Advocacy Service

Advocacy Service

Annual

Report

2014/15

Author: K E Ryder

Date: 27th August, 2015

Table of Contents

Page 2-Introduction

Section 1 :Service Provision

Page 3-Publicity

Page 4-Advocacy Provision

Page 6-Recruiting and Training the Advocates

Section 2 :Equality Monitoring

Page 7-Equality Monitoring user statistics

Section3:Appendices

Page 11-I – Equality Impact Assessment

Page 14-II – Quality Audit targets and progress

Appendices 3 – 5 are appended to this report

III – Sessional Worker Supervision Pack

IV – Partnership Information Pack

V –Publicity Material

Introduction

In the first 4 years, the One Voice has had a contract with Wolverhampton City Council to provide a peer advocacy service for people with long term physical and sensory impairments. In the last year 18 months we have also been providing an advocacy service for other groups of disabled people – people with mental health issues, and people with learning disabilities, and in the final quarter of the year 2014-15, we provided a one-to-one advocacy service for older people, family carers,and people without mental capacity, who were unable to get a service with other organisations.

We have enjoyed developing our client base, as it has helped our advocates to gain valuable experience, knowledge and expertise in more areas. This will help contribute to our efficiency when we begin the new advocacy contract for disabled people, non-professional carers, older people, and people with alcohol/substance misuse issues.

We requested a quality audit from the City Council in the final quarter of 2014/15, so we could make sure we were in a healthy state to deliver the new contract.
This took place in January 2015.
The targets arising from the audit, and our progress against them, can be found in the Appendices.

This report covers the work done on the One Voice Advocacy Project in the financial year from April 2014 to March 2015.

Sections One and Two cover the service objectives required by item 19 of our contract with Wolverhampton City Council.

If you need a copy of this report in Large Print or on audio cd, please email us:

Or you can download a copy of the report on the downloads page of our new advocacy website, here:

Section 1 :Service Provision

Publicity

While more people are finding their way to us, and more agencies are referring people to us, we still have the problem that not every citizen in our client group who needs our service, will know about us, and therefore be without the support they need to help make informed decisions about their lives.

We have attempted to address this by increasing the mode and number of our promotional activities:

• Going to community groups and meetings to talk about our service,
• Regular drop-in service at venues that our client groups use,
• Attending events to publicise our service,
• Word-of-mouth of current/past service users
• Listings in online and print service directories

We do regular drop-ins at the Well-Women’s Centre, Gender Matters, and Access for Independence.
We will increase our drop-ins in the coming year, to cover places attended by our new service user groups.

We have contacted or done talks at partner organisations, including Access to Business, Age UK, WFTA, Wolverhampton Homes, Eyes, LGBT, Gender Matters, Voice4Parents, Aquarius, and Mental Health Groups.

We attended the City Show, Castlecroft Home, Accord Community Day, Low Hill Community Centre Health & Wellbeing event, Voluntary Sector Council Health & Care Sector event, and the University Mental Health Day.

We distributed over 400 of our leaflets during the year.[1]

Advocacy Provision

In 2014/15 we saw a lot more clients than in previous years – 185 people – an increase of 33%.

During the year 130 of those cases were opened and completed – with in most cases a result that pleased the service user. Those cases that have not yet been closed are around issues that require intermittent support – such as helping a person with a learning disability to come to a decision about supported housing.

The graph below shows the breakdown of referrals, open and closed for the 2014 – 2015 project term.

The largest referral source of 78 is self-referral followed by 36 from Social Workers 10 Women’s Well Being Centre, 8 Healthy Minds, Advocates, Age UK and Family equally 6, 4 Friends, Support Worker, Access to Business and Job Centre equally 3, 2 from The Maltings and West Park Hospital. Equally 1 from Beacon Centre for the Blind, CAB, Rethink, Civic Centre, Sandwell Advocacy, Care Worker, St Georges Hostel, Specialist Mentor, Welfare Rights, Advisor Direct Life, Pohwer, West Midlands Police and Independent Age, making a total of 184.

The graph below shows the breakdown of where our referrals came from and the number of cases from different providers.

