- Volunteers as advocates
- Volunteers in children protection
Dorset Advocacy Network provides services to people with learning disabilities, supporting them to speak up, protect their rights and be part of their local community.
The Supporting Parents Advocacy Network (SPAN) supports parents with learning disabilities with child protection issues, enabling them to keep their child and get the support they need to do so. Many people working in child protection are concerned that parents with learning disabilities are unable to care properly for their children and will consider that the best option for the child is to remove them from the parents and to put the child forward for adoption. SPAN works with parents to enable them to say what help they need and to enable child protection workers and others to engage more helpfully with the parents.
Referrals come from all sorts of people – mostly Social Services, but also health visitors, solicitors, CAB, other small organisations, and self-referrals. Some referrals are made during pregnancy, before the child is born, but sometimes the referral doesn’t come to SPAN until an adoption case is just about to go to the Family Court. Other parents manage well while the children are small but then find it difficult to cope when the children reach adolescence, which is another time when Social Services and others are likely to intervene.
Once a referral has been made, the co-ordinator makes sure that the individual parent knows that they’ve been referred, and meets with them to explain what the service is, that it’s there for them and is independent of any other authorities, and to see whether the parent wants to use the service. She then informs the referring agency that the individual has chosen to use the service and allocates an advocate according to the skills of the advocate, a judgement about how they will get on together, how much time the volunteer has, and locality to make it easy for the volunteer and parent to work together. The parent volunteer partnership is reviewed every six months, but where cases are very complex the co-ordinator will have much closer involvement.
Volunteers work with the parent and other professionals to enable the parent to identify what is difficult for them and what help they need, and for that to be said to the professionals for them to make changes to their work. Volunteers also accompany parents to court and support them through those processes, enabling them to say to their legal representatives what messages they want conveyed to the court, and to ensure that they understand what their solicitor is putting forward and that they are informed of choices they may have to make
Outcomes: a good outcome for a parent is that they feel they have been able to express all the support they need in keeping their child, and have been able to get that support. For a volunteer it’s likely to be that the parent has developed so much that they just have occasional phone contact with the volunteer for a bit of support and to be able to share good news. SPAN also continues to offer support to parents after their child has been taken into care but for some parents this is a reminder of a horrible time in their lives and they choose not to stay in touch.
Volunteers are recruited though leaflets in libraries and doctors surgeries, but mostly through newspaper advertising. They range in age from 21 to 80, are mostly women and some have no experience of advocacy before they start. They have to supply references and be CRB checked and undergo induction training over a period of four weeks which helps them decide if this kind of volunteering is for them. Some drop out at this point because either the advocacy role or the subject – child protection – is difficult for them. Once a volunteer has started they receive monthly supervision from the co-ordinator, as well as access to relevant external training and six-monthly group meetings for all the advocates. Volunteers are also involved in social events and the AGM. In the last year there have been 14 volunteer advocates, with another 6 volunteers helping with presentations, developing resources etc, and some of the parent volunteer partnerships can last for several years.
Further information
Debbie Harris
01305 251033
Debbie@dorsetadvocacy.co.uk
http://www.dorsetadvocacy.co.uk/
