Overview

• Advocacy is acting, speaking or writing to promote and protect a vulnerable person's human rights and welfare. 
• We are fortunate to have advocacy services for our clients, particularly those requiring aged care or living with disabilities.  
• Advocacy services are available in aged care through the National Aged Care Agency Program (NACAP)
• Funding by the NDIS is the National Disability Advocacy Program (NDAP), which ensures there is no cost for these clients to access advocacy services. 

• Individual - one-on-one advocacy aimed to prevent or address instances of discrimination or abuse of a client
• Systemic - advocacy to influence or secure long-term changes to ensure the collective rights and interests of clients
• Family - when a parent or family member advocates with and on behalf of a family member 
• Citizen - where community volunteers advocate for a client over the long term, supported by a citizen advocacy organisation
• Legal - where a lawyer provides legal representation, pursues positive changes to legislation or gives legal advice to clients about discrimination and human rights.

• provide direct advocacy on behalf of a person
• provide information and advice so a person can advocate for themselves (e.g. deal with a landlord, go to court, deal with the police, get legal advice, negotiate deals, deal with problems at work or education, deal with guardianship and financial matters)
• connect a client to relevant services, e.g. solicitor
• help a client work through problems
• help a client take formal actions on matters, e.g., make a complaint with the anti-discrimination board.

• provide counselling
• make decisions for another person
• provide mediation
• provide case management.

• to all our services 
• to all HWH representatives involved in providing services, including the leadership team and Home Support Workers.

• Disability Discrimination Act (1992) Cth
• National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (Cth)
• Advocacy (Accessible)
• Request for Advocate 

Policy

• upon commencing services, our clients are informed of the role of advocates, their right to use advocates and advocacy services, and how to contact and involve advocacy agencies 
• our clients are supported if they choose to self-advocate, change advocates, or withdraw their authority for an advocate
• if a client needs an advocate and a family or carer cannot provide it, we will attempt to introduce an advocate chosen by the client
• we will provide a mechanism for clients to request an advocate and assist in managing the process through to a successful outcome
• if a client requests one of our workers to be an advocate, their authority to act is recorded along with the issues important to the client and their goals
• we will work with the advocate chosen by our client and involve the advocate in all areas of the client's service planning and decision-making
• whenever an advocate assists a client, it will be documented.