AAW25: Why advocacy

There are so many reasons why advocacy continues to be a vital part of our health and social care landscape. And, perhaps now more than ever, it’s helpful to reflect on the role that advocacy plays in addressing imbalances of power, achieving human rights, enabling inclusion and being a powerful driver of social justice.

The definition of advocacy in the Advocacy Charter reminds us that, advocates help people to speak up and say what they want, secure their rights, pursue their interests and obtain services they need.  Advocacy providers and advocates work in partnership with the people they support and take their side, promoting social inclusion, equality and social justice.

The first part of that definition, speaking up, securing rights, representing interests and supporting people to access the support they need, these headlines of the advocacy role, get spoken about every day.  This is what we use when we describe our roles to people who draw on advocacy support, to professionals we work alongside and to our friends and family when they want to understand more about our roles. 

And they are all vitally important functions of advocacy.  But how often do we take time to reflect on the broader purposes of advocacy? Challenging injustices, standing alongside someone as they navigate life changing moments and decisions, robustly standing up for what someone wants and needs, challenging decisions and ensuring that people don’t face discrimination or prejudice. These other aspects of the advocacy role are what make advocacy stand out from other types of support and what help make advocacy such a powerful driver of change in people’s lives.

Advocacy is different to other types of support.  The activity the advocate undertakes is always led by the person.  Advocates’ sole focus and priority is on the person. They don’t have to juggle competing priorities that other professionals might. Advocates are independent of all other services, and this allows them to truly stand along side someone.

Advocates often provide support at the moments in people’s lives where they face the biggest changes or perhaps the biggest restrictions to their liberties:

• Independent Care Act Advocates support people when they are being assessed by adult social care services for support and when people’s services are being planned and reviewed. These can understandably be worrying times for people; when you rely on support to manage day to day life, it can be nerve-wracking when your support is being reviewed or possibly changed.  These are times when people might feel like they have less choice and control.  The Care Act Advocates’ role is to support people to participate in these assessment, support planning and review processes to ensure their views, needs, wishes and preferences are central, to ensure people’s rights are upheld and to help people access the support they need to live life with as little restriction as possible.  This is where the principles of social justice and social inclusion can really come into their own.  The advocates role, whilst independent, supports social care staff by facilitating people’s involvement and supporting people to plan and prepare for assessments and meetings.

• Independent Mental Health Advocates (IMHAs) are able to support people when they are subject to the Mental Health Act, most often when people are detained in a hospital ‘under section’. This is a time when people’s liberty and freedom is restricted and being in hospital in an unfamiliar environment can be unsettling.  Advocates are able to spend time on the ward, getting to know people, offering and explaining independent advocacy support as well as making sure people are aware of their rights.  IMHAs also support people to plan for and participate in discussion and decisions about their care and treatment, helping people to express their views, wishes and preferences to the professionals in charge of their care.  Advocates aren’t a part of the multi-disciplinary team that need to make decisions about someone’s medication, care and treatment and liberty.  They are there for the person, to enable them to speak up, ensure their rights are upheld and being on their side.

• Independent NHS complaints advocates support people when things have gone wrong with their NHS care and treatment or the care and treatment of a loved one, a time when people can feel vulnerable and let down by trusted services. Again, advocates stand alongside the person and help them to navigate complaints processes, providing help to people with communicating their concerns, enabling people to be heard and to achieve social justice.

• Independent Mental Capacity Advocates (IMCAs) provide advocacy support when life changing decisions are being made about someone who doesn’t have the capacity in relation to those decisions. IMCAs get involved in decisions about where people will live and in decisions about whether or not someone will receive serious medical treatment.  These decisions can have a profound impact on someone’s life.  The importance of home and where we live and with whom is something we can all relate too.  Many of us will have experienced disappointment at not getting to rent the rooms or apartment we wanted or the devastation of having a house sale fall through.  Where we live really matters.  Moving house and changing where we live is one of the biggest life events we can experience. That’s why IMCA support and representation is so hugely important.  IMCAs are independent professional with the sole focus on the person, their rights and what the person is expressing is most important to and for them – ensuring decision makers are focusing their decision on the person, upholding rights and reducing restrictions.  The more restricted someone’s life is, the harder it can be for them to achieve inclusion.

• Community advocates support people in all sorts of scenarios and situations; addressing housing issues, hate crime, child protection, safeguarding concerns, accessing services and utilities, etc. The same principles of independent advocacy will always apply. The advocate will be led by the person and what they want to happen and what they need, taking the person’s side, helping people speak up about what is most important, ensuring rights are upheld and achieving social justice and inclusion.

Advocacy is helping people say what they want, securing people’s rights, pursuing people’s interests and accessing services they need.  Advocates and advocacy organisations work in partnership with the people they support and take their side, promoting social inclusion, equality and social justice.

Whether you work as an advocate, supervise advocates, work alongside advocates, are someone who draws on advocacy for support or if you’re just learning about advocacy for the first time; have a great advocacy awareness week and take a moment to think about how advocacy supports social inclusion, equality and social justice as well as supporting people to be heard and have rights that are recognised and upheld.

This advocacy awareness week, I hope you get to share and listen to wonderful stories about why advocacy is important and understand how advocacy can provide the vital independent support and representation people need at moments when having support and someone on your side can matter the most.