Advonet is excited to be leading a new consortium to provide advocacy services and support in Leeds, working with partners Touchstone, Age UK Leeds and SignHealth.
Building on Advonet’s experience over the last 20-plus years, the new service will provide ever stronger, more inclusive ‘statutory’ advocacy to those that need it (as set out in the Mental Capacity Act, Mental Health Act, Care Act, NHS Health Complaints).
We will use co-production and a wider partnership approach to better address the needs of other people facing disadvantage who need support to speaks themselves and have their rights. In particular, we will develop the Leeds Advocacy Network to support the many other services delivering advocacy across the city whether or informally.
We will be enthusiastically re-promoting our Referral and Promotion route, Leeds Single Point of Access for Advocacy (telephone number: 0113 244 0606). This is the only number you need if you or someone you know needs support to speak up or to have their rights respected. This is for anyone with a health or social care need. You also use it if you have any questions about advocacy more generally.
We will place a fresh emphasis on promoting self-advocacy and providing free training, consultancy and support to the many other organisations and community groups who are already doing amazing advocacy in creative ways. Closer partnership work will help us make sure that statutory advocacy better meets the needs of all of Leeds citizens.
Another benefit of stronger partnership working will be that it will provide a fuller picture of how health and social care could work better for people who need advocacy. We will pass this onto Healthwatch, commissioners and other key decision makers, and communicate the responses in regular reports. This collective advocacy will complement the individual advocacy work so many organisations undertake.
Please find an invitation to our consortium launch on 19th July at the bottom of this page. This will be a chance for you to find out more and sign up to become more involved. I hope that you can join us. If you are not able to come but would like to find out more, please let us know by emailing [email protected].
Yours sincerely,
Philip Bramson
Chief Executive (on behalf of the Advonet consortium)