We recognise the importance of building strong relationships so that we can provide the best possible support to our service users. We work with:

Local Organisations

Developing good working relationships with other local organisations helps us understand the needs of the local population. By sharing local knowledge with community organisations and support groups we can ensure that we reach hard-to-reach communities and everyone needing our support can access it. We share information about our services with these organisations so that we can make referrals to each other. Together we can spot gaps in services and help stop people falling through them.

We also share resources such as providing or sharing the cost of training and organising shared drop-in sessions and awareness raising events. Examples of joint working with our partners include: working with local Healthwatch groups to identify trends of poor care in NHS services; working with local disabled people’s support groups to make sure their members can access our services; providing training about Care Act advocacy to carers groups.

We also deliver a number of partnership contracts where we work jointly with local specialist providers to deliver seamless integrated advocacy services.

Commissioners

We want our commissioners to be confident that we are providing high quality, good value services so we meet with them regularly and provide detailed reports of the work we are doing. As well as the numbers we also share anonymous feedback and case studies so that they understand more about our work and its value. We try to ensure that we have an open and honest relationship with commissioners so that they feel able to contact us straightaway if they have any concerns.

By building good relationships with commissioners we are able to work with them to identify opportunities, develop new models for services and prepare for changes to legislation.

Professionals

We know that good communication with doctors, social workers, care managers, complaints teams and other professionals can help us get better outcomes for our service users.

We rely on professionals to refer people who need support to us so it is important that they have confidence in our services and know that our advocates are well trained and qualified. We make a point of going out to meet professionals, offer training and attend team meetings to explain our services.

Our services are independent, confidential and user-led so we never allow relationships with professionals to negatively affect our work with service users.