Advocacy

Advocacy comes form the Latin ad voce – meaning towards a voice. Put simply, advocacy is about speaking up. Advocacy can mean people speaking up for themselves or getting support to speak up. Advocacy is needed in disability services because people are often seen and not heard. Sometimes disabled people are neglected and have their rights restricted or denied.

Advocacy is a way of stopping this from happening. Advocacy and rights are integrally linked. Cheshire Ireland has been doing advocacy and rights development work in recent years. A two-year advocacy development project operated in Dublin from 2005-07. This involved the provision of information, training and advocacy support.

Cheshire Ireland also has a number of advocacy groups called Consumer Committees. These Committees meet every six to eight weeks to discuss issues of common interest. There is currently one national and three regional committees.

In 2007 a new citizen advocacy service was launched in Dublin. This is an exciting new project for Cheshire Ireland and is supported by the Citizens Information Board. The Citizens Information Board (CIB) is the national support agency responsible for supporting the provision of information, advice, and advocacy on social services. The service will focus initially in three services in Dublin (Barrett, Cara, Richmond residential services).

A service quality system is also being implemented across the organization. This system is called the Shared Values and Basic Assurances. This is a quality system that puts the person at the centre of what we do and it helps us to measure how well we do this. The reason we are introducing this quality system is because people living in Cheshire services and staff have told us that there are many things we do well, but there are also many things that we need to do better. There is a strong human rights element to the Shared Values and Basic Assurances system.

The focus of Cheshire Ireland advocacy and rights work in 2007/08:

• Implementing the Shared Values and Basic Assurances system
• Ongoing development of an advocacy supports in Cheshire services
• Rolling out of a citizen advocacy service in Dublin
• Supporting staff training and development
• Introducing rights-based policies and procedures for Cheshire Ireland
• Facilitating the voice of people that use Cheshire services through existing and new advocacy groups
• Support local Cheshire services to make effective links with community-based advocacy services

Links

• Citizens Information Board
• The Council on Quality and Leadership (CQL)
• Quality System for Cheshire Ireland

Contact Information

The advocacy and rights work is located under the Human Resource and Quality Service Department in Cheshire Ireland. Further information on advocacy and rights work in Cheshire:

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