What is advocacy?

A free, confidential service for people with learning disabilities working to:

• Give people the opportunity to express meaningful choices in their lives
• Ensure that individual wishes and preferences are not only recognised but acted upon
• State the case for those who would like it
• Give people the opportunity to be treated equally
• Include people
• Recognise the unique contribution that everyone makes

Advocacy adds weight to people's views, concerns, rights and aspirations.

Pembrokeshire Advocacy is a charitable organization which provides an independent advocacy service to adults with a learning disability in Pembrokeshire. Advocacy is a process which helps to empower the individual to assist them in taking control of decisions affecting their own lives. The service is confidential and free to individuals who either self refer or who are referred to us through other agencies.

Pembrokeshire Advocacy adheres to the Code of Practice for Advocates (Action for Advocacy) which states: “Advocacy is taking action to help people say what they want, secure their rights, represent their interests and obtain the services they need. Advocate and advocacy schemes work in partnership with the people they support and take their side. Advocacy promotes social inclusion, equality and social justice.”

One of the key findings in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s study Our Lives Our Communities - August 2007 found that ‘the more choices were available to people with learning disabilities, the more likely they were to be included in their local communities’. Giving choices to a marginalized group in society is one of Pembrokeshire Advocacy’s guiding principles.

Many of our clients live in the most deprived areas of Pembrokeshire and therefore face the double disadvantage of disability and deprivation.