Care Act Advocacy

Care Act Advocacy is there to help people who may struggle to understand or say what support they need and have no one such as a family member or close friend to help them with decisions about their care.

You have to have ‘substantial difficulty’ to be eligible for a care act advocate. This means the person needs to have difficulty understanding, weighing up ,retaining or communicating information around the social care process that is being undertaken.

This includes people who have been assessed as lacking mental capacity to make decisions; in these cases, a Care Act Advocate may use a non-instructed advocacy approach to help put forward the client’s views and wishes. This means they have to look at other ways to gain information about what the person would want. For example consulting notes, speaking to people who know the person best and making sure the law is upheld.

If you are going through a needs assessment, review, care planning, carer’s assessment or safeguarding processes, then you may be able to have a Care Act Advocate.

Referrals for Care Act advocacy (CAA) should be made by social care professionals who work in the local authority. This is stated in the Care Act. This would be someone who is assessing or reviewing care or conducting a safeguarding process for an individual who they judge as having substantial difficulty being involved in the process and where there is no other appropriate person to support them to be involved.

 If you are a health professional involved in safeguarding, you can ask the allocated safeguarding worker to make a referral on your behalf.

What do we do-

Social care processes we may be able to provide a care act advocate for:

• Needs assessment
• Review
• Care planning
• Carer’s assessment
• Safeguarding processes

A Care Act Advocate is there to help people who may struggle to understand or express what support they need and have no one else to support them with decisions about their care.

We can support you through the process with your social worker. If you are in a hospital or mental health unit and you are being safeguarded, or you are safeguarding someone, you may also be entitled to a care act advocate but as above the referral has to be made by the local authority.