Evidence to the C&YP Committee Re: Advocacy Services

NCH Cymru is a large national voluntary organisation that works with over 13,000 disadvantaged children and young people in 60 projects across Wales. Approximately a third of our projects in Wales support disabled children, young people and their families, through services such as residential short breaks and key working. A further large service area is to provide family support and preventative services to improve the emotional health and wellbeing of vulnerable children and young people. NCH also manages some advocacy services, although NCH is not one of the main advocacy providers in Wales. NCH aims to put the child at the centre in all of the work we do and so our staff do inevitably act as informal advocates when issues arise in the lives of the children with whom we work.

Question 1

NCH Cymru agrees that access to advocacy services should be a universal right for all children and young people(c&yp) in Wales and that advocacy should be available to represent c&yp’s views across the service areas of health, education and social services. NCH Cymru also feels that there should be access to advocacy to ensure c&yp’s voices are heard and not just to make a complaint. C&yp should know where they can access advocacy to enable their views to be heard. We feel that access to advocacy and the strategic approach taken to complaints should be included in the Participation Strategies under development in each local authority area and also the single plans.

NCH Cymru agrees that advocacy services should be independent. Currently when an advocacy service is commissioned solely by Social Services and for just 3 years the independence of the service is compromised. We agree with the proposed service model of regional commissioning of advocacy services by the C&YP Partnerships. As stated above, NCH Cymru does feel that advocacy should be available across the service areas, thus involving several of the partners in the C&YP Partnerships. We would also like to suggest that contracts are awarded for perhaps 5 years instead of 3 with much more robust monitoring and reporting requirements.

NCH Cymru does not feel that a national unit should commission advocacy services locally as there would then be a danger of remoteness, both in terms of the knowledge local professionals have of the service, and the ability to resolve problems at an early stage.

NCH Cymru also feels that advocacy services should be made available to children with additional needs at an early stage; children for example on the autistic spectrum often do not receive the support services they require and that would enable them to achieve their full potential.

Question 3

NCH Cymru agrees that the proposed service model is adequate to meet the stated aim and broadly agrees with the proposed role of the National Advocacy Unit