The best things in life are free: community-powered advocacy

Purpose - This is an opinion piece about exploring fresh approaches to advocacy for older and disabled people. The purpose of the paper is to suggest a new role for professional advocates. Professional advocacy help can be an important first step to a stronger life or it can be a revolving door. It...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Working with older people (Brighton, England) England), 2013, Vol.17 (1), p.25-31
Main Author: Wightman, Clare
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Advocacy
Advocacy services
Athletes with disabilities
Commissioners
Community
Learning disabilities
Methodology
Midlands
Older people
Paralympic Games
Transactions
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Summary:Purpose - This is an opinion piece about exploring fresh approaches to advocacy for older and disabled people. The purpose of the paper is to suggest a new role for professional advocates. Professional advocacy help can be an important first step to a stronger life or it can be a revolving door. It makes all the difference when we've got people around us who can help us to get over problems, and not feel we're stuck on our own. But most users of services have no one whom they can turn to when things get tough for them. What if we designed advocacy services so they acted on the causes of demand for advocacy, rather than delivered a number of advocacy transactions?Design methodology approach - This article uses the experiences of Grapevine in Coventry and draws on the findings of a project conducted with advocacy organisations in the Midlands and South East, many of whom felt that professional advocacy was not getting to the root of the problem.Findings - Advocacy practice is about being a corrective to failures in other services and an intermediary between service users and providers. It can be very vulnerable at times to being seen as an "add-on" of unproven value.Practical implications - The article asks practitioners to consider the new role advocates might play in developing and connecting networks of local people for mutual help and support. This "community-powered" advocacy could provide effective root cause help and protect the sector's legitimacy during unprecedented financial austerity.Originality value - The paper is of value to practitioners and commissioners of advocacy services.
ISSN:1366-3666
2042-8790
DOI:10.1108/13663661311312557