The
Advocate provided me with
all the help I needed and took a great deal of weight off my shoulders.
I felt
a great reward of thanks was due.”
Anonymous
comment from a Service
User (from a returned questionnaire)
As
predicted
our overall referral
numbers for the current year demonstrates a decrease in service user
take-up.
The changes in criteria and the monitoring template introduced in the
new
Service Level Agreement last year have had an impact on the collection
of this
data. Following our instructions, we no longer close a referral until
there is
an outcome achieved and in the specific case of DWP benefits appeals,
the wait
now can take over 6 months until a case is decided. This somewhat
distorts our
‘open’ work as these referrals only return to
activity close to the time when
the submissions or meetings are to be held!
Although
there
has been and no doubt
will continue to be much discussion regarding whether professional
(formal)
advocacy has a role to play in assisting mental health service users in
the
pursuit of their rightful financial benefits, I fail to understand how
advocacy
representation in this area would not be viewed as substantially
assisting
service users into a world of ‘social inclusion’,
which is currently accepted
as the goal in all mental health recovery practice. People who have
been
seriously mentally ill require the care of those who understand and can
professionally support them. At a meeting in London last year of all
the
interested advocacy agencies the consensus was how significant Benefits
support
remains for people who are attempting to remain ‘mentally
well’. I am therefore
delighted that MAPME has generated a ‘funding cost’
of approximately 1/7th of
the
overall
Benefits sum total that it has helped
to successfully generate for clients. This cost does not allow for all
the
other work that we also provide, which in turn reduces even further the
actual
‘spend’ on our services for Benefits. This is an
astonishing achievement.
When
we
compare the proportion of
community office advocacy, the district with the highest number of
referrals is
WBH (Witham, Braintree and Halstead). This district has the greatest
proportion of advocacy
support
and the recent arrangements to deploy an advocate every 4 weeks to the
new location
of The Coach House in Halstead, where the Community Mental Health team
is
based, is proving successful. The WBH district has additional financial
support
not from Joint Mental Health Commissioning but from Partnership funding
for
that district which enables additional support hours weekly. In this
year it
grew by a take-up of 6% to account for 40% of all locality referral
work,
eclipsing Chelmsford which accounted for 34%. The additional service
hours really do make a
difference and I wish additional funding could be sourced for at least
the Chelmsford district where
need is very great and where we do not fully meet demand. Funding from
Chelmsford Borough Council has proved in the past to be unsuccessful.
I
would like to
comment on the
continued professionalism and dedication of all members of the Advocacy
team.
We have three MAPME advocates in our team since Tony Moynihan left due
to
health reasons. Sandra Brush and Barbara Horsley have recently been
joined by
Marjorie Neal replacing Jackie Farrow who has moved on after a year.
The
commitment and continued team work are a result of hard work and
determined
intent. The entire team including our part-time administration officer
Brenda
Yardley and project management from myself all hold a strong belief in
the need
for mental health advocacy. We view our model as an improved pathway to
recovery
and normalisation for the hundreds of service users who chose to ask
for our
support either directly or who were referred through other professional
workers. Whatever changes may lie ahead, this has been a year of
successful
outcomes for our project.
Myra
Houlding
