SIAA were delighted to host an event this week highlighting the launch of a new report on independent advocacy ‘Independent advocacy for independent lives‘. The Social Finance report provides a groundbreaking evidence base for increasing access to independent advocacy, including a robust picture of the financial impact and the wider society benefits of growing independent advocacy provision.
In 2022, The Henry Smith Charity set up a £2.6M fund, giving grants to 15 organisations providing independent and non-statutory advocacy to support people with learning disabilities and autistic people across the UK.
Non-profit organisation, Social Finance, was the learning and evaluation partner for the programme and over three years they worked with the grantees and people with lived experience, to build evidence of practice and to assess the benefits of independent advocacy services to people with learning disabilities and autistic people.
The 15 grantees used the funding to reach 1,667 people through a variety of different forms of advocacy, including one-to-one advocacy, self-advocacy and collective advocacy. Two of the grantees were Scottish organisations and SIAA members – Advocacy Service Aberdeen and Central Advocacy Partners in Forth Valley.
Scottish Context
All independent advocacy is fundamentally about human rights, the right to have your views heard and be taken seriously. Typically, the issues people are supported with are human rights issues such as the right to privacy, education, housing, or an adequate standard of living. Understanding these everyday challenges as human rights issues is crucial for advocacy partners and is a core aspect of independent advocacy work. Independent advocacy is a human rights tool that helps advocacy partners navigate barriers to having their rights realised and helps public services engage more effectively with people they often find challenging to serve.
The findings from the report, which you can explore below, underscore the critical importance of independent advocacy. When grassroots, high-quality independent advocacy is available, it can lead to significant savings for public funds by aiding individuals in navigating systems, enhancing their self-advocacy skills and confidence, and improving access to communities while addressing barriers to realising their rights.
In the Scottish context, it is important to point out that ‘statutory’ and ‘non-statutory’ independent advocacy framing does not apply as it does in other parts of the UK. In Scotland, people with a learning disability and autistic people, the groups that the Henry Smith fund covered grantees to work with, already do have a right of access to independent advocacy under the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003. However, in practice, only 5% of people that have the right in Scots law to independent advocacy can actually access it, this is noted in the Scottish Mental Health Law Review published in 2022. This is due to local interpretation of the law being too narrow and limited resources being allocated for independent advocacy organisations.
Key findings from the report
1. For every £1 spent, advocacy generated benefits worth £12.
As part of our research, Social Finance undertook a financial analysis for independent advocacy services. This showed that for every £1 spent on advocacy services, there were savings of approximately £7 to the National Health Service and £5 to local authorities. The report covers the cost-benefit analysis and findings in detail.
2. Data suggests that any additional system costs from better access to services may be offset by reduced or more effective service usage elsewhere.
Independent advocacy can potentially contribute to wider economic benefits by helping people improve their well-being, gain greater independence and participate more actively in society (including employment). Future research could potentially use a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) or quasi-experimental methods to further assess the attribution or economic costs and benefits of independent advocacy.
3. People used independent advocacy to help them work toward a wide variety of goals
The most common advocacy goal types were related to:
- accessing services (e.g. health services, social services, or other services)
- supporting people with accommodation-related issues (e.g. applications to move to independent living facilities or resolving disputes with landlords or neighbours)
- helping people navigate family-related situations (e.g. supporting with difficult relationships with partners and parents, or navigating child protection procedures).
People also had goals related to their mental health and wellbeing.
Advocates played an active and important role in helping people prepare for meetings with professionals and ensuring their voices were heard. They also provided support by signposting to services, assisting people in contacting these services, making information more accessible, helping people understand it, and planning next steps.
Taken together, these elements of support ensured that people got the right care at the right time to prevent issues from escalating.
4. Grantee independent advocacy services had a positive impact on people's wellbeing, relationships and their ability to speak up
Services provided individuals with the skills and confidence needed to live more empowered, independent and fulfilling lives. An outcomes framework for this project was co-produced with the grantees and Speakup to capture key data. This included seven core outcomes that advocacy aims to improve:
- Speaking up
- Knowledge of rights
- Knowledge of local services
- Good relationships
- Happy with life
- Feeling listened to
- Learning new skills
5. Advocacy helped people achieve self-defined goals
Data from this programme demonstrates the impact of non-statutory advocacy support on people’s chances of achieving their advocacy goals. The vast majority of the 963 people with goal data achieved (58%) or made progress (35%) towards their goals.
These findings strongly suggest that independent advocacy is often a critical factor in enabling people to break through barriers and secure their human rights.
6. Independent advocacy services are creating a meaningful and lasting difference in people's lives regardless of whether they achieve their goals
While progress on advocacy success outcomes appeared to be positively linked with goal achievement, the small percentage of people who did not make progress towards their advocacy goals still made substantial progress in their advocacy success outcomes.
Average scores across the seven advocacy success outcomes still improved by 0.31 on a scale of 0–2 among this group.
This serves as compelling evidence that participation in non-statutory advocacy resulted in wider benefits to people which were separate to their success in achieving their advocacy goals.
7. More work needs to be done to support people from Asian backgrounds
Within the UK wide context, data collected through this programme suggested that Asian ethnicities were underserved by grantee organisations, which may be indicative of a wider trend in the advocacy sector.
Reaching these communities may require greater prioritisation and additional funding, as well as culturally sensitive support.
Grantees did well to engage with people who identify with a gender other than that which they were assigned at birth, and there might be lessons here on reaching other marginalised communities.
Groups supported
People were supported across all age groups, with those aged 30–39 forming the biggest group (24.1%). There was an even split between males and females. 89.9% of the people participating in advocacy were of White ethnicity. 59% had a learning disability, 25% were autistic, and 16% reported having both learning disabilities and being autistic.
Read more on the Social Finance website.
