Examples of rights-based action
AccessAva – Access Social Care
AccessAva is an online AI-driven service that makes expert legal support available 24/7 ‘ensuring that everyone can navigate the complexities of accessing health and social care with ease and confidence.’
Making Sense of Self Advocacy Today Report – Alan Armstrong and Jan Walmsley
This report aims to gain a picture of the state of self advocacy for people with learning disabilities in England in 2018-19 with a view to strengthening it.
One example was Ace Anglia’s work with its local authority and clinical commissioning groups which highlighted the benefits of partnership working. This arrangement provided both a route to funding and local influence, including co-producing the Learning Disability Strategy and securing funding to support peer education in relation to Annual Health Checks.
Equal Treatment Project – Contact, Changing Our Lives and Include Me Too
Equal Treatment was completed over 2022. The project worked with 3 partners and aimed to challenge racism and health inequalities through strengthening self-advocacy and peer support.
The project helped groups think about how to be more inclusive and good allies to tackle racism.
Using Human Rights to Get Me Home – British Institute of Human Rights and My Life My Choice
This is an accessible resource for people with learning disabilities who have been placed in long stay hospitals either unnecessarily or for too long. It aims to inform them about what rights they have and how to use them to challenge their stay.
Building evidence: Advocacy for those with learning disabilities and autistic people – Henry Smith Charity and Social Finance
In 2022, The Henry Smith Charity launched a Strategic Grant Programme to support 15 organisations providing advocacy services across the UK.
Over 3 years the programme has found evidence of what difference community based advocacy makes for autistic people and people with learning disabilities.
We Are Human Too – Campaign Group
We Are Human Too is a campaign group of self-advocates from the North East of England.
In 2019, self-advocates and colleagues from Skills for People, Speaking Up Together at Your Voice Counts, and Sunderland People First came together after they heard about the abuse that happened at Whorlton Hall, in County Durham.
The group have taken various action to try and prevent further abuse happening at Assessment and Treatment Units and in secure hospitals.
AccessAva
This is an online AI-driven service that makes expert legal support available 24 hours a day. It wants to help everyone understand their rights and get the help they need from health and social care.
Becca Cooper – ‘York People First and Me’
Becca Cooper, chair person of York People First talks about her life, self advocacy and what she thinks about the future.
Becca showed this powerful audio/visual piece at the Learning Disability England’s conference ‘Building Change Together – Actions for Good Lives’ in 2023.
50 Years of Self-advocacy Film – Brighton and Hove Speak Out
To mark 50 years since the first recorded self-advocacy meeting for people with learning disabilities Brighton and Hove made a short film to celebrate this important history.
Lewisham People’s Parliament – Lewisham Speaking Up
Lewisham People’s Parliament is a self-advocacy forum that meet four times a year to focus on a particular theme.
People who join the forum have a chance to say what they want and what they want to change. A report is then written and shared after each meeting that captures what has been said.
The reps then take the views and wishes of the Parliament to decision-makers in a bid to create changes that people want.
Research and evidence in this area
Filling in the gaps – The Open University
Research on the role of self advocacy groups in supporting the health and wellbeing of adults with learning disabilities during the coronavirus pandemic. The research showed how and where self-advocacy was ‘filling in the gaps’ left by other services.
Funding the gaps – The Open University
A project about how self-advocacy groups for people with learning disabilities are funded. The researchers wanted to know how and why local authorities and Clinical Commissioning Groups fund self-advocacy in some areas, but not others. How groups are funded when they receive little or no funding from local authorities. The pros and cons of different types of funding from the perspectives of self-advocacy groups. They came up with a series of recommendations for how to strengthen self-advocacy.