Our largest areas of support covered are benefits 67, social issues 36, care 24, child protection, 14 debt, 12 housing followed by social service issues, accessibility, financial, medical, safeguarding, guardianship, education and hospital.

Recruitment and Training of Advocates

During the year, we trained 3 new advocates. We recruited trainees from the Black and Asian communities, since most of our BME advocates were no longer available for a variety of reasons - full time work elsewhere, full time education, DWP mandatory work experience (the placements are decided by the DWP), and long term ill health.
So far only one of the 3 new trainees has completed his portfolio, and he passed the course.

Since then, we have also had 2 advocates return to us.

Section 2 :Equality Monitoring

All of our clients are asked to or helped to fill in an equality monitoring form, and we use these combined statistics to identify any gaps in service provision. So, for example, if we find that we are not serving many Asian people, or gay people, we will target groups that serve those people, or places they go, to let them know about our service and how to access it.

This year, in common with some previous years, not everyone has filled in a form, and advocates and co-ordinator have not strongly encouraged them to do so. We think this is a weakness that needed to be addressed. In order to amend this, we now do the form with the new client as part of our advocacy partnership paperwork, which is done at the first meeting.

These are the equality statistics collected in 2014/15 before this adjustment was in place.

Appendices

The purpose of the Appendices is to include examples of our work, how our performance meets agreed targets, the paperwork we use with our clients and other things that don’t readily fit into the main body of the report.

Appendix 1-Equality Impact Assessment

Whenever One Voice makes a change to our service, we analyse the Equality impact. Although this is not legally required, it is required of the Local Authority, and since most of our contracts are with the local authority, it is good practice to analyse policy or practice changes for equality implications.

Our Equality Impact Assessment should:

• Assess likely impact of proposed policies or projects – what is it, who is it forwho might be excluded(why)
• Monitor for any adverse impact
• Adjust project or policy accordingly

The Assessment can be seen in the following table, which is a modification of the general template we use for impact assessment

Policy/Project Change:Expanding service to cover new client groups[2]

Stage

/ process /

What effect did this have

Consultation / Who have we consulted:
Disabled people
Present Service Users / What did they say
The identified need from this project arose from disabled people – via what they told the council they wanted via the Long Term Impairments service plan, and via things identified to One Voice in our wide-ranging research of disabled people’s agendas, published in our What Disabled People Want and Need reports (2004, 2009).
The expanded services has the effect of increasing the range of disabled people who can get the service, and increasing the potential number of disabled people trained as paid advocates.
At our AGM and via discussions with groups and service users, the view was unanimously positive
Modification / Has consultation led to modification?
In line with our intentions / What did we do:
When we were proposing to run the service we applied the things disabled people had said to us, making it an opportunity to train and give paid work experience to unemployed disabled people, adding value to the service, and enhancing it as a service provided by and for disabled people.
We have trained and employed disabled people as advocates from a wide range of impairment backgrounds.
Update November 2014
But as a result of the service expansion we have gone out to other groups of people who will be entitled to our service and recruited from there.
We will be doing the same in 2015/16 when our service users will also include family carers older people and people with substance misuse issues.

Monitoring

/ How and how often / We monitor the service through our user data and feedback every 6months
Results of Monitoring / Does monitoring show equality failures
(ie effect on one group appears to be different from another group). / No
There has been an increase in people with learning disabilities, and people with mental health issues using our service, without detriment to our pre-existing service user group
Other comments / none

Appendix II – Quality Audit targets and progress

We requested a quality audit from the Council’s Quality Assurance Team in the final quarter of 2014/15 to test our readiness for our new contract commencing april 2015, and indentify improvements.

