The People’s Care Watchdog has provided free independent advocacy for as many families as we could over the last 3 years but there is a vast need for more independent advocacy.

The unmet advocacy need across the country reflects serious failings in the current way local authorities commission advocacy services. We are attempting to tackle these failings through our strategic change plans but change will be slow. For example, there is evidently a lot of re-training that needs to happen across advocacy services and nationwide commissioning practices need revising.

Without ethically and legally competent advocacy provision that recognises the failings across the care home sector, thousands of individuals and their families are suffering injustices and harm. It is impossible to get any urgent results through the UK legal system, however, we have a history of creating meaningful results for care home families. Therefore, we want to significantly increase our advocacy provision with plans for an initial three-year nationwide advocacy service.

The PCW advocacy project will be led by a legal professional and a social work professional, who will use the initial three-year funding to not only continue delivering advocacy results for families but to also train volunteers and peer-to-peer advocates. They will also create a wealth of self-help information resources for families trying to navigate the system. During the initial funding period, we will also develop mechanisms to enable the project to become self-sustaining after the three-year period. We expect to be able to do this through minimal service charges paid by the families who can afford the cost and paid training offered to professionals.