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For children and young people

An advocate can help make sure that adults ask you what you want and listen to you 

Mental Health Act: Call for “unequivocal commitment” to improve access to advocacy

Over fifty leaders in mental health and advocacy are calling on the government to ​“make an unequivocal commitment to improving access to Independent Mental Health Advocates (IMHAs) as part of the reform of the Mental Health Act” 

Safeguarding Adults Week: Shifting the balance of power

This article looks at how imbalances of power can increase the risk to abuse, and how advocacy can work preventatively by helping to redress power imbalances. 

Safeguarding Adults Week: What have we learnt from abuse?

Abuse filmed by the BBC at Winterbourne View in 2011 and Whorlton Hall in 2019 made clear in the starkest and most brutal way, the potential contrast between what external professionals may see when they visit a care setting, and what actually might be going on behind closed doors. 

Safeguarding Adults Week: Professional curiosity and the Advocacy role

Professional curiosity is of central importance to safeguarding and to advocacy. When things go wrong, a lack of professional curiosity is often there, in amongst the mix of things that could and should have been done better. 

Safeguarding Adults Week: Non-instructed advocacy and preventing abuse

Not everyone can tell an advocate their views but they have the same right to be heard. Non-instructed advocacy is the work that takes place to try to understand a person and their likely views when they cannot directly state them.