There were some problems with the record-keeping of the previous project co-ordinator, so we had already put some improvements in place, but we wanted to ensure good practice for the 3 year contract due to commence in April 2015

Below is the Action Plan and our target dates

Findings by QAC Team / One Voice Action to be taken / By whom / deadline
1 / Service user records do not always contain the name and details of Provider referring the client to the Service / New regime – this is checked before assignment to advocate
All have a referred by part of form
All referrals from another agency have to use a referral reform – only Age uk have not done this / all /  done
2 / When someone has signed the partnership form on behalf of the service user, it does not state who the person is, their relationship with the service user and whether they have authorisation to sign the form on the client’s behalf.
It is recommended that it is also recorded how the agreement has been discussed with the service user. / Refresher training for advocates
Users sign to say they have understood and agree. / KR
KR/ALL /  done + ongoing
 done
 done
3 / Not all records evidence all support offered to a client, other than face to face contact. For example, if the advocate makes calls to a finance department, who they spoke to and the outcome of the conversation are recorded. / Remedial Training to all advocates
Checked by advocacy supervisor / KR/JS/ALL
KB / May 30
Ongoing
4 / There is currently no evidence to show that where concerns or risks are identified they have been addressed and risk assessed. / Refresher training for all – checklist will be distributed
Referral agents do risk assessment. Where co-ordinator identifies risk s/he addresses it / ALL
KB / May 30
5 / The team has identified some gaps in their systems for collecting information relating to the employment of advocates. There are currently some advocates without application forms on file. / Missing AFs will be redone
All staff files will be updated at next round of supervisions / All co-ordinators + Advocates / June 30
6 / There are currently some advocates who do not have supervision contracts in place. / These exist in a mix of electronic and print copies,there will be an electronic file on each advocate, incl the relevant certs, contact details, supervisory etc
[training completed is recorded on a separate spreadsheet] / JS/KB
staff / May 30 ongoing
 done + ongoing
7 / It is important that Supervisions occur at the frequency detailed within the supervision policy. / Quarterly supervisions scheduled via advocates meeting. Supervisions more frequent where remedial
[remedial ones done as and when, with monthly opportunity] / JS/other / May 30
 done + ongoing
8 / There is currently no evidence to show that where a complaint or concern has been raised with a staff member, that this is followed up within the timescales stated on the record. A copy of the follow up review should be placed on file. / Agreed
(problems with previous regime rectified)
[no complaints so far to record] / staff / Immediate
 done + ongoing
9 / The Recruitment policy does not currently cover how advocates are recruited and selected.
It also does not cover how decisions are made if an advocate has a positive DBS, and what support is provided to advocates following employment.
The application form for advocates training currently relates to employment as paid advocates which could be confusing.
The Organisation would also benefit from having a procedure regarding advocacy training, including who can apply and what the process is following application. / To be amended
To be amended
Amended
Will be rewritten / 30thapril
30thapril
 done + ongoing
 done
10 / There is not a record of all training undertaken by advocates. / Now in existence in personnel file / Service co-ordinators / Immediate
 done + ongoing
11 / Areas of work to be undertaken by volunteers is not currently detailed in the volunteer agreement. / It is added by hand in the form – it is individually tailored re impairment group /  done
12 / The Service maintains a list of DBS checks for staff and advocates. The list does not currently detail inactive Advocates and would benefit from doing so. / Now in place / [JS] / Immediate
 done + ongoing
13 / There is currently not a job description in place for advocates. / Will be written as separate document from charter / 30thapril
14 / Confidentiality agreement to be reviewed to include internet safety, safe storage of records when out of the building and information sharing with other agencies. / To be reviewed and rewritten / May 30th
15 / Advocates personnel files do not contain information relating to advocate observations, shadowing etc. / Addressed from now / Co-ordinators / Immediate
 done + ongoing
16 / The Organisation are lacking some of the Councils Procedures and best practice tools. / QA&C Officer to send over a copy of the Children’s safeguarding board policy for reference.
QA&C officer to send over good practice guidance in relation to safer recruitment.
QA&C officer to send over training matrix for use or amendment. / QA&C Officer
all / 25.02.15
Using our own based on it
17 / The organisation currently only record complaints resolution as part of the annual report. It would be beneficial to review the complaints process to add in an opportunity to record resolution when there is a complaint. / In place /  done + ongoing

[1] Copy of leaflet is in Appendix I

[2] As well as long-term physical/sensory impairments the service is to be extended to cover people with mental health issues, people with learning disabilities