It could be any of us at any time

CAPS’ Individual Advocacy Manager Kyna Reeves and Education as Advocacy Manager, Ele Davidson share thoughts on independent advocacy.

Independent Advocacy helps people to have as much influence and control as possible over their lives. Independent Advocacy is about people having the right to a voice: addressing barriers and imbalances of power and ensuring that human rights are recognised, respected, and secured.

Independent Advocacy is important for people because it’s a very human thing to need someone on our side, in our corner, who’s got our back. It doesn’t matter how confident we are, how busy lives we lead. We could all go through something: whether it’s becoming unwell, having an accident, experiencing a bereavement or being the victim of a crime. We could all go through something that leaves us needing that bit of support. And we may be facing probably quite new and unfamiliar, complicated processes. Processes that are just overwhelming. This could happen to any of us at any time. And for some people it’s maybe more often. There may be reasons why some need that support more than others. Recognising that is part of our commitment to human rights and equalities.

It’s crucial that Independent Advocacy is independent. This is because the people who are looking for that support have been in a marginalised position for some reason or other. The benefit of CAPS being independent is that we are only there for that person. We tend to work with people who, often for good reasons, don’t have a lot of trust in services. And they maybe can’t always meaningfully choose the services that they are involved with. For example, if you’re detained under the Mental Health Act you don’t get to choose that. So it’s all the more important that you have somebody who’s not part of that system who’s there to help make your views known.

It’s inspiring to see the difference Independent Advocacy makes to real people. Advocacy can be quite a big word, it’s quite nuanced and it’s not always immediately easy to see, what does it actually mean? But when you’ve been alongside someone, in that doctors appointment they’ve been really worried about. And they say ‘you know what, they spoke to me totally differently, I’ve never had that much time with them before’. Or you know they feel listened to during an assessment and they’re telling you what a difference it’s made to them, it just makes it real. It shouldn’t be that way, that there needs to be someone else in the room for services to listen to people. But we hear that time and time again.

There can be days where we’re experiencing people’s powerlessness, because we don’t have any special powers to fix things. So sometimes we’re not able to get people what they want. We have to walk alongside them and sometimes it can be really frustrating. It can be quite emotionally hard for advocacy workers too as they are invested in the work that they’re doing. But sometimes even if someone doesn’t get what they want, the fact that they’ve had someone there, the fact that they’ve had someone to listen to them and be on their side, can make a huge difference. It’s what it’s all about.

Similarly in collective advocacy we get a lot of opportunities to see that as well. We’re able to offer the people that we work with a perspective that feels equal to them. We are able to openly recognise that there might be a power dynamic still there, for example because advocacy workers are paid and they’re not. But the entire intention is to bring it to a level where we can have that equality, that’s so exciting sometimes. It’s so powerful to be able to go into a room of professionals and say exactly what people think. And for that to be the primary task that that we’re there for. We don’t have to try and twist words or to change things. There’s something quite special about that.

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