Community Advocacy - The Advonet Group

Community Advocacy can help you to understand, say what your choices are and be involved in what you need.

About the Service

If you have a health and social care need and are looking for advocacy, you can now visit one of our Community Hubs. They are in four different locations around the city and held on different days/times to hopefully suit all across the city.

At the Hubs, you can either have a drop-in appointment or take part in a one-to-one advocacy session to help think about how you can overcome a challenge you are facing and develop your self-advocacy skills.

Please click on the button below for more information about the Community Hubs which are running this week.

Community Advocacy Hubs

Keep an eye on this page. We plan to vary the locations of hubs over time to make it easier for the people who need us to find us.

If you are involved with a community location in Leeds that would like to host a Community Advocacy Hub, or want to discuss what our Community Advocacy service can do for you, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Contact

0113 244 0606

office@advonet.org.uk

Unit A3, Unity Business Centre,

26 Roundhay Road, Leeds, LS7 1AB

@advonetuk

Key Contact

Kerry Shipley, Universal Advocacy Lead – Community and Health Complaints Advocacy
Kerry.Shipley@advonet.org.uk

What Does the Service Do

We currently run three Community Advocacy Hubs every week. Two are in-person on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The other is run remotely for phone calls and video meetings every Wednesday.

Tuesdays 10am-1pm: Alternate weeks at Deacon House, Seacroft and the Armley Community Hub
Wednesdays 9am-1pm: Every week remotely, for online or phone meetings
Thursdays 12 Noon-3pm: Alternate weeks at the Reginald Centre, Chapeltown and the Dewsbury Road Community Hub, Beeston

The client can “drop in” to one of these sessions, but there is no guarantee an advocate will be available. If the client cannot be seen at that session, then they will be offered a booked appointment at a future session.

Alternatively, the client can arrange to be seen at a pre-agreed time during one of these sessions by calling our office (0113 244 0606) and arranging this through the First Contact Team. If the client is unable to get to one of the centres, then an advocate can call the client either by telephone or video call at a prearranged time during one of the sessions.

Who is the Service For?

This service is for anyone who resides in the Leeds City Council area that requires advocacy support that can not be covered in our other services. If you are unsure as to whether advocacy support is what is right for you, please read our ‘What is advocacy?’ page.

The advocate’s priority will always be to assist the client to self-advocate wherever possible, therefore the client should expect to leave the session with some ideas and practical tools to help progress their issue themselves.

Where a client has a greater advocacy need than this and where time allows, the session time may be spent by the advocate drafting a letter, sending emails, or making calls with the client. Where time does not permit this, the client may be offered a further appointment at a future Community Advocacy Hub session.

If a client attends a session with an issue that is not advocacy eligible (i.e. the problem is not around being heard or having rights upheld), then the advocate will attempt to signpost the client to other services.

Further Information

As with our other advocacy services, we encourage you to do as much for yourself as you can. If you need support with this, our Self-Advocacy service can help. They can provide free self-advocacy resources to help you speak up for yourself and your rights. Visit our Self-Advocacy Resources page to find them.

We are no longer able to facilitate community advocacy support outside of the remit of the hubs. If you require adjustments for us to support you, please feel free to contact us to discuss whether we can facilitate these. There is no guarantee that we will be able to, however we will try to support in the best way we can.