n-compass advocacy services
‘Your Voice, Your Choice’
n-compass Advocacy Service exists to support people to take action and to speak up for themselves, their rights and wishes, in order to obtain the services they need and so improving their quality of life.
Where do we work?
Our projects operate throughout the County of Lancashire and surrounding areas. For further information please contact us.
What do advocates do?
We are dedicated to ensuring:
- Your views are heard
- Your opinions are valued and respected
- You understand your rights and are able to exercise them
- You feel able to speak up for yourself whenever possible
An advocate will support someone to:
- Work with health and social care staff
- Access services
- Understand available options and make decisions
- Understand rights
- Write letters and make phone calls
- Prepare for and attend meetings
How do we support people?
The majority of our work is ‘instructed advocacy’ which means that our clients tell us what they would like our support with and we work with them to discuss their options. We will then support them to exercise their choice if they wish for us to do so.
There are three main ways we will work with people:
‘Self Advocacy’
This is when a client will speak for themselves, and an advocate will support them to prepare for any meetings. We encourage our clients to ‘self advocate’ whenever possible.
‘Speaking Together’
This is when a client and their advocate will work together jointly on an issue. The advocate will support the client to take as much action as they can on their own.
‘Speaking for you’
In certain circumstances and advocate may speak on behalf of a client. We would only do this when asked to by our clients and as a last resort as we aim to empower our clients to speak for themselves whenever possible.
Who are we supported by?
In order for us to remain independent, n-compass Advocacy services secure funding from a variety of different sources.
Quality Marks
n-compass Advocacy Service is one of only a few advocacy services nationally to have been awarded the Quality Performance Mark (QPM) for Advocacy, from Action for Advocacy a national support service for Advocacy Schemes.
Further information on the QPM can be found here