We’re looking back at the impact we’ve had on people’s lives during the last 15 months.
The quality of our work, and our focus on positive change, has made a real difference for the 5129 vulnerable people known to us and the 1760 people involved in our outreach work from April 2019 to June 2020. Our intention is for people to be empowered and have agency in their lives. Through working with us people tell us they feel stronger, safer and more confident: better able to stand up for themselves.
Real stories about real people
Here’s a short video illustrating how advocacy makes a difference in people’s lives. These are real stories about real people who have experienced real change. From the many different cases we’ve worked on, we’ve selected two further stories to share about how we’ve worked with people: John, who needed to feel safe on a mental health ward, and Tom, who needed support to move back home after having a stroke. (We’ve changed service users’ names to protect confidentiality.)
Highlights over the last 15 months
We’re proud of many things about our work in the past 15 months, as well as people and organisations we’ve partnered with. Here’s a selection of highlights.
- We won the National Advocacy Award for Equality & Diversity. The award specifically mentioned our work on inclusive governance practices, and challenging structural injustices LGBTQ people face in the mental health system.
- We launched a fast track personal health budget service to help people who don’t have easy access to technology or phones during COVID-19.
- We established our advocacy service for patients at Broadmoor Hospital.
- We presented at the Westminster Policy Forum on our survey on polypharmacy amongst older people.
- We contributed to an academic review into BAME people in the mental health system.
- We won the prestigious three-year contract for statutory advocacy in Hammersmith & Fulham, and also Care Act/Mental Capacity Act advocacy in Ealing, plus NHS England services with national reach.
- We were successful in our bid to deliver safeguarding training to staff and volunteers at Royal Botanical Gardens (Kew and Wakehurst)
- We had excellent staff survey results, including: 94% of staff say their manager recognises and acknowledges a job well done; 97% of staff say their job gives them a sense of achievement.
- We delivered nine public lectures on advocacy and topical issues; during lockdown our online talks reached more than 300 health and social care professionals across the UK.
