Advocacy in practice: Who Advocates for the Advocates?

Abstract

Advocacy has been defined as promoting social inclusion, equality and social justice to empower people - principles closely associated with social work's professional values. However, in-depth literature on advocacy and the current challenges it faces is sparse. Little is known about the day-to-day realities faced by advocates and the pressures they currently experience. This raises the question of who might advocate for the advocates themselves? This article reports on findings from a larger study to explore local recruitment and retention issues in adult social care from the perspective of different populations of interest in the South of England. A mixed methods approach was undertaken. One group of participants were advocates drawn from LA contracted services (n=7) who participated in a focus group. Comments relating to the challenges facing advocacy and knock-on impacts on advocates from the recruitment and retention issues currently being experienced in adult social care were themed together and are described. The findings highlight a number of challenges currently facing advocacy and advocates alongside an urgent need for more research to take place within this area. The authors also offer suggestions for consideration to help improve this picture.