Kim Walsh, Author at Advocacy Focus

Your Time Is Now – by Justine Hodgkinson

April 8, 2022 11:51 am Comments Off

Today is International Women’s Day (IWD) and it looks – and feels – very different to last year when I was stood in front of a room full of amazing women, talking about legacy and what we leave behind as leaders, and as human beings. I am booked to attend a United Nations online event to celebrate IWD this year, but as good as I am sure it will be, it just won’t be the same as sitting in a room full of women, enjoying good food, good company and capitalising on great partnership opportunities. Because when women work together, amazing things happen. Sure we spend time talking about our children, pets, and the daily challenges we face as working mums, or carers to dependent relatives, but once that is done, we get down to business and make things happen.

I’ll be honest, I used to baulk a little at the thought of all women networking. Being a feminist I simply want what all people want, equality, so all women networks felt slightly uncomfortable at first. However, my mind was soon changed when I joined a Unique Ladies group for the first time and met so many amazing colleagues and embarked on so many fantastic opportunities. Maybe it’s because we do share a little more, we do open up about the trials and tribulations of home schooling during a pandemic, or the anxieties some of us may personally face or are witnessing within our teams – emotional intelligence front and centre in many of the conversations taking place. Real solutions to many of the challenges we all face over a brew and a virtual catch up.

So I began to reflect on this of late as we approached this important date in the calendar. I thought about the many people I have met, shared my life with and worked with over the last several decades. Interestingly, each time I think about this, great women come to mind. From my art teacher at school who said to me “you can’t really do art Justine, but my goodness you are a trier’, to the supervisor who firmly put a peer in his place by saying “don’t take Justine’s kindness as a form of weakness”, to my boss and friend Rosemary Clarke who said “family first Justine, always”, despite her absolute driven focus and passion to put books into the hands of families. My mum of course, who to this day is the voice in my head telling me “there is nothing you can’t do if you put your mind to it”. All great women, building each other up, paving the way and cheering each other on from the side-lines.

As a leader of an organisation whose workforce is primarily female, I am humbled everyday in how the team have “turned up” week after week during the pandemic. Women who have had to learn how to work from their living rooms or bedroom. Women who have had to supervise and motivate children to do their lessons and navigate online learning. Women who have lost precious family members or friends, attended their funerals, and returned to work and their role as keyworkers. Women I am proud and honoured to work alongside.

So whilst I sit and reflect on what it means to be a leader on IWD, it means remembering those that walked the path before me. The women I looked up to, learned from, admired, and loved. Of which there were, and are, too many to mention. I grew up in a very different world to the one now. I was told not to whistle, because little girls don’t do that. I was told to be more ladylike and to wear dresses instead of jeans. I was told I was a chatterbox and wouldn’t amount to much of anything by more than one person! Well just for the record, I do whistle (usually to round my dogs up), I wear jeans more than dresses to this day, and I am a Chief Executive of an amazing charity that is doing great things in the health and social care sector. And I got there with the support, guidance, and love of many great women – and possibly by being a bit of a trier!

Happy International Women’s Day 2021, to women and girls everywhere. Rise up and be the leaders you were born to be. Your time is now.

Sorry For Your Loss …

10:26 am Comments Off

Many of us know a thing or two about loss. As humans, if we are lucky, our relationship with death and loss often begins through the process of dispatching funfair goldfish or the family pet. A key lesson in life, is often one that shows us, that at some point, we all die. A ‘teachable moment’ as we grow from children to adults. The burying of a beloved cat or dog in our back garden etched into our memories as our first experience of loss. As we get older, those pets morph into grandparents, neighbours or friends and families gather to mourn, reminisce, and celebrate the life of the person that has died. Some people knowing exactly the right thing to say, and others crossing the road to avoid an awkward conversation. Death and loss are not an easy subject for many.

