OSTAS Annual Report 2009 - 2010
Introduction
This has been another busy year for OSTAS. We have managed to sustain the same number of partnerships alongside a substantial amount of statutory work. The arrival of a new volunteer coordinator/administrator should enable us to recruit more volunteers over the next year, which in turn will mean we can set up more advocacy partnerships.
Summary of Activity
229 new enquiries
103 new advocacy partnerships
New Enquiries and partnerships
We received 229 new enquiries about OSTAS this year. Of these 103 developed into advocacy partnerships, compared to 102 last year. We gave information or signposted onto another service to a further 70. See Chart 1. This was a very similar number to last year and reflects the fact that a major part of our role is supporting people to access appropriate services. There were slightly more people this year for whom we had no available advocate to meet them at the right time. This may reflect the fact that we have been asked a lot for support at specific meetings, such as medical assessments for incapacity benefit or employment and support allowance, often with very little advance notice. We do try to ask people to give as much warning as possible so we can match them up with a suitable volunteer.
The client groups making enquiries with were much the same as last year. See Chart 2. The two main groups were mental health and older people. We have also had enquiries from a larger number of parents/family/carers. These are very often about older relatives needing a higher level of care and considering whether they have to move to a care home.
Out of the total 229 enquiries, 69 of them referred themselves. Out of those referrals made by someone else, 68 came from the statutory sector and 45 from the voluntary sector. See Chart 3 Moreover of those who approached us direct, 28 had heard about us from someone in the statutory sector and 49 from a voluntary sector worker. This demonstrates how important it is to keep getting information out to our partners in Oxfordshire to support them to spread the word about advocacy.
The issues were as usual very diverse with 21% relating to housing issues and 16% relating to a legal problem. See chart 4. We have had several requests for support at court hearings. These can create difficulties as they can take up a lot of time and it is not always clear as to whether there is a clear advocacy role or whether it is more to do with providing moral support in a threatening environment.
In terms of the 102 partnerships that we set up this year, 50% of them were based in Oxford City. The next biggest area was 22% of them in West Oxfordshire. This may reflect the fact that we have done a lot of work with MIND in Carterton and Witney. It seems that we support fewer people South Oxfordshire. In order to redress this imbalance one of our targets for the year is to focus our publicity on the South of the County. The range of issues and client groups within partnerships is very much in line with the numbers for enquiries, with legal and housing matters as the most common.
At the year end we carried out a feedback exercise asking all the partners from last year how they felt about the advocacy they received. As we write this report we are still collating replies. We will then analyse the results and in response hope to look at ways of improving our services.
Volunteers
Once again our volunteers have a played a crucial role in providing advocacy across the county. Out of the 103 new partnerships, 45 of them were undertaken by volunteers. The coordinators carried out the advocacy in all the others. For the first time this year we have asked volunteers to keep a log of the time they have spent on working for Oxfordshire Advocacy. So far it looks as though they have put in over 1000 hours for us over the last year. To date, we have not divided it by work on different schemes but certainly the work that they do for OSTAS enables us to provide advocacy for far more people across the county than we could possibly reach on our own. Now that we have a volunteer coordinator/administrator in place we can concentrate on how to maximise our use of volunteers. One of the things we would like to see improved over the next year is the integration of our volunteer database with the OSTAS database.. This should allow us to make sure that we can use the volunteers’ time more effectively and make it easier to keep track of what they are doing for OA at any moment. We have also started carrying out Annual Reviews with all our advocates which gives us valuable feedback on the work they do but also gives volunteers a sense of recognition of the substantial contribution they make to OA and also encourage them to try out working for one of the other OA schemes.
Publicity
This year we have focussed on making sure that government agencies working around Oxfordshire know about OSTAS. We have been in contact with the medical assessment centre at St Aldates and the DWP interview centre in Botley and although we have been in touch with Job centre plus previously we are now going to revisit to make sure that current staff are aware of how we can support their clients. We have also done presentations about our work to various voluntary agencies such as Citizens Advice Bureaux (Thame), the Refugee Project and Mind, and been involved in a joint seminar with the Oxfordshire Equality and Human Rights Commission - OEHRC. This aimed to promote advocacy among ethnic minorities.
Through various requests to support people through the court process, it has become apparent that as funds for legal aid are increasingly difficult to access, many people feel completely intimidated by the prospect of appearing in court. We have explored the role of a “MacKenzie friend” which recognizes the right of a defendant or witness to have a “friend” attending the court with him/her. However as suggested above it can be a very time consuming process and it is often not possible to find an advocate with time to do this. This coming year we intend to discuss with the Oxford courts how to explore ways we might be able to support people to attend court. This should benefit both the individual and also the court system which is keen to make sure that people are able to do whatever is asked of them - whether as witness or defendant.
