Join us in celebrating Advocacy Awareness Week (#AAW21) and help us make sure everyone’s voice is heard

Every day our independent advocates play a vital role in ensuring people have their rights upheld and their feelings and wishes heard.

The regulation gives people the right to advocacy in certain situations and anyone at any time may find themselves in need of independent advocate support, for instance; an elderly gentleman with dementia who wants to go home from the hospital, a young mum with postnatal depression detained under the Mental Health Act; a young man with learning difficulties financially abused and neglected by his family.

Advocacy Awareness Week emphasises that stories such as the elderly gentleman, young mum, and the young man are sadly not unique. Hence the need for advocates to challenge unlawful decisions on behalf of the human rights of the most vulnerable in our society is ever-present.

It is also a great opportunity to tell the wider public what we offer, and how it makes a real difference to people’s lives. It is also a chance for people working in advocacy to celebrate achievements, share stories, and think more deeply about our practice.

Gill Valentine, our Advocacy Manager, said: "Advocacy has the power and impact to change people's lives. To help someone have their voice heard at a time when they feel at their lowest is one of the most crucial things a person can do, and we must continue striving to do this in the strongest way that we can support people and make their voice heard. Those of us who already found it harder to have our voices heard have suffered greatest in the pandemic.”

The awareness week gives us time and space to explore and communicate some of the pressing issues facing the people we support and represent – especially with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has been significant for all of us, changing the ways we all work, live, socialise, and connect. It has also changed the ways in which we get support to be healthy and well and to live the lives we want.

Hence, access to independent advocacy has possibly never been as important and the role of advocacy in supporting people to have their voices heard, in addressing inequalities, and in upholding rights has in many instances been vital.

Join us in celebrating Advocacy Awareness Week (#AAW21) and help us make sure everyone’s voice is heard. Follow #AAW21 on Twitter to get involved.

Find out more information about the range of statutory services for Wolverhampton providing help under the Mental Health Act, Mental Capacity Act and the Care Act, independent advocacy, as well as the ICAS service.