Advocacy for a Change - Best Practice in Advocacy Support for Adults with SEND

This paper describes a model of best practice in the provision of advocacy activities and services. This best practice model was developed over a long period of time where advocacy work was extended and expanded from the provision of case based and citizen advocacy to the co-production of group, peer and case based advocacy provision and projects. This involved iterative evaluation and innovation of different, more extended forms of group and peer advocacy. Also the model takes into account the work of advocacy providers and current trends in advocacy social work and social support. Successful advocacy that both improves the lives of people and influences how institutions behave towards users is a long and complex process especially where the individual(s) who needs advocacy has additional or complex needs. This paper models advocacy and change for and with people as a process of 12 steps. Practitioners and organisations involved in any kind of advocacy, social work or other community services will find the model helpful in providing a synthesis of the processes one needs to go through to facilitate successful change and improvement through advocacy. The paper includes a description of the change model and illustrations its effectiveness with three case studies. This work has lessons for social work and community support practice.