pursue the appropriate review or escalation process.
We don't challenge for the sake of challenging. We ask the questions that need answering and follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Evidence-led advocacy. Clear accountability. Holding services to their own standards.
Founder
William McAllister
In Your Corner was founded by William McAllister after practical family advocacy showed how much difference careful evidence, process knowledge and persistence can make when a child becomes stuck in a system.
William is not a solicitor or clinician. The project is deliberately open about that. Its credibility is intended to come from disciplined evidence, clear boundaries, transparent processes and — as the organisation develops — independent governance rather than inflated titles.
What guides the work
Useful advocacy needs more than good intentions.
Honesty
Say when evidence is weak, when a decision appears reasonable, or when specialist advice is required.
Respect
Challenge a decision without turning every professional relationship into a fight.
Where the organisation is today
Transparent about what exists — and what is still being built.
In place
Service framework
Defined scope, case lifecycle, capacity principles, authority boundaries and evidence standards.
In place
Accountability routes
Complaints, conflicts, service boundaries, privacy controls and public safeguarding boundaries.
Developing
Independent governance
Founding trustees are to be recruited deliberately rather than appointing people simply to obtain a charity number.
Developing
Charitable structure
Formal charity registration is being explored. In Your Corner does not claim to be a registered charity today.
The point
Small does not have to mean vague.
The aim is to build a transparent, governed and useful parent-advocacy service — and to grow only as quickly as the systems behind it can safely support.
Building toward charitable status
OUR FUTURE
IYC is building the governance, trustee, financial and public-benefit foundations needed to seek charitable status, with a target of September 2027.
Read our route to charitable status →