User:Visctrix/independent advocacy

Advocacy is about speaking up, or being helped to speak up. It is about ensuring people have the skills, confidence and support to stand up for themselves. Many of us act as informal advocates: for our children, our parents, our friends, or other people. Independent Advocacy is provided by trained advocates and organisations that work within established frameworks. Independent advocates are independent of any other carers or service providers that work with an individual. Independent advocacy is always free and confidential.

How can advocacy help?

When important decisions are being made about someone’s life it can help them to have support. Most people need someone to help them speak up for themselves at some point in their life.

Advocacy is particularly useful when:

Others have more say in your life than you.
Others are making decisions for you.
You cannot get what you want.
Things seem out of control.
You are not able to speak for yourself for any reason.

Advocates can:

Talk to you about your problem and help you plan what you want to say and do.
Support you in speaking up for yourself, or say what you want to say for you.
Go with you to meetings.
Help make sure that people listen to what you say.
Help you make a complaint and follow it through.
Help you to access other agencies, such as housing or legal services.

Advocacy support should help you to:

Have more choices.
Get more or better services.
Be treated fairly and equally.
Solve problems.
Get stronger, so you can help yourself.
Get to know more people and find it easier to make friends.

Who do advocates work with

Advocates mainly concentrate on working with the most vulnerable people in society, particularly people who have no friends or family to support them. In particular in the UK advocacy schemes have been set up to work with:

people with learning disabilities
people with mental health problems
people in care (children, the elderly or the disabled)
older people who are isolated or vulnerable
people with physical or sensory disabilities
people accessing health services
people whose first language is not English and who are trying to access English language based services
children in prison
people suffering from Alzheimer's Disease
and many others

Models of advocacy

A range of approaches to advocacy have developed over the past couple of decades. These models all share the same basic principles, but vary in how they provide advocacy and who the advocate is (e.g. whether a paid worker or volunteer).

Citizen Advocacy

This is based on the idea of an ‘ordinary’ member of the community (the advocate) working with a person who is discriminated against (the partner). The partnership may develop into friendship, but it should certainly build mutual trust, respect and loyalty. Citizen advocacy partnerships, although often developing out of a particular need, usually continue over several months or years so if other problems come up they can be addressed easily.

Peer Advocacy

People who have experienced similar problems or used similar services can be very effective in helping others to speak up for themselves. A peer advocate is likely to have a very good understanding of what other people are going through.

Volunteer Advocacy

As the name suggests, this model has developed to fit in with common practices in the UK voluntary sector, mainly from the citizen advocacy model. Volunteer advocates are often flexible in their approach, working to a variety of advocacy models depending on their partner or the situation. Volunteers gain useful skills and experience which can develop into full time work or other opportunities.

Crisis Advocacy

This is where an advocate is found to help with a one-off difficult situation or crisis. The advocate may be a volunteer or a paid worker. Also known as short-term or casework advocacy.

Professional Advocacy

People who are paid solely as advocates, and usually work with the casework model. Professional advocacy can also be provided by experts in a professional field, such as solicitors or barristers, being commissioned to speak up on behalf of an individual service user or group. These experts may or may not receive payment for acting as an advocate.

Non-instructed Advocacy

Traditionally advocates have only worked with people who are able to give them instructions, if only in the most rudimentary way. There is increasing call for advocates to work with people with profound and multiple disabilites, with advanced Alzheimer's, or who for other reasons have little or no intelligible forms of communication, and some effective methodologies are being developed in response. Non-instructed advocacy is only carried out by professional advocates.

Self Advocacy

Where most advocacy is aiming – for people to be able to stand up for, and speak out for, themselves.

Group Advocacy

This is where a group of people, usually from a similar background, work together to deal with issues that affect them. This may be by speaking together as a single voice, or by speaking to and learning from each other so each individual gets stronger.

What advocacy is not

Advocacy sometimes gets confused with a variety of other forms of support. Here are some descriptions of some of these from an advocacy perspective to try to clarify the differences:

Advice

This is different from advocacy in that an advisor will suggest options for the person based on objective knowledge or judgement, whereas the advocate’s role is to be non-judgemental and follow the person’s wishes as much as possible. However, going with your partner to an advice service can be a useful advocacy role in itself.

Interpreting

This is closely related to advocacy as the interpreter is an intermediary who helps someone’s voice to be heard. It is different from advocacy because the interpreter should be objective, and not take sides. Bilingual advocates sometimes perform an interpreting role, but they clearly work on the side of their partner, and spend extra time ensuring that their partner fully understands what is going on, and working through any cultural or other misunderstandings.

Befriending

This is mainly about helping people to access social opportunities. It is similar to advocacy because it is usually based on a partnership between two people, and it is usually arranged by a befriending ‘scheme’. Befrienders can do informal advocacy if they are asked to help their partner by attending a review meeting for example, and advocates often build up friendships with their partners. Difficulties can arise if the boundaries are too blurred however – befrienders may find themselves out of their depth, and advocates could find their friendship compromises their responsibilities as an advocate.

