Our roots are in the mid 1990s as a local citizen advocacy project using volunteers to support adults with autism lead independent lives. By the early 2000’s we had grant funding for paid advocates, providing statutory and non statutory advocacy to vulnerable adults and children, and from 2014 expanding beyond Basingstoke to the Andover, Winchester and Hart & Rushmoor areas of Hampshire with commissioned contracts. From 2020 we provided advocacy across Hampshire working in partnership with Choices Advocacy.
We started out providing citizen advocacy with volunteers and self advocacy groups for adults and young people with a learning disability and/or autism. This quickly developed into peer advocacy where group members supported each other to become self advocates and speak up for themselves. As we received additional funding we were able to provide more community advocacy using paid advocates. From 2007 we provided IMCA statutory advocacy, then from 2012 Statutory Children’s Advocacy and Care Act Advocacy from 2014 as well as continuing with community advocacy.
We are committed to providing good quality advocacy that supports people in the right way at the right time. We work to the Advocacy Charter and our advocates have completed the Independent Advocacy Award.
We know that Advocacy makes a difference in peoples lives, and use the national NDTi Advocacy Outcomes Framework as well as things like Outcomes Stars to measure effectiveness.
If for any reason you think we have got something wrong, or you want to complain, please get in touch with us or download our easy read complaints leaflet.