Fast forward to 2020 and a global pandemic. The rule book goes out of the window and communities across the globe suffer mass losses. But it’s not just about the loss of a loved one anymore. It’s far more complex than that. Since March, we have in one way or another, been in lockdown or under the government’s tier system. Lives have changed beyond recognition for so many of us, some for the better, some for much, much worse. The traditional workplace has gone for so many people, instead we now have many teams, working from home. People were placed on furlough, a word many of us hadn’t even heard before, and never returned to work. Redundancies and the trimming of organisations and office space was happening all around us. Relationships made or broken due to the enforced way of living; friendships ended due to divided opinions on the pandemic. Funerals and weddings of our most loved people were limited in number.

So we are not just grieving our dead and all those lives that have been taken directly or indirectly by the pandemic. We are grieving so much more. Our way of life, a job that we may have held since school, the fact that we cannot look into the eyes of those we hold most dear without a respectable social distance. Missing people that live outside of our tiers and relying on memories of time spent together in the past. Many of us grieving for loved ones locked away in care homes. Attending virtual funerals of close friends due to travel and attendance restrictions. Wedding plans postponed. Our Facebook memories reminding us of what our lives looked like before a virus shut us down. Lives paused, 2020 cancelled.

So once the dust settles and we move from lockdown into tiers again this week, we must acknowledge that we are grieving as a community. For the people we have lost and for other losses we have faced over the last 9 months. It is the only way to heal. There is hope on the horizon in the form of vaccines and a promise that life will begin to look like it once was, by Easter next year. Which is all good news and can give us hope. But for those that have lost people, pets, relationships, businesses, their mental health, let’s allow them to grieve and tell them how sorry we are for their loss, whatever their loss may be. We may have to wrap our arms around our communities in a virtual sense for now, but it is the only way to come through this collectively. Personally I take some solace from a personal favourite of mine, Winnie the Pooh. “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

This week is National Grief Awareness Week. A week where The Good Grief Trust bring all UK bereavement services, support organisations and helplines together to talk about and normalise grief. Early signposting and support for the bereaved and those working with them. A week where people are given the tools to help rebuild their lives. They are asking people to share their story to help others and to remind us that being socially distant doesn’t stop us from sharing our grief.

At Advocacy Focus we have remained open during the pandemic and continue to take referrals from people, or can signpost them on to the services they need at this current time. We have also developed a ‘Grief’ toolkit as part of our ‘Healthy Self’ series, which you can download here: https://www.advocacyfocus.org.uk/healthyself

Demonstrating our support for Dementia Awareness Week 14-20th May

9:34 am Comments Off

Dementia is set to be the 21st century’s biggest killer. But awareness and understanding remains low and many families are facing it alone.

To play our part the awareness week, we thought we would share how we help people living with dementia through our highly skilled advocacy service.

At Advocacy Focus, we have a vast experience of helping to give support and understanding and practical support to those living with dementia, and their families. We have 12 trained dementia friends and are in the process of training up a further 6 team members.

How Advocacy helped Mr Shaw from Lancashire

Our Independent Advocate Becci Jackson recently acted as a Paid Relevant Persons Representative (RPR) for an individual who was living in a care home with no friends or family.

Unfortunately, the individual was unhappy with being in the care home and would often pack his belongings and sit by the front door for long periods.

Becci visited the client every month and, as a result of working with the client over a period of time and building up a relationship, it was discovered that the client was not happy in the care home due to not being able to go out, and there being a lot of noise coming from the resident in the room next to him, meaning he could not sleep.

Taking the time to listen to the concerns of the individual meant that we could then help to address the specific concerns.

As is our duty as the person’s representative, we take our role very seriously and we worked closely with the care home staff and the person’s Legal Power of Attorney and as a result, he has been able to visit shops in the local area, garden centres, go for walks along the lake and go to the pub.

We also raised his concerns around the noise at night to staff in the care home and he was offered an alternative room in a quieter area of the home which he accepted.

Our client is now very happy in the care home, is able to maintain access to the local community, and feels his new room is “top notch”. This is just one example of how we can help people, even those living with dementia to have a better quality of life and achieve the things that matter to them.