Professional support

Sometimes what professional staff do as part of their job looks a lot like advocacy. It is simply good practice to listen to what the service user has to say and help them to take responsibility for their own situation and make informed choices. This approach should be part of every staff member's role and staff should not feel discouraged from using their advocacy skills to the benefit of the service user. There are limits to how far any professional can take this of course. A social worker, for example, can be an advocate without compromising their own position in relation to a health or housing issue, but they risk a conflict of interest when they attempt to act as an advocate within their own organisation. It may put both the staff member and the service user in a difficult position.

Mediation

In disputes between two parties (e.g. a service user and the local authority) an impartial mediator can help by negotiating a solution that is acceptable to both sides. However, the advocate’s role is to take the side of their partner, and therefore cannot be said to be impartial.

Principles of advocacy

While advocacy is naturally a very principled practice, one of the barriers to the rapid expansion that it deserves in the UK is a clear and common set of principles and standards. There are several efforts currently being made to address this, which are currently beyond the scope of this article. Hopefully later contributors will address this gap.

One suggestion from Henderson and Pochin (2001) was that the six Key Ideas of advocacy presented in the Advocacy 2000 document (see links) should form the basis for this development. Following this, some work in Wakefield has led to the following eight principles being suggested:

Empowerment
Loyalty and tenacity
Inclusion and respect
Effective communication
Independence
Sustainability
Quality
Advocacy dilemmas

More details will be provided in later updates.

These priciples needs some sort of clarification: for example what independence mean and empowerment in which way? also what is the dilemma in advocacy?

At the same time an advocacy project/organisation needs to practice based on these priciples or can implement part of them? which ones are essential in advocacy? Looking carefully to what you have suggested as priciples i would take three of them as main advocacy priciples:

Independence

Effective communication

Quality

Thanks for this, though I've put your comments (and these) in a box as they should really be on the discussion page.

I have lots to say about these principles, and I tend to think they all work together so I would be hesitant to pick out any in particular. The last one is advocacy dilemmas, which is definitely inspired by Advocacy2000's work: see the bottom of this page for their words on this.

The new one is sustainability: this is usually seen in an environmental context, but we thought the work of advocates should last, beyond the end of the partnership if necessary (or the partnership should last). This sets advocacy apart from the common quick fix/cure a symptom approach of services, and fits in with the principle of empowerment (which is about people getting stronger, but certainly needs more clarification and probably renaming).

Empowerment is first because we want to support people to become self advocates where possible. Loyalty and tenacity, and inclusion and respect are next, and again taken from Advocacy 2000, because these seem especially particular to advocacy in contrast to than other services. Quality is the most difficult for me, because although it sounds good, the term has been so badly moulded and abused you need to be very careful to make something appropriate out of it.

In a week I will move these to the discussion page. To get there, and for more comments, click on the 'Discussion' tab at the top of this page, and then click on 'Edit this page'.
This article can be edited directly, but try to improve the actual text rather than making comments or asking questions - i.e. follow the Wikipedia ettiquette. For more guidance and support here are a few links:

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And don't forget to sign any changes: if you are a user and logged in just type 3 or 4 tildas (~) Cheers, Visctrix 21:53, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

How is independent advocacy practised?

To consider advocacy in more depth, it could also be said to be about:

Accessing services
Relationships
Communication

Accessing services

Usually advocates get involved when someone is having difficulty accessing services (8). This includes being treated fairly and respectfully within services (e.g. if you are living in a care home). Examples include helping someone to speak out about the side effects of their medication; explaining that you can't go to visit a service, but they must come to you; or supporting a child to complain about their foster carers.

Sometimes advocates can get involved in situations where services are not involved: examples of this include helping someone to persuade their family that they are capable of going on a bus on their own, or going to work, or living more independently.

Relationships

Advocacy is usually based on a partnership between an advocate and a person who is having problems making their voice heard. It has thus been said that independent advocacy is all about relationships (Henderson & Pochin, 2001).

Within the public services, staff are usually expected to be objective about their work and not form relationships with their clients. There are some very good reasons for this, but it can also lead to problems, especially if your client doesn't understand the concept of objectivity. Advocates take a different approach: they work to form a trusting relationship with their partner, and they are always on the side of their partner. Sometimes the people who advocates work with are very isolated, and may not have any family or friends to support them, so it is important for the advocate to stay on their side even if there are personal doubts about the actions they are aiming for (unless the law specifies otherwise).

Communication

If advocacy is about helping people to speak up, it is also about ensuring that they are heard and that they receive an appropriate response or are able to enter into an appropriate dialogue.

Often people's voices are not heard because they speak in ways that take quite a lot of effort to listen to properly. This can include having speech impediments, limited vocabulary, finding it difficult to organise thoughts into coherent order, forgetting what you wanted to say, or getting frustrated and angry. Of course it is also true that some professionals simply don't listen properly.

In either case an advocate will help people to prepare and deliver a coherent statement of their needs or wishes, and being there with their partner also encourages other people to respond appropriately. Afterwards the advocate can also help their partner to remember what was said and to plan what to do next.

References

Henderson, Rick and Pochin, Mike (2001) A Right Result? Advocacy, justice and empowerment (Bristol: The Policy Press)
'Independent Advocacy, A Guide for Commissioners' (Edinburgh: Scottish Executive, 2001) [1]
'Independent Advocacy, A Guide for Commissioners: Supplement' (Edinburgh: Scottish Executive, 2001) [2]
Williams, Paul (2000) 'Exploring the Boundaries of Citizen Advocacy' [3]