Crisis Advocacy remains both extremely busy and exciting, with no day being the same. In the last 12 months the project has provided advocacy for and supported 71 individuals, well over twice the number envisaged when the project was first mooted. 

This has presented challenges for me personally, in balancing my role as the Advocacy Manager with that of being currently the main Crisis Advocate, I am indebted to colleagues, my predecessor Lorraine particularly and volunteers generally for providing invaluable advocacy and support for a number of people.

These both show the increasing demand for Crisis Advocacy and the fact that the organization provides a quality service that achieves results.
The increase in demand is for many, many reasons. I will, here, focus on one current and one future one. 

In recent years increasing numbers of people who are labeled as having learning disabilities have been exercising the right to a family life and having children. 

This is rightly supported by most organisations, including most Social Workers. However, experience and research shows that parents with learning disabilities need good quality support services - sadly lacking at present and without policies for this. 

As a result, many children are being removed from their families. In the last 12 months alone we have supported 9 individuals/couples in these situations and have in 5 cases helped via advocacy to keep the family together, and in 2 others supported fathers to have increased contact with their children.

The increase in individual budgets for people, who need support, is going to lead to many disputes in terms of people having enough money to cover their needs. 

We have already seen referrals relating to individual budgets, and there is a particular concern that people with severe disabilities may find it difficult to find appropriate services to support them in the future.

Something that is particularly pleasing is the increase in the number of people with learning disabilities who are contacting us themselves. This appears to be for a number of reasons, firstly the excellent leaflets and other publicity materials the production of which is led by Debbie, our Office Manager. 

With support from other staff and some services users Debbie will be exploring how to make these materials even more accessible. A recent survey of people with learning disabilities showed that between 50% and 60% had great difficulty in reading and writing. It is, therefore, crucial that we find new ways of communicating with people. One of the first steps has been to investigate the possibility of producing our publicity materials in different languages, to reflect the local diverse community.

Nick Barber

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