Three people, three stories

What the person’s situation before working with Advocacy Focus?

Heather* is a 42-year-old lady who resides in her own home with a package of care. Heather had led a normal life, until she was sadly involved in a road traffic accident. This resulted in an acquired brain injury and an extensive physical disability.

Prior to Heather being involved with Advocacy Focus, she had a package of care which did not meet her needs. Heather would frequently have falls and be on the floor for lengthy periods of time before a staff member arrived and could assist her. Heather had a complicated medication regime which required close monitoring, but due to the lack of support in place Heather would frequently miss vital medication or at times, overdose.
Heather did not have the correct equipment in place to meet her needs or optimise her independence.


What did you do to help the person?

An Advocate was allocated to support Heather with a social care assessment. Heather did not trust professionals, as she felt she had been let down and dismissed by them in the past. Heather felt it was down to her processing needs and how long it took her to both understand and relay information back. The Advocate visited Heather regularly to build rapport with her, and once they had built up trust, they talked about her care and support needs at a pace she felt comfortable with.

Heather told her Advocate that she was working with an Occupational Therapist (OT). Heather asked her Advocate if they would liaise with the OT to get her needs across and ensure any assessments were recorded accurately by the OT. During the social care assessment, it was clear that Heather’s needs were well above the social care needs threshold, and she required continuing healthcare.

Heather had processing difficulties due to her acquired brain injury but had been deemed as having capacity around her care and support needs. Therefore, the Advocate adapted documents by changing the font size, format, and text colour, so that Heather was able to read the documents and be fully involved in the process. The Advocate also explained things to Heather in a simple, jargon free manner.

The Advocate supported Heather through the Continuing Health Care assessment and made sure that the nurse assessors understood Heather’s processing needs. This resulted in the nurse assessors setting up regular two-hour meetings to go through one issue/decision at a time. The Advocate followed up the meetings by visiting Heather to go through the information completed. They checked to make sure that Heather was happy with the information recorded and made any amendments or additions that Heather may have forgotten to mention during the meeting.


What was the outcome?

As a result of the Continuing Health Care assessment, Heather qualified for fully funded Continuing Health Care. Heather was provided with a 14 hours per day care package for two staff members. This took into consideration Heather’s needs and personal care and catered for Heather’s extensive medication and physiotherapy regime.

By working with the OT, the Advocate was able to support Heather to have a track hoist fitted in her home, along with a mobile hoist. Heather also had motorised worktops fitted, which gave her access in her wheelchair. Heather, in addition, had a full fire safety assessment completed, with fire alarms installed and new fire doors. Heather also had a medication cabinet fitted for safe storage of controlled medication. Heather also had a customised shower chair fitted. Further work is ongoing for a specialised seating system and sleep system for Heather.

How do you think this impacted on the person?

Advocacy supported Heather to get her wishes heard and helped her to remain in her home with a robust care package. The package did not just meet her needs, it improved her personal safety whilst optimising her independence.

Why do you think advocacy support was so effective?

Advocacy was effective as it gave Heather the time needed to process information in a format she was able to understand so she could be fully involved in the decision-making process. Heather was able to make informed decisions about her care needs and to get across the severity of her needs so they could be safely met. Heather was also able to achieve the adaptions in her home to promote her independence in a safe way.

Adam* used to be in care and had an advocate to support him during this time. The advocate helped Adam to get the support he needed, like helping him get his own records.

Adam had a daughter and wanted to get her records from the local authority, like his advocate had helped him to do before. He talked to his daughter’s social worker about this, and the social worker said they would take care of it.

After waiting for a few months without any updates or getting the records, Adam got in touch with his advocate again for help. He had also tried contacting his daughter’s social worker multiple times but didn’t get any replies.

Adam’s advocate helped him by trying to get in touch with his daughter’s social worker and the person in charge of handling record requests. They tried many times and sent emails at least every couple of weeks. Despite sending lots of emails, they rarely got a reply. It took several months to get the request to the right department.

By the time the request was finally handled, Adam’s daughter was already in care. This meant that Adam did not have the legal right to request her records anymore. When Adam had first asked for the records, he did have the right to request this. As the request had taken so long to get to the right place, by the time it was looked into, things had changed.

