Paper
Mapping the impact of children’s advocacy services
- issue: Issue 3 / 2009
- authors: Andrew Pithouse
- keywords: children’s perspectives, organisations, complaints, advocacy
- views: 3966
- downloaded: 0
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abstract
Background
The presentation will set out key results from a Welsh Government funded study in 2005/7 of complaints against local authority social services involving vulnerable children, particularly those looked after and their use of advocacy services in Wales.
This is the first study of its kind in Wales and reveals important insights into the way vulnerable children and public service providers view advocacy and the ways in which advocacy is delivered. Nearly two decades of research, reports and policy on child abuse and child safeguarding have made children's advocacy a government imperative driving the growth of an independent advocacy sector in Wales. This paper focuses on this rarely-researched organisational world of advocacy.
Key findings are presented from research which sought to explore the evidence base around advocacy interventions by (a) focus groups and interviews with children as users of advocacy (b) a nation-wide survey on children's involvement in leading complaints against local authorities about their care (c) data on advocacy activity and its delivery in a competitive system of local authority commissioning.
The presentation will conclude with reference to the policy response of the Welsh Assembly Government to the study. New government policy now envisages a more regionally-based multi-agency commissioning approach to advocacy in order to create more independence for advocacy in order to better promote the voice and wishes of vulnerable children and children more generally.
The research questions
- What are the types and activities of children's advocacy services across Wales funded by local authorities?
- What evidence is there for the involvement of advocacy services in complaints by children against local authorities?
- How do children and young people understand their experience of advocacy?
- What operational and strategic challenges stem from current provision and policy?
Methods
A multi-method qualitative and quantitative exploratory design was used to capture organisational activity and perceptions of multiple participants in advocacy services. The samples and methods comprised:
- A national questionnaire survey of all 22 local authorities in Wales about their commissioning of advocacy, operational relationships with advocacy, number of complaints brought by or on behalf of children in previous 12 months, involvement of advocacy in these complaints.
- A questionnaire survey of all children's advocacy services commissioned by the 22 local authorities about their organisational model and activities.
- Focus groups and semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 70 children and young people drawn from different vulnerability contexts (e.g., care, disability, poverty, refugee, ethnicity, sexuality) most of whom had used advocacy in last 12 months.
- Semi structured interviews with a purposive sample (n=28) of young people who had made complaints to local authorities about their care in the last 12 months.
- Structured interviews with all local authority staff responsible for commissioning and/or liaison with advocacy services (typically local authority children's complaints officers).
- Structured interviews with all managers of advocacy services commissioned by the 22 local authorities.
- Secondary sources (e.g., organisational memoranda, agreements and contracts, annual reports, activity / monitoring data).
Main findings
Children and young people overwhelmingly viewed advocacy positively, irrespective of its organisational shape or location. They revealed much of the 'emotional work' that underlies advocacy in detailed accounts and expectations of the 'good advocate'.
Local authorities were ambivalent about advocacy, viewing it as valuable mainly to the child rather than to service outcomes or decision making. Some thought advocates were unrealistic and 'pro-complaints' rather than collegial and moderating in their influence upon children. Much depended upon local authority culture as to whether advocacy was seen as a threat or an opportunity to meet the child's needs. Most complaints brought by children revealed little involvement of advocacy services.
Advocacy providers viewed their role as compromised by reliance upon local authority funding which they believed undercut their independence. Most considered their funding insufficient for the purposes of providing a mainly case-based service that sometimes failed to engage effectively with a diaspora of hard-to-reach children (e.g. in foster care, in respite care [disabled children] or in special residential placements far away).
The need for (a) a country-wide reform of advocacy commissioning and (b) a new strategic integrated approach to children's advocacy, participation and rights was a prominent conclusion of the study and accepted by government in Wales.
Key references
Dalrymple, J. (2003) 'Professional advocacy as a force for resistance in child welfare.' British Journal of Social Work 33, 5, 1043-1062.
Pithouse, A. and Parry, O. (2005) 'Children's advocacy in Wales - organisational challenges for those who commission and deliver advocacy for children who are looked after.' Journal of Adoption and Fostering 29, 4, 45-56.
Pithouse, A. and Crowley, A. (2007) 'Adults Rule? Children, advocacy, and complaints to social services,' Children and Society 21, 3, 201-214