Were calling on our supporters to help us fund an advocacy service across South Wales, to ensure people with mental health illness that do not meet the statutory eligibility criteria can still have access to an advocate.

ASC currently provides Independent Mental Health Advocacy, Independent Mental Capacity Advocacy and Community Mental Health Advocacy across health boards in South Wales. However, the advocacy service we provide has strict eligibility criteria set by the Welsh Government. Our funding only allows us to provide independent advocacy for those individuals who meet the criteria.

Unfortunately, this means that ASC receives a considerable number of calls and referrals from people that we cannot help, even though they have a clear need for advocacy support. Last year, ASC recorded at least 140 unmet needs that is, 140 people who needed help, that we could not help due to our funding restrictions.

There is a clear need for advocacy support for those who are being treated or assessed for mental health reasons within primary care. In many instances, people cant get help with their mental health; perhaps their GP wont progress with an assessment or maybe they have failed an assessment with a Community Mental Health Team (CMHT). Analysis of our data indicates that frequently they may be sofa surfing and/or looking for support with housing, they may be looking for support with understanding or writing letters or forms or they may be experiencing mild to severe financial or benefits difficulties.

Within Cardiff & Vale UHB and Swansea Bay UHB areas, ASC is able to support with Community Advocacy but only if a person is receiving secondary mental health services meaning that their care is either being managed via a CMHT, if the person is wishing to be reassessed by a CMHT if their case has been closed in the last three years or if the person is a psychiatric inpatient requiring advocacy for issues not related to medication or treatment. If the caller does not qualify for our Community Mental Health Advocacy service or our statutory IMCA or IMHA services, very often, their urgent request for help cannot be met and this person falls through the net.

What is the Stepping Stones Service?

The Stepping Stones service aims to meet these unmet needs and expand our current Community Advocacy services to ensure that we can provide independent advocacy to more people who need our help, to empower them to fight for their rights and speak out.

Through online referral, we envisage that this proposed advocacy service will offer support for clients to make their voice heard through:

- Understanding legal rights and explaining processes and options available

- Accessing medical records

- Support with talking to GP or other medical staff to understand decisions

- Understanding housing issues and where to access help and to assist with form filling

- Understanding benefit entitlements and to assist with form filling

- Supporting with Finance, Banking and other financial needs

- Understanding how to complain and compliment and support with doing it

- Accompanying to important appointments (where appropriate)

As with all of our existing services, the Stepping Stones service will not give advice, offer counselling, provide mediation or befriend. Our advocates will not judge the wishes of those they support or look to seek to persuade a client into a particular course of action. The Advocate will provide information to people to help them understand what options might be available, but will not decide or advise which one to take.

The service will also aim to raise awareness of the benefits of Independent Advocacy and encourage people to seek the support of an advocate. We aim to create a safe and inviting service where people with mental illness can ask questions and find out more about the support available to them.

We will hold community drop in sessions, work with GPs and local authorities to raise awareness of the service and explore new ways to reach people with mental illness that may need the help of an advocate.

The long-term vision is that this service will be available in health board areas we currently support, including Cardiff and the Vale, Swansea Bay, Cwm Taf Morgannwg and Aneurin Bevan health boards.

When will the Stepping Stones service be available?

We estimate that well need to raise £130,000 to run the service each year. This includes provision for two dedicated advocates and an advocacy manager, as well as funding for awareness raising and outreach sessions, promotion and support services.

Currently, our funding only permits us to provide the statutory advocacy services we currently provide. We urgently need to raise as much money as possible to allow us to fund this new service. Our aim is to raise enough money through our fundraising, corporate supporters and grants from trusts and foundations. But we need the support of our communities and local businesses to enable us to raise the funds required to launch the service.

There is an urgent need for this service to ensure everyone with mental illness can receive the support of an independent advocate, the sooner we can raise the money to fund this service, the sooner we can launch!