About DAD Advocacy Service page
What is advocacy?
Some people in society find it more difficult and face more barriers to having their voice heard when decisions are being made that affect their lives.
DAD Advocacy Project aims to remove these barriers, working in partnership with the individual to ensure they are involved in the decisions happening in their lives and safeguarding the person’s rights throughout the process.
DAD can provide independent, experienced and skilled advocates to support people to ensure their voice is heard and their rights upheld.
Easy Read: Advocacy is.... Easy Read: Advocacy is not.....
What does an advocate do?
All DAD advocates have either achieved or are working towards a National Diploma in Advocacy. All advocates are carefully selected, have enhanced DBS checks and undertake regular training and professional development including safeguarding, changes in legislation and good practice.
An advocate supports people to think about their options, views and wishes, providing the right level of support to ensure these are expressed and heard.
An advocate will support the person to consider their options and where needed can provide support to challenge or complain about a decision. An advocate can also support a person to prepare and attend meetings.
Where an advocate is supporting a person who is unable to communicate their views or instruct the advocate, a skilled advocate will represent the person using person centred and rights based approaches which will guide their advocacy work. This is also known as ‘non-instructed advocacy’.
Who can access DAD advocacy service?
DAD Advocacy Project can support people living in Darlington and Tees Valley in a range of circumstances, listed below.
Please use the link below to find out who is eligible.
Who we can help and referral information
Some types of advocacy DAD provides is known as ‘statutory advocacy’, because in certain circumstances a person has a legal right to an advocate.
· Care Act Advocacy during assessments, support planning and safeguarding processes
· Independent Mental Health Act Advocacy
· Independent Mental Capacity Act Advocacy
· Relevant person’s representatives for people who are Deprived of their Liberty
· Victims of Hate Crime and victims of any crime who have a mental health need (Darlington and County Durham).
· Specialist mental health advocacy
· General advocacy regarding a specific issue (sometimes known as ‘non-statutory advocacy’)
DAD values it’s independence and we believe this is key to providing high quality advocacy support.
We provide a confidential service, and will not share information without the permission of the person we are supporting. The only circumstances we would need to share information is if the person we are supporting shares information that would put themselves or others at risk or danger. DAD’s privacy policy has further information on this.
How you can support us
As a local organisation we very much rely on the support of our local community. We support over 2,000 people every year to have greater choice and control and remove the barriers that disabled adults and children experience in their everyday lives. But we need YOUR help.