• Advocacy about discriminatory attitudes and unfavourable treatment
•  Advocacy and not making reasonable adjustment
•  Advocacy about access to appropriate support
•  Advocacy about communication
•  Advocacy about bullying and hate crime
•  Advocacy to obtain specialist equipment
•  Advocacy about safeguarding
•  Advocacy at looked after care reviews
•  Advocacy about inclusion in community
•  Advocacy about education
•  Advocacy about transition arrangements
•  Advocacy about denial of treatment
•  Advocacy about parent separation
•  Advocacy about care arrangements and care planning

• Independent advocacy service to disabled children and young people who reside in local authority care on behalf of Birmingham City Council Children’s Rights Service

• Independent Children’s Rights visitor on behalf of Focal Childcare for with disabled children and young people who reside in their care

• Mentoring and facilitating the development of person centred plans with disabled children and young people and people around them

• Facilitation of group advocacy and training young disabled people  

• Advocacy can support you to achieve every child matters outcomes for disabled children and young people
• Advocacy can support you to show how you have listened to children and invlolved them in decision making and thier lives
• Advocates have increased capacity to spend time with young people on a regular basis
• Advocates assist in facilitating communication and interaction methods between professionals and the children, so that you can involve them in making choices and decisions
• Advocacy can reduce demand on your services by supporting the child to resolve the issues that affect thier lives
• Advocacy can alert professionals to issues that are affecting the child and observe childrens rights from an independent perspective
• The relationship that an advocate builds can support you with difficult and complex issues such as transistion, child protection and safeguarding

The Need for Advocacy:

·        Lack of advocacy provision that caters for the rights, needs and wishes of disabled children and young people

·        Lack of specialist trained advocates who are appropriately skilled, experienced and qualified in advocating with disabled children and young people

·        Lack of advocacy provision for disabled children and young people especially with Severe, Profound and Complex Disabilities

·        Underrepresentation and marginalisation of disabled children’s voices in decision making about issues that affect them

·        High level of need for advocacy for Looked After Children, Education, Access to Social Play and Leisure

·        Lack of advocacy that maintains the importance of independence which is distanced structurally distanced from care providers

·        High frequency of referrals received from local authorities for looked after disabled children, children in school, out of school provision,

·        Lack of training, policy, support and guidance in the area of advocacy with disabled children and young people

Independent

-        We are an independent advocacy  organisation who works positively and responsively to the requirements and direction of disabled children and young people

Specialist

-        We specialise in working with disabled children and young people especially with Severe, Profound and Complex Disabilities

-        We provide quality support to the advocates so that they can support disabled children and young people to obtain their rights

Holistic

-        We use a range of advocacy methods that are tailored to enable the person to participate as much as possible. These include directive, non directive, representative approaches.

-        We facilitate visiting advocacy, self advocacy, collective advocacy, peer and group advocacy

-        We encourage the development of responsive services that actively listen to and involve disabled children and young people

-        We support disabled children and young people to express in powerful and cathartic ways; using creative methods and approaches

Innovative

-        We provide extensive valuable resources to support advocacy with disabled children and young people