Connect Advocacy

Connect Advocacy seeks to provide accessible advocacy to people with learning disabilities.  Issue based, self advocacy, social inclusion work, project work and person-centred planning are open to all people with learning disabilities living in the Fareham and Gosport Boroughs.  Last year over 450 people accessed the range of advocacy available.

The project began in 1994 as a local initiative to develop a Citizen Advocacy project, successfully providing long term partnerships for people and connection in their community.

The project had contact with local self advocates and in 2001 helped these self advocates to form an independent self advocacy group.  The self advocates called their group ‘Connect’.

As a service user led project a policy of providing involvement and employment opportunities for self advocates shapes the project work.  Projects have given an opportunity to work in partnership with other organizations and have included work in local schools, colleges and universities to raise awareness of disability and diversity, providing training in communication for people working in shops, leisure, recreation and transport services to enable them to offer better support to people with learning disabilities.

Connect Advocacy is a responsive project, that is able to react to local or national issues and agendas.  Current project work at Connect is Person Centred Planning, Hate Crime Awareness, co-facilitating an information group for local family carers, co-coordinating a HARG Hampshire Self Advocacy Day and providing national conference presentations about the importance of independent advocacy.
As a locally based voluntary organisation Connect Advocacy and self advocates are a part of local community networks in Gosport and Fareham.  Helping other local services know about their community partners who have a learning disability is part of the social inclusion aim of the project.

Volunteer advocates and supporters are still vital to the success of Connect Advocacy.  Connect Advocacy also provides practice learning placements to social work students, this helps meet the demands of the range of advocacy provided and gives trainee social workers direct experience of the importance and effectiveness of independent advocacy.

We currently have a team of advocates and person centered workers in the Fareham and Gosport area.