CHARTER FOR CHALLENGE JULY 08

In Derbyshire we have recently launched The Choice and Control Charter: Be in Control. The development of this exciting and dynamic new approach has been spearheaded in services to people with learning difficulties. But its implications are much wider than care services and it is relevant not only to one group of people but to practically anyone.

However, starting at the beginning (which you will remember that Julie Andrews tell us is a very good place to start) it was at a sub group of the Derbyshire Learning Disability Partnership Board that ideas for this first started to be generated.

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©Peter Dawson

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Is Advocacy at a Crossroads by Peter Dawson July 07

Is advocacy at a crossroads? Are we standing wondering which way to turn? Do we go off in new directions or stay on the road we've always been on? Do we go forward from this crossroads with confidence or is our greatest desire to go back along the way we've come?

It is quite easy to think in these terms: that Independent Advocacy is facing a crisis. I manage a smallish independent, generic advocacy organisation. And even though I've only been in this post for a little under three years it does feel sometimes that we're in a different position now than we were when I started. Or are we?

People who have been around longer than I have in this field might indeed hanker for the old days. Did Independent Advocacy Organisations emerge from the mists of time in a glorious sunrise of idealism infused with the warmth of Wolfensberger's and O'Brien's visionary energy? Were the halcyon days of advocacy spent in a glorious trouble-free garden of delights - Its champions gleaming armour clad, all dragons easily slain and ogres banished, funding flowing like golden honey from a limitless well? Was the yellow brick road of independent citizens advocacy mapped out and disappearing into the distance, for ever and a day?

I think not.

Surely it must be true that advocacy has always been in an uncomfortable place. Yes, the ideals of Citizen Advocacy may have shone then and may still shine brightly but, I imagine, have hardly ever been easy or straightforward in their application. Twenty years or more ago independent advocacy was born out of the realisation that the lives of people with learning difficulties were often isolated and more often than not dominated by decision-makers with power, who did not value, recognise or celebrate them as individuals with their own authority.

So independent advocacy was independent from the start out of necessity and choice, not by perversity or chance. And from the start it must have been the case that battle-lines between advocates and power-holders were often drawn. Surely such flash points of conflict have reoccurred as part of the nature of advocacy ever since.

Up until the mid 80s I was for some years a nurse for people with learning difficulties and my first encounter with advocacy (and that was just with the concept of it) brought a defensive response on my part. Sadly, in my own experience, that sort of response is still alive and well.

It was then, and still is, too easy for people who are close to people who need advocacy to believe that they are most appropriate person to deliver it. And if you are a brother, neighbour, nurse, tutor, residential social worker or even friend it maybe that you are in a good position to be an advocate to your 'person' but it is more likely that you have other agendas and, in some circumstances, conflicting loyalties.

So independence was the watchword. And along with independence of thinking and focus are the issues of funding, of direction (ie by whom are advocates directed), training, governance et cetera.

In reminding us all of this I am suggesting that these are issues which have always faced independent advocacy. My own set up here has existed since 1988. We were formed by a group of people who were determined to provide advocacy to vulnerable people in our area. Such determination has born fruit over the years. But sometimes hard decisions have had to be made and disappointments endured.

The funding issue, for instance, has always provided tensions. And in some ways created crossroads (or atleast mini-roundabouts) on route.

The following questions must have been mulled over many times by managers and co-ordinators of independent advocacy organisations:

• Which funders do we apply to - is it more ethical to apply to some rather than others?
• Should we be applying for funds when that means competing with other advocacy groups and worthwhile causes?
• Do we even compete within our own organisation for the same pots of money?
• What ways round these internal conflicts are there?
• What do we do when projects or pieces of work fizzle out or have to be brought to a premature conclusion because of no more funding being available?
• Where do this all leave our advocacy partners?
• " Do we or don't we contract with service providers (local authorities, Health Services et cetera)? How do we avoid compromising ourselves by doing so?

Independent Mental Capacity Advocacy - advocacy organisations tendering with local authorities to supply an 'advocacy' service has been written about extensively elsewhere and is very much on our minds but has it presented a new dilemma or only highlighted an old one?

The questions above about funding have illustrated some of the crossroads we have faced, face now and will probably always face. If we go down a certain path does that lead us to somewhere different to where we really want to be. And as a result are we still independent advocacy organisations or have we mutated to something else - quasi local government departments and agents of the status quo?

More importantly I believe we should be constantly facing the question; Where do our advocacy partners want us to be?

Our advocacy partners want us on their side, independently. to help them to be listened to, recognised, valued and empowered. Advocacy is not something we do to our advocacy partners. It is a stance, a belief and a communication that is generated outwards from them, with our assistance, towards anyone who they feel needs to take notice.

In conclusion I'd say that advocacy is always at a crossroads of some sort. It would be good to think that there is enough experience, skill, determination, understanding and listening for us all to take advocacy forward with us wherever we go.