For the last two years, OA has benefited from the increase of information about advocacy that surrounded the launch of the IMCA service with the spin- off that more professionals are becoming aware of the general importance of the advocacy role even outside the Mental Capacity Act. This year we have been further involved in promoting advocacy as part of the campaign to inform people about the revisions to the Mental Health Act and the new role of Independent Mental Health Advocate. In the process of taking referrals for these two services we often find that the referral is not actually eligible for a statutory advocate and that a referral for general advocacy has to be made instead. Most significantly, Care Managers generally seem to more aware of the work of OA. However as it is now over 2 years since the launch of the IMCA publicity campaign, we are going to refocus OSTAS publicity on Health and Social Care departments particularly in the South of the county where referrals have slowed down somewhat.
Case Studies
1. Sheila (not real name) asked for an advocate to support her with writing to her housing association. She suffers from chronic depression and sometimes needs medication for this.
Sheila felt that she wasn’t being listened to when she wanted to ask for some help with noise in her bedroom that was coming from her next door neighbours. It seemed as if this noise transference had become an issue that was now impacting on Sheila’s health and well-being.
Various attempts of polite letter writing and a meeting resulted in no action. She was also advised by the housing association that there was not enough money in the budget to install sound insulation for the property.
Sheila did not accept this response and then asked the advocate to support her in making a formal complaint. Several months later and with further meetings, there was a third stage panel meeting. The outcome for Sheila was still unsatisfactory, with her feeling that excuses were being made and that the goal posts were being moved despite all her cooperation with gathering her evidence.
Sheila has now decided to take her case to the ombudsman and has asked OA to support her. The start date for this parnership began in September 2008.
2.Gemma suddenly became ill and was admitted to hospital while she was on a short break.. She could not be transferred to her own county hospital for treatment due to a shortage of beds crisis.
Gemma has her own property, but has recently made it a deed of gift to her son and his family. Meanwhile Gemma lives in an adjacent annexe that she had built especially for her, so she is in close quarters to her son and grandchildren.
Due to Gemma’s illness she can no longer live independently in her annexe and has asked the family if they will take her in. The family have refused, giving reasons that are unacceptable to Gemma.
Gemma doesn’t want to involve the family solicitor at the moment, nor does she want to involve the local mediation service as she feels this will be yet another service that she has to explain her situation to.
Gemma has asked for an advocate to speak up for her at a forthcoming case conference, to ensure she gets her views and wishes heard.
She doesn’t want a falling out with the family and worries that she may not be able to see her grandchilderen, and she is worried about losing her home.
3. Jane who has recently seprated from her partner had to attend a court hearing over custody of and access to her two year old daughter. She had been awarded legal aid but felt that her solicitor did not take her seriously. An advocate met her at court on the morning of the hearing. She was already in a meeting with the solicitor and a barrister and communication was not going well. The solicitor questioned why she needed an advocate at all as she had legal aid. They agreed the advocate should stay. By the end of the meeting communication was going much better and Jane felt that they did now understand her concerns. She had wanted the advocate to go into court with her as well. However the solicitor said that the court would not allow it as it was a family court with particular rules aobut confidentiality. Moreover the advocate did not have time to wait until they were likely to be called – possibly several hours later. In the event Jane was quite happy to go in on her own as she felt that the solicitor now understood her concerns.
4. Dave is subject to a standard authorisation of Deprivation of Liberty. He has a relevant person’s representative (RPR) supporting him on a regular basis to ensure that the conditions of the authorisation are being met. This means that Dave’s health and welfare needs are being fulfilled.
On one occasion Dave asked his RPR to help him write a letter of complaint about a previous care home. The RPR contacted Oxfordshire Advocacy and requested a generic advocate to help Dave to write his letter, as this issue was not within the RPR’s remit.
OSTAS were able to allocate an advocate so Dave could make his complaint.
Targets for 2010/11
- Continue to achieve new enquiries and set up new partnerships across the county of Oxfordshire
- Focus publicity in the south of the county to ensure that as many people as possible are aware of our services
- Analyse the results of the feedback exercise and make any changes necessary to improve the service
- Work with jobcentres across Oxfordshire to increase awareness of advocacy among their users
- Make contact with Oxford court service to consider how OA can support people within the court system but with no access to legal aid.
- Look at ways of integrating the OSTAS database with the Volunteers database to maximise our use of volunteers.
Yanina Carling
Naomi Karslake 20 May 2010 |
