Specialist Inpatient Advocate 22.5 Hours

Length of contract: 12 months fixed Term (Subject to the continuance of funding)
Salary: £22,571 – £26,975 per annum 
Hours: 22.5 hours

Based: Lancashire and South Cumbria

Our Mission
We help people to achieve the outcomes that matter to them in their lives, by providing high-quality advocacy.

Purpose of role

The role of the Specialist Inpatient Advocate will be to provide support to individuals of all ages within mental health inpatient settings, ensuring people have a voice in decisions affecting their life, whilst helping them to understand their rights. The role will require the post holder to promote self-advocacy and empowerment and enable people to make informed decisions and get their views heard in matters relating to mental health and/or care and support needs within these settings. This will be through one-to-one advocacy and other models of advocacy as required. This activity will include working with people of all ages, people with mental health needs but specifically with people with Autism.

The post holder will also be required to confidently triage eligible and non-eligible referrals and making necessary contact to referrer/advocacy people where further clarification is needed. Where a case is not eligible, the post holder will be signposting the individual to other relevant services that can aid.

Key tasks

• To manage a client caseload and ensure accurate case management and record keeping
• To remain independent from all other services, ensuring you are representing the person using the service only.
• Carry out advocacy duties in line with the QPM (Quality Performance Mark)
• Provide a person led and outcome focused advocacy service for the people we support
• Communicate with the person via phone, face to face, or virtually to explore what issues they would like support with
• Research and find out information for the person and help them to understand any information
• Work with other partners to ensure you are able to fairly represent the individual
• To support people to self-advocate (to articulate their own views wherever possible) or to speak on behalf of the person when requested to
• Promote the rights, equality, diversity and needs of the person by ensuring they are respected and valued as individuals
• Ensure that people have access to information that is presented in an appropriate manner for their individual needs, e.g. Easy Read documents.
• Promote self-advocacy through partnership working, encouraging the person to have maximum involvement in their case, where appropriate.
• Triaging referrals to the service and having discussions with partners and professionals where necessary.
• To support with survey and evaluation of peoples experiences of inpatient settings and produce high level reports.

You can download the role description, equal opportunities monitoring form and privacy notice below:

• Advocacy Focus Specialist Inpatient Advocate Role Description
• Advocacy Focus Diversity Monitoring Form
• Advocacy Focus Privacy Notice

Please send a copy of your CV, Privacy Policy & Equal Opportunity Monitoring Forms to HR@advocacyfocus.org.uk to be considered for this role.

Alternatively, you can post this to us at Advocacy Focus, First Floor, The Old Tannery, Eastgate, Accrington, Lancashire BB5 6PW.

Please note that the salary advertised is for full-time hours. If this post is less than 37 hours per week, the salary will be pro-rata.

This vacancy will close when sufficient applications have been received.  Therefore it is advised to complete your application as early as possible to avoid disappointment.

Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply regularly as we will use this to contact you regarding your application.

Please note, that shortlisting is completed anonymously with candidates being assessed against the essential criteria for the post.  Therefore only persons who can clearly demonstrate how they meet our person specification criteria in their application will be short-listed.

Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply regularly as we will use this to contact you regarding your application.

Advocacy Focus is committed to fighting racism and other forms of oppression and discrimination. We want to be a great employer for all our staff, regardless of their background or characteristics. We recognise that not everyone is the same and that different people will require different support to fulfill their potential. One thing we can do to work towards that goal is to ensure that our staff team is representative of the diverse communities across our service delivery areas. We particularly encourage applications from men, members of the LGBTQ+ community, those living with a physical or mental disability, and those from an ethnic minority background. 

Reasonable Adjustments: Support is available to candidates with disabilities when applying for vacancies. For more information on reasonable adjustments please contact our Recruitment Team by any of the following methods: 

By telephone 01254 958940

or email hr@advocacyfocus.org.uk 

or write to HR Team, Advocacy Focus, The Old Tannery, Eastgate, Accrington, BB5 6PW