Supporting, promoting and developing

independent advocacy in Gateshead

Advocacy awareness training

GAIN provides commissioned advocacy training. In partnership with experienced advocacy organisations in Gateshead, we can put together a bespoke training course to meet your needs.

Topics we can cover include:

• Introduction to advocacy
• Advocacy with people with dementia
• Advocacy and safeguarding
• Advocacy and personalisation

GAIN can also provide workshops, seminars and presentations at conferences and other events. Please contact us for more information.

Advocacy update events

We held free advocacy events across England towards the end of 2011 in conjunction with OPAAL.

OPAAL ran a session on ‘Policy into practice’ that looked at setting up an advocacy service from scratch or refreshing existing policies. GAIN's Project Manager Angela Broadbridge discussed the Outcome Star Tool. The tool has been developed and piloted by GAIN’s A Stronger Voice project for over two years, with seven Gateshead advocacy organisations. It can be used across seven different service areas, including learning disabilities and mental health.

The event at Newcastle’s Castlegate on 30 November saw delegates from over 25 different advocacy organisations from across the north east look at how they can better promote the differences their services make to people’s lives.

Angela said “These events take place at a time when services are facing cuts and growing numbers of vulnerable adults need support to speak up for themselves. We were fortunate to secure funding from Department of Health to develop a range of tools to support advocacy projects to better measure their outcomes and are delighted to share these with the wider advocacy community.”

Melanie Stephenson, the Support Services Manager for Alzheimer’s Society Gateshead, was one of the attendees and commented "I really appreciated the opportunity, as a manager, to meet with other advocacy services and share our experiences of the role of advocacy in personalisation, to discuss measuring advocacy outcomes and get some practical experience of working with the outcome star approach.”

Creative communication as an effective approach to advocacy

As part of the A Stronger Voice project, a number of advocates from across Gateshead and South Tyneside took part in a training day on 'creative communication' run by asist. Communication is at the heart of advocacy and can be both straightforward and frustrating.

We tried out a number of interesting tools and had a chance to reflect on case studies. The communication cards can be useful and include pictures and words of everyday events and choices. Why not develop your own tools by taking photographs and using pictures from magazines to build an understanding of what is important to the person you are working with. If you have come across interesting resources do let us know.