To find out about how Advocacy can help you or someone you know, phone 0300 323 0965 or email admin@advocacyfocus.org.uk

To find out more about the Dementia Awareness Week, click here: https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/downloads/20167/dementia_awareness_week

Alzheimer’s Society have created a useful booklet which outlines 5 things that you need to know about dementia, download it here.https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/download/downloads/id/1739/5_things_you_should_know_about_dementia.pdf

Excellence secured at the Selnet Awards!

9:25 am Comments Off

Like Selnet, we believe that training is a crucial element of many Social Enterprises and this category recognises organisations that strive to ensure their staff or volunteers receive a high standard of training.

What judges looked for:

– Scale and relevance of training provision

– The improvement or difference this makes to participants

– Recognised quality of provision

Why we won:

Advocacy Focus prides itself on having high skilled and dedicated staff. We invest in our team as a whole including our Advocacy Managers and our Independent Advocates. It was our Volunteer training that particularly caught the eye of the judges for this award.

Our Volunteer Manager recruits, trains and mentors volunteers across Lancashire to add extra added value to our service, allowing us to provide additional support to those with ill mental health, who lack capacity or have learning or sensory disabilities.

The judges were impressed with the personal approach that Lauren takes for every volunteer to ensure that they achieve personal goals, as well as contributing to the organisation of the charity as a whole as our volunteer team includes our Peer Advocates who have experience of ill mental health themselves.

Lauren spends time individually mentoring each volunteer, alongside training them in a group setting. Each volunteer receives an Individual Learning Plan so that our Volunteer Manager can support them to achieve their goals such as gaining interview and employability skill and building confidence and self-esteem.

In addition, the comprehensive and rolling programme of training that our volunteers receive was also mentioned as a key reason for the award win and includes:

A Foundation Course in Advocacy
Self-Advocacy Training
How to make a Health and Social Care Complaint
Training around the Mental Health Act, Mental Capacity Act and Care Act in order to enable them to support members of the community.

Justine Hodgkinson, CEO of Advocacy Focus said, “Our nomination focused on the excellent work that Lauren has developed in her role and the strong induction, training and mentoring the volunteers receive as part of our team. It is phenomenal to receive this recognition for Lauren, the volunteers, our team and Advocacy Focus as a whole and it really demonstrates the important role that volunteers play here at Advocacy Focus.” To read more about the Selnet awards and winners of each category, visit http://selnet-uk.com/enterprise-in-society-awards-2017/

Pendle Hill conquered in aid of mental health and well-being

April 7, 2022 1:30 pm Comments Off

Why you ask, would we brave bumping into any remaining witches, so close to Halloween?

Well… we conquered the 360m ascent to help us reflect on the daily up-hill mountain that our services users often face and to raise money for us to extend our advocacy services to vulnerable individuals in the local community.

So, after a quick morning cup of coffee and with our friends from BNI Diamond Chapter, Preston, a team of 25 set off from the carpark in high spirits.

The going was fairly easy (at first) and we stopped to admire the view at Lower Ogden Reservoir.

At the impressive dam wall, we headed up the right hand side on a rough path to reach the Upper Ogden Reservoir. We followed this higher path through the valley and even crossed over the Boar Clough stream!

Following the marker stones for the route of the Pendle Way, after crossing the stream we turned right and ascended steeply north on the rough path up the shoulder of Boar Clough.

After a quick pit stop, our thoughts tuned to our ultimate end goal, ‘the summit of Pendle Hill’ known as Beacon End or Big End. We continued on (through the mud!) and reached the summit where we found an OS trig point pillar sat on an impressive circular stone cairn.

We were at a height of 557m above sea level and took in the spectacular view where apparently on clear day you can see the Peak District, Yorkshire Dales, Morecambe Bay, the Forest of Bowland and of course the sprawling Lancashire mill towns.

After congratulating ourselves on our achievement of reaching the top, we then realised that we were only in fact halfway! It was time for our rocky descent and headed for the picturesque village of Barley which was a great place to finish the walk.

Overall a brilliant experience and every one of us experienced highs and lows and then ultimately a great sense of achievement.

We thank everyone for their sponsorship. See you there next year???

