Lomond and Argyll Advocacy Service joins Charter for Involvement
National Involvement Network (NIN)
The Charter for Involvement was published in January 2015 and contains a series of twelve statements that show how people who use support services want to be involved:
- In the services they get
- In the organisations that provide their services, in
- In the wider community
The Charter is unique in Scotland as it has been written and developed by people who use services for service providers to make involvement better for everyone. Lomond & Argyll Zagovorništvo storitev (Laas) supports the work of the National Involvement Network and firmly believes that people have a right to be fully included and involved in decisions which affect their lives. LAAS is committed to putting their Charter of Involvement into practice within our own organisation. You can find out more about NIN and the Charter of involvement at https://arcscotland.org.uk/ (external site).
Our commitment to the Charter was signed by our Service Manager Scott Rorison.
Here is how we are putting the 12 Statements into practice and how we intend to improve the service we deliver.
- “We must be at heart of any plans about our lives”
Advocacy is crucial element in social justice and it is about ensuring that the most vulnerable people in society are included, heard, empowered and involved in decisions about their lives. Our advocates assist and support people to participate as fully as people can in their care plans, meetings and to challenge decisions that they don’t feel are right for them.
We work with people to ensure the issues most important to them are the matters we are supporting them with. We encourage people to participate fully about how we assist them; we encourage the person to have the control over the way they wish to address issues.
Areas to Develop
Develop action plans with desired outcomes and agreements as to who is doing what and how people wish matters pursued and that they are kept fully informed by us.
- “We have the right to live our life independently”
Independent advocate assists and supports people to express views and their wishes regarding living as independently as possible. People are supported through advocacy to express wishes about where they live, who they live with and about friendships they have.
We support people through using a range of communication aids, including pictures and books, talking mats and providing large print leaflets.
We encourage everyone we work with to be as independent as they wish and can with the issue we are addressing. We support people to have as much control over the help and support they need from us. Advocates will not take over and do things for people; advocates encourage as much participation as people are able to give.
Areas to develop
Evaluate how we measure participation from the people we work with.
Develop more self management strategies into all parts of the work we do.
3. “We must be involved in our communities”
Our advocacy organisation promotes itself far and wide across our communities. We use Social Media, Posters, leaflets, host information sessions and participate in events.
We work with individuals who use services to participate or give views about services they use.
We have created links with ALISS and ABAN to promote our work further to people who may access services or be employed in them.
Areas to develop
We will look at how we further develop links with agencies and services that provide support to individuals across our communities.
- “We must be able to speak about how our support is working for us and what would work better”
Advocates assist people to express views and participate in decisions about their support. We help ensure people feel confident and able to speak up when things are not working for them, when they feel their outcomes are not being met, when they receive too much or too little support.
We discuss with people if the way we are assisting and supporting them is correct. Have we got the pace right, are we supporting them to communicate their views correctly, are we keeping them informed and working at a pace that is right for them.
Areas to develop
We need to develop how we receive feedback from people on the help we gave them.
We should consider developing an advocacy advisory group, or a one off series of conversation groups.
We could consider whether people would share their personal stories of working with an advocate.
- “We want to be involved in choosing the people who support us”
We help people express views around about who they want to support them, the agencies they’d prefer and have assisted people to participate in recruitment of their staff team.
Areas to develop
We need to look at how we meaningfully involve people more in our own recruitment procedures.
Look at how we match case work and consider further what involvement people accessing our service have in this.
- “We want to give information and training to staff at all levels”
Advocacy has assisted empowered and enabled a few groups to build and develop self advocacy skills. These groups have developed significantly and some have gone on to provide training. One group in particular have gone on to provide staff training at all levels about how they can improve their services to the people they support with learning disabilities.
Areas to Improve
It would be useful to have involvement of individuals who have accessed Health and Social Care (HSC) services in our Basic Advocacy Skills Training Course
We should involve people we advocate for on what they feel would be essential and desirable skills for an advocate.
Seek views and opinions and input of people who use services when designing, upgrading or developing any of our literature, relevant policies and procedures on the way we work with individuals.
- “We want to be involved in policies that affect us and making them easier to understand”
Advocates are knowledgeable about policies and service designs that may affect people’s participation.
We have designed some parts of our policies in Easy Read format, this includes our complaints procedures.
We work closely with the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance (SIAA) to give views and to ensure new policies and legislation is about enabling and empowering people to be as fully involved in matters that affect them.
Areas to improve
We must look to develop some of our own policies. This requires involvement of people who use our services, seeking their views and guidance on providing clear, helpful, accurate and easy read formats. This could be met through some working conversation groups.
- “We want to be involved in decisions made by organisations that plan and run our support”
Advocates support may individuals to express views. We learn themes and trends of common issues that are raised. We report back to our commissioners on these common themes of issues that are relevant to how they run services.
We assist people to report and give feedback on supports they have received. This at times involves surveys or interviews from agencies or independent officers.
LAAS undertakes its own satisfaction surveys twice a year. We use this to learn about overall satisfaction and to look at where we can make improvements.
We advertise widely and invite people and services to our Annual General Meeting (AGM).
We have individuals on our Board of Directors who have accessed our advocacy support before.
Areas to improve
We need to improve participation of individuals attending our AGM or Board meetings. This could be met through ensuring that we meet in accessible locations across the area we work. By ensuring people have the right support where required to travel. Ensuring individuals feel meaningfully informed and involved on issues and topics. Provide opportunity to support people to understand our aims and objectives. Provide easy read formats of Board and AGM papers and the support of someone to help people feel confident, understand and fully participate and give their views.
- “We want to be involved in events run by organisations that plan and run our support”
Advocates at times assist and support people to take part in their service providers’ events.
When LAAS hosts events, we promote this to both services and to people who use services or have accessed ours.
Areas to improve
Continue to involve services and users or these services including our service.
- “We want to be involved with speaking up groups”
This advocacy organisation supports some individuals to attend some speaking up groups. We have provided Advocacy Skills Training to some of these groups.
We have helped support people to be able to attend events where people wish to speak out about issues.
Areas to Improve
We want to make the Charter of Involvement work in our organisation and help support people to know about the Charter and its principles.
We will promote and champion the work of NIN.
- “We want to take part in National Campaigns”
This advocacy service supports people to be able to know about where they can go with an issue if they feel it is an area that needs improved. We support and assist people to meet with individuals who have similar views and that are involved in local community groups.
We promote information about some national campaigns across social media.
We keep strong links with SIAA to ensure that we are knowledgeable about relevant National campaigns
Areas to improve
We need to ensure we are sharing links of relevant consultations and campaigns happening that could impact on groups of people we work with.
- “We have the rights to make formal complaints if we need”
Advocates often assist individuals to make formal complaints. We always check how people wish to do this and ensure people feel they are kept informed during the process.
We promote to service providers the benefits of people known about advocacy supports and our independent role. We encourage agencies to understand where it is appropriate that access to advocacy is discussed.
We ensure our own complaints leaflet is easily accessible and that individuals are taken seriously, reassured and respected throughout the process
Areas to Improve
If and when we receive complaints we must ensure any concerns where we have been at fault are put right, but also ensure we are adapting changes to process, where appropriate, to improve.
If you have any questions about these statements and our responses, prosim contact us.