Types of Advocacy

There are several types of advocacy

Citizen Advocacy
Is a one-to-one ongoing partnership between a trained volunteer advocate and a person who is not in a strong position to exercise or defend their rights and is at risk of being mistreated or excluded. The citizen advocate will be free from conflicts of interest with those providing services to their partner and should represent the other person's interests as if they were the advocate's own.

Self-Advocacy
Essentially means 'speaking up for yourself'. Self-advocacy involves a person who expresses their own needs and concerns and represents their own interest.

Peer Advocacy
When one person advocates for another who has experienced or is experiencing similar difficulties or has similar life experiences. (e.g. people in a residential facility).

Legal Advocacy
Legal advocacy is work undertaken by lawyers on behalf of users of health and social care services (in the form of litigation and judicial reviews) and those investigations carried out by quasi-legal bodies such as ombudsmen.

Paid Advocacy
Professional advocates are people that are paid to provide an advocacy service, usually focusing on particular issues.

'Support Advocacy' - People can request for an advocate to accompany them to a meeting purely as support or to take notes for the service user to reflect on at a later date.

'Joint Advocacy' – People can request and determine the level of involvement of the advocate.  The advocate and user will meet before a meeting to decide questions to be asked to professionals or when to prompt if things are unclear or if the service user has not asked something that they previously stated they wanted to.  This can also include typing out letters and liasing with other professionals e.g. when using the complaints procedure

Representative Advocacy – People request the Advocate to speak on their behalf in all forms of meetings.  The advocate will take all instruction from the user.

Advocacy services within Windsor Ascot and Maidenhead are committed to empowering people to give them more confidence and more opportunities to make decisions that affect their own lives and treatments. When people are involved and use their own voice they can shape their own lives and effect ownership to what is happening to them.