It took more than a year for Adam to get a final answer. For most of this time, Adam and his advocate had been trying to chase up what was happening and had got no answers. His advocate helped Adam to write a complaint about how long everything took and how the local authority handled his request. The local authority looked into the complaint but did not change their decision, and there were more delays in telling Adam what was happening. When Adam got the final answer, he was unhappy with it and wanted to take the complaint to the next level. The local authority said they would not look into it further and gave different reasons about why Adam could not get his daughter’s records.

Adam’s advocate explained that Adam could contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and ask them to look at how the local authority had handled his request and the complaints he made. The ICO found that the local authority made several mistakes and wrote a report about to explain this. They sent this report to Adam, his advocate, and the local authority.

The ICO suggested that the local authority should do their own investigation to learn from their mistakes and improve for the future.

Adam’s advocate helped him get ready for a meeting with the Assistant Director of the team that looked into the issues. After the investigation, Adam got a letter from the local authority apologising for their mistakes and saying they had made improvements. Adam also received some money as compensation to apologise for how the mistakes had affected him.

Even though Adam did not get everything he wanted, with his advocate’s help, he learned more about his rights and the process. Adam also raised awareness about the problems he faced so that hopefully, other people will not have the same issues in the future.

Claire’s* son had been a Looked After Child for several years through a Care Order. Claire was struggling when attending Looked After Child Reviews and Family Time meetings due to some executive functioning difficulties. The Local Authority recognised this and commissioned independent advocacy to support her. Claire had an advocate called Maureen.

Over time Claire had worked hard to turn her life around and felt that she was now able to care for her sons and very much wanted her sons to live with her again.

Maureen supported Claire at the statutory meetings and to work with the local authority towards getting the care order discharged. This included Claire being re-assessed to care for her son fulltime. Sometimes this process did not go as expected, and Maureen supported Claire to raise complaints and to seek further access to her son through the family court.

Through having Maureen as her advocate Claire felt more involved in meetings and built-up the confidence to speak for herself. Claire and her advocate spent time preparing for statutory meetings and Claire practiced with Maureen what she wanted to say. Claire felt confident having Maureen there if she needed her support.

Having advocacy support meant that Claire could positively challenge the local authority through the complaints process and to uphold her rights as a parent with shared parental responsibility.

As a result of Claire working with her advocate to develop the confidence to express her views and what outcome she wanted, Claire and her sons were able to spend more time together at weekends. Eventually a transition plan was put in place for Claire’s sons to return home to her.

Claire said, “I am delighted you are able to come today to the final lac review. We can celebrate your intense dedication of supporting me in bringing my boys where they belong, home to me. You have been more than fantastic I couldn’t have got here without you.

“Thank you for everything – for always being there to support me, for standing up to the local authority and helping me to do this myself sometimes. I feel I have grown in confidence and can speak up better now, so thanks for helping me get that confidence.”

I appreciated the notes you sent me after every meeting, they helped me remember and keep track, and sometimes it was because of your notes that we could challenge the social workers. I can’t believe how long it has taken to get the outcome I wanted and the boys wanted, but you have never let me down once the whole time. You helped me prepare for meetings, speak at meetings, and even discuss my case with a barrister when I went to court. You are such a lovely person, warm and approachable, – I felt comfortable with you very quickly. You are a wonderful person and a brilliant advocate.”

Claire’s family member told us, “Maureen, I just wanted to thank you so much for being an outstanding advocate. You have the right mix of professionalism, warmth and deep humanity that made her feel comfortable with you and trust you. Being able to have a laugh with you as well really helped her relax.

You have been her advocate for a long time, through countless meetings with Social Services and I have seen a difference in how much she can advocate for herself now. Thank you for this, as at one time she would not have been able to voice her wishes and feelings to authorities who she felt discounted her completely.

You have been amazing in holding the Local Authority to account, and in challenging them when necessary. Being organised as you are, helped my auntie, as she was able to refer back to your notes, and you helped her and myself to prepare for meetings, as you had already done your preparation before meeting with us. Our emotions often ran too high, everything felt personal, and your experience of working with Local Authorities and your professional objectivity, helped calm us down and see the bigger picture, and different ways of approaching them. We appreciated you going the extra mile – literally, considering the distance you had to travel!

“As well as being a superb support for my auntie, you made such an impression on me, that I became an advocate myself. I wanted to be able to have the kind of impact on somebody that I saw you have on my auntie. You made her feel worthy, like her voice mattered and should be counted, and little by little, she has grown in confidence. I hope I can make someone feel like that, and achieve what you have done for her.”