Different advocacy types

There are many different types of advocacy, but the following explains the different forms of advocacy provided and supported by HARG and its member organisations.

• One to One
• Citizen (Volunteer)
• Self Advocacy
• Peer Advocacy
• Non Instructed Advocacy
• Statutory Advocacy Provision (IMCA / IMCA DoLS / IMHA)

One to One

An independent organisation with knowledge of the different agencies within the legal, health or welfare systems, recruits advocates who use their skills and expertise to represent another person's interests, to assist that person to get their point across more effectively. This service may be provided by independent paid professional staff or by volunteers with relevant training and/or experience. This type of advocacy is common to all client groups and occurs when one person speaks up on another's behalf. An advocate stands beside the advocacy partner and focuses on seeing things from that person's perspective. The advocate is not there to represent their own views but to represent the advocacy partner's interests as if they were their own. An advocate does not make judgments about what is in a person's "best interest". An advocate will always encourage a person to speak for themselves where ever this is possible.

Much of the one-to-one advocacy is now also shorter-term, 'issue – based' advocacy. In general it means that advocacy intervention is offered to address a specific issue or situation and is not intended to be ongoing. It is not necessarily in a crisis situation and it may not be particularly short term but will exist for the time it takes to resolve the issue.

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Citizen (Volunteer)

Volunteer Citizen Advocacy is about individual active citizenship, where one member of the community makes a commitment to the rights of another who is disadvantaged and/or socially excluded. This commitment can be either time limited to assist a person in dealing with a specific issue, decision or crisis or it can be a longer-term commitment where an advocacy relationship develops. The longer-term Volunteer Citizen Advocate helps to identify problems and assists the person in taking steps to help resolve them. A main aim of longer-term partnerships is to combat the discrimination and social exclusion experienced by the Advocacy Partner.

Key features of Citizen Advocacy:

• Long term, one to one relationships
• Advocates are unpaid
• Advocacy schemes 'match' advocate and advocacy partner and support the relationship
• The advocate is accountable primarily to their advocacy partner
• Advocacy schemes are structurally independent from service provider agencies

For more information see CA Coalition website www.cacoalition.org.uk - National Coalition of Advocacy Schemes

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Self Advocacy

Self-Advocacy is to speak up for oneself, either as a member of a group or as an individual, and contains an element of developing the confidence, skills and knowledge to do this. Self-advocacy groups will often involve the use of a facilitator or supporter, to offer additional skills and knowledge that members of the group do not have. This term for advocacy is most common among people with a learning disability who will often refer to themselves as self advocates.

Self-advocacy groups are mostly groups of people who use services, have the same interests locally or have a common cause, and people work together to influence and challenge the way services are run. Groups can become lobbying organisations, involved in raising awareness, and often provide training to service providers on issues that are relevant to them.

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Peer Advocacy

Peer Advocacy refers to 'experts by experience', and is used to describe advocacy relationships where both the advocate and the advocacy partner share similar experiences, difficulties or discrimination. This could include people with drug or alcohol dependency issues, those with mental ill health, the elderly or people with a learning disability

Peer advocacy is often spontaneous in such settings as day centres, residential homes, hospital wards, self advocacy groups, or self help groups. Often it happens because one person feels more able to speak up than their counterpart and people feel united because of a common cause. The relationship is based on mutual support and empowerment and has the added benefit of a special insight and close rapport being developed between the people involved. The primary qualification is their own experience of disability, exclusion or using services.

Some people with substance misuse or mental health issues for instance, may prefer to have an advocate who has similar experiences; they are then supported by someone who "understands" by experience and will not be judgmental about their circumstances.

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Non Instructed Advocacy

Advocates should always commence their role by assuming that the person they are advocating for can communicate their wishes. Advocates should do everything they possibly can to enable the person to understand and communicate what they think. There will however be times when a person's ability to direct their advocate is so limited, or in rare circumstances non-existent, that advocates are faced with the choice of doing nothing or adopting a "quality of life" and "legal and civil rights" based approach.

This may be because of the person's limitations in grasping concepts or because they are not able to make others understand their wishes because of significant communication barriers or a lack of capacity to do so. Capacity to instruct or understand can be diminished for a number of reasons, for example mental health problems, dementia, acquired brain injury, learning disabilities etc. To ensure that this group of people have a voice an advocate will strive to identify that the person's fundamental human and civil rights and needs are met.

To do this they will use a number of core quality of life domains, together with relevant legislation, to make comparisons and consider what quality of life or experiences would be usual and acceptable to the general population.

This approach provides a means by which a particular group of people can have a 'voice', ensuring their individual needs and preferences are taken into account, through the process of an Independent Advocate asking questions and probing responses. It is important, however, to remember that advocacy of this model should only be used as a very last resort when all other attempts at communication and understanding a person's wishes have failed.

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Statutory Advocacy Provision (IMCA / IMCA DoLS / IMHA)

In addition to the wide range of more traditional / established types of advocacy, recent years have seen the development of new, statutory advocacy roles. These new roles have come out of major legislation (Mental Health and Mental Capacity Acts), and are intended to provide extra safeguards for some of the most vulnerable people in society.

For full information please follow the following links:

HARG is very much committed to providing these new forms of advocacy, as they are an essential part of the advocacy spectrum and allow us to deliver vital, truly individualised advocacy support to even greater numbers of potentially vulnerable people living in Hampshire.

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