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What is Advocacy?

Advocacy means speaking up.

Sometimes we can do this for ourselves quite easily, sometimes we find it more difficult.

This could be because we are not feeling at our most confident, or may be facing some life-changing decisions, perhaps we don’t know enough about what or who to ask or what our choices might be.

At times like these it can help to have an advocate, someone to help us find and understand information, prepare for meetings, look at the choices we have or just to be there with us when we need to speak up and be listened to.

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What is East Lancs Advocacy and how does it work?

East Lancs Advocacy is an independent charity offering adults in East Lancashire a free advocacy service to help them when they need to speak to Health or Social Services. It is confidential, this means that anything you say to your advocate will be kept private between you and East Lancs Advocacy, unless it is something to do with yours or other people’s safety. We will always tell you if we can’t keep something private. Your advocate won’t do or say anything you don’t want them to and won’t talk about you if you’re not there. We won’t tell you what to do or sort things out for you.

Our job is to help you to find out what you need to know or do to be able to make your own choices and sort things out for yourself.

We have a team of advocates, most of them are volunteers who work with you because they want to and you want them to. All our advocates are trained and have a badge with their name and photograph on and details of how to get in touch with the East Lancs Advocacy office so that they can show you when you meet.

You only need to tell your advocate what you want them to know and you can keep any notes they take.

Your advocate will work with you until you have sorted out your problem and will not push you to do things quickly. You and your advocate will choose when and where you want to see each other.

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Do you or someone you know need an advocate?

If you or someone you know think that having an advocate may help this is what you can do. You can telephone or write to the office or even call in. You can ask someone to do this for you but if you are doing this for someone else you need to ask their permission first. We only need to know a name, how we can get in touch and a little bit about what the problem is.

We will get in touch within 3 days, but not Saturdays, Sundays or Bank Holidays, and arrange to meet you.

When we meet you for the first time we will tell you what we do, how it will work for you and ask you if you still feel you want an advocate. If you do we will then arrange for you to meet the person who will be your advocate and you can take it from there. If we can’t help you for any reason we will tell you and try and give you some ideas of who might be able to help you.

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What if you are not happy with what we are doing?

Please tell us, we try hard to get things right but sometimes we may get it wrong.

You can talk to the Manager, or write a letter or ask someone to do this for you. We will treat it seriously and find out what has gone wrong and why and try and put it right.

We will let you know what we are doing about it and if you are still not happy you can talk to or write to the Board of Trustees and ask them to look at things again.

We can only make things better if we know what we are not good at, so please let us know.

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Could you be a Volunteer?

Perhaps you are listening to or reading this and think that you could help someone else to speak up. If so and you can spare a few hours a week then please get in touch with us. We will train you, pay for your travel costs and offer you support to do this rewarding job. It really can make a difference to people’s lives and often our volunteers find work or go onto College and find their lives are better too.

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Would your Group or Team like us to come and tell you more about Advocacy?

We are happy to come and talk to groups or work teams and tell people more about who we are and what we can do. If you would like someone to do this please get in touch with the East Lancs Advocacy office.

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How can we be contacted?

Our telephone number is 01254 301030 and our fax number is 01254 301033. Our address is 54 Blackburn Road, Accrington, BB5 1LE. Our email address is elas@elas.org.uk and we have a website, which is www.elas.org.uk.

We are open from 9-5 p.m. Monday to Thursday and 9-4.30 p.m. on Friday. There is an answer machine where you can leave a message at other times. Or you can send a text message to 07886 744634.

Thank you for listening to, or reading, this information.

If you have any other questions please let us know.