Our Advocacy Service is classed as ‘Outstanding’ at the National Advocacy Awards 2016

1:21 pm Comments Off

The National Advocacy Awards celebrates outstanding people, organisations and practice in the field of Independent Advocacy. The ‘Outstanding Service’ category recognises services that are making a difference locally by providing creative and innovative ways of evolving their support. Katrina Kelly, Service Delivery Director at Advocacy Focus has always maintained that her committed team of Senior Advocates and Advocates is top class, but now the recognition at a national level and beating off stiff competition just goes to prove it.

Advocacy Focus’s winning strand of advocacy is based on our IMHA activities following the publication of ‘A Right to be Heard. We worked hard with our multi-agency partners to establish a new ‘opt out’ policy.

In addition to tackling the real life hurdles of Information Governance, Caldicott Policies, the relocation of 19 wards to one specialist unit, and amalgamating 6 different Mental Health Act Administrators ways of working, an opt out policy for automatic referral at the point of Section was finally introduced after a long period of dedication by the team. As a result of the initiative, IMHA referrals increased by over 400% in the first year and on average we continue to work with 268 detained patients per month.

In addition, our very own Advocate Leanne Barber was a shortlisted finalist and voted Highly Commended in the ‘Outstanding advocate’ category, which recognises people who truly make a difference to the world through their advocacy practice. Well done Leanne! The Awards Ceremony was held on October 12th in Birmingham, for more details, see http://www.advocacyawards.co.uk/

Jane’s experience of Advocacy Focus

12:52 pm Comments Off

My sister has had mental health problems since she had meningitis as a child and the two of us have always been inseparable. As she got older my sister had to live in care homes and that’s when I feel the problems started. I felt that the staff at the care home where my sister was living were mistreating her and actually putting her in danger. I had a social worker at the time but she always seemed to be on the side of the care home staff and I thought allowed them to get away with treating my sister really badly.

I got in touch with Advocacy Focus because I had heard about advocacy and they have been an absolute lifeline for me and my sister – nothing is too much trouble for them. They came with me when I had to attend meetings between social services and the care home and helped me to understand what was going on and to put my point across. When I’ve had to write letters trying to support my sister, my advocate helped me to say things clearly and get the message over.

They really have been on my side all along the way and have helped me to get things sorted. At one point I was banned from seeing my sister for 9 months at the care home and that broke my heart, but Advocacy Focus helped me to get that sorted out.

They have helped me in so many ways over the years, I really couldn’t have managed without them.”

* the person’s name has been changed in order to protect her identity

Demonstrating our support for Dementia Awareness Week

12:37 pm Comments Off

Dementia is set to be the 21st century’s biggest killer. But awareness and understanding remains low and many families are facing it alone.

To play our part the awareness week, we thought we would share how we help people living with dementia through our highly skilled advocacy service.

Dementia is set to be the 21st century’s biggest killer. But awareness and understanding remains low and many families are facing it alone.

To play our part the awareness week, we thought we would share how we help people living with dementia through our highly skilled advocacy service.

How Advocacy helped Leonard*

Our Independent Advocate Becci recently acted as a Paid Relevant Persons Representative (RPR) for an individual who was living in a care home with no friends or family.

Unfortunately, the Leonard was unhappy with being in the care home and would often pack his belongings and sit by the front door for long periods.

Becci visited him every month and, as a result of working with the client over a period of time and building up a relationship, it was discovered that the client was not happy in the care home due to not being able to go out, and there being a lot of noise coming from the resident in the room next to him, meaning he could not sleep.

Taking the time to listen to Leonard’s concerns meant that we could then help to address the specific concerns.

We also raised Leonard’s concerns around the noise at night to staff in the care home and he was offered an alternative room in a quieter area of the home which he accepted.

Leonard is now very happy in the care home, is able to maintain access to the local community, and feels his new room is “top notch”. This is just one example of how we can help people, even those living with dementia to have a better quality of life and achieve the things that matter to them.

To find out about how Advocacy can help you or someone you know, phone 0300 323 0965 or email admin@advocacyfocus.org.uk

Author Archives: Kim Walsh

How Advocacy helped Leonard*