3.2 People and organisations who can advocate for you

If advocating for yourself does not seem to be working you can get support. For expert advice see youknow.org.uk [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] or Hft (search for ‘Care act guide’).

These websites have advice about:

• your rights
• being clear about what the problem is and what needs to change
• keeping good records
• ways of resolving disagreements directly with your local authority
• making a formal complaint, for example to your local authority’s monitoring officer, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and your MP. Mencap also has advice about this, including a template for letters of complaint (search for ‘challenge decision’ on their website)
• seeking legal aid.

There are certain circumstances where you have a right to have an advocate to speak up for you – it’s worth contacting advocacy organisations in your local area. You can also ask your local authority for details of advocacy services you can access. In addition, carers organisations and centres offer advocacy guides and services.

Activity 4 How can an advocate help me?

Timing: Allow 10 minutes

Many people are not sure what advocates actually do. Listen to what Gail has to say about the role of advocates and how they can help you when you are in the process of planning future care for your relative. Make some notes if you wish.

Download this video clip.Video player: gopa_1_session4_video2gail.mp4

Show transcript | Hide transcript

Transcript

GAIL:

Small groups where possible with cake and coffee or tea is what we found works really best. Bringing them together to break the isolation if we can, but also helping them to have those conversations, again, with their peer group. Providing the information. Sometimes they just need a fact sheet. I did have one family carer that-- well, it was a couple. They asked us to if we could put the Care Act on one page, which no, was the answer to that. A bit difficult.

We managed to get it down to 10 pages, though really, really punchy. These are the things that you need to do. So they want that key information. They want it in very-- don’t overload people with jargon. All these things that have jargon busters. We do it because we feel like we have to, but just don’t use it. Just speak plain English would be my suggestion to anyone writing anything for anyone. Keep it plain language and lose the jargon. So that is key.

Sometimes I think supporting other people-- well, one of the things that we could do is just be with that person sometimes. So when there’s an assessment, we have a small family support service where we can kind of say, well, we’ll send somebody with you. I know that’s not going to be available everywhere, but saying to the family carer that they need-- Just take somebody with you. If you’re having a meeting with someone, don’t go on your own.

Get everything in writing. Back it up. Don’t rely on a phone call for anything. Get them to write it down. And just say, look, your memory is not what it was. Mine certainly isn’t. So get them to write it down and get everything in writing, but back everything up, I think, as well. Again, it’s that knowledge is power stuff. So whatever information that can be provided to any carer. We found doing some of the big events that we’ve done through our elder carers project, we found that younger families came along to that.

So people in their 40s, 50s came along to start thinking ahead. And I think some of the older carers found that intergenerational approach really positive. So they liked being with some of the younger families. So they felt that they’re tired of fighting, so actually having younger parents that could do that around them was really good. So we encourage that in everything that we do.

End transcript

Download

 

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

To use this interactive functionality a free OU account is required. Sign in or register.

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

Comment

Gail talks about how specialist advocates in her network can help carers. As you will have seen, having an advocate can be really useful. Here is a list of the sort of things they can do to help you:

• listen to you and your concerns e.g. about services
• put you in touch with other parents
• help you understand choices
• provide you with information
• help you say what you want and don’t want to say
• support you to make your own decisions
• accompany you to assessment and meetings
• help you think about nominating someone who can advocate for your relative if you are no longer able to do this.