Advocacy Focus, a charity with its head office in Accrington, East Lancashire, are delighted to announce that they have successfully retained the Lancashire Advocacy Hub contract after a recent competitive procurement exercise.

The Lancashire Advocacy Hub will re-launch on the 1st August 2023 and will run for the next five years. This new contract will bring further employment opportunities, to add to the 70 strong team, and widen advocacy support for local people.

The Advocacy Focus team are grateful for the opportunity to continue to support people, over the age of 16, who are facing challenges or problems around their health and social care needs.

Over the next five years, the charity will continue to provide community and specialist advocacy, with a big focus on prevention and upskilling people to advocate for family or friends, via its new “Family and Friends Focus” service. This will provide a range of free resources and support, which will help anyone to support key people in their lives through health and social care processes and get the best possible outcomes for them. The team will also be delivering advocacy training for grassroots charities across Lancashire.

Advocacy, or the ability to advocate for others, has never been more important, or more necessary.

Many people feel that important decisions are being made about them, without them. However, Advocacy Focus are there to make sure that decisions are made with the person, by helping them understand their rights, put forward their views and wishes, and explore all and every option open to them.

The team at Advocacy Focus help put control back into the hands of the person, help them to make sense of their situation and feel listened to and heard. People often don’t know what advocacy is until they really need it, or that Advocates are completely on the side of the person and independent from all other services such as the local authority, health or social care services. The service is free for all Lancashire adults, with the exception of Blackpool and Blackburn residents, who have their own advocacy providers.

As part of their commitment to Lancashire, the charity has also promised to offer wider benefits via their “Community Focus” service, providing advocacy support to people beyond health and social care and give them support for housing issues, benefit problems and will assist in helping people to access education, training and employment.

Advocacy Focus’ Chief Executive, Justine Forster, has this to say about resecuring the Lancashire advocacy provision contract.

“We’ve been Looking After Lancashire for over a decade from our head office in Accrington. Our team live and work in our Lancashire communities and leave no stone unturned when it comes to helping people get the health and social care outcomes they are looking for.

“We care about our County and the people in it, so we are looking forward to working with any people or organisations that share the same vision as ours, which is to make sure that people are seen, heard and listened to when it comes to making big decisions in their lives. We are your Lancashire provider, and we will be working tirelessly to help people to live the lives they want – and choose – to live.”

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