1-1 Advocacy

What is Advocacy?

Advocacy offers individuals one to one or group support to tell others what they need or want, to make decisions about their life, to make choices, to take control of situations, to understand their rights and to implement these rights in their daily life.

Advocacy is a free and confidential service. Referrals can be made to Speak Out for someone who:

  • has a learning disability
  • is 17+ years old
  • lives in Brighton or Hove

You can make a referral by following these links:

Issue Advocacy

An issue advocate gives support to someone when they need help with a particular problem.

These are some problems people have:

  • They want to live somewhere else
  • They do not feel safe
  • They do not understand their rights
  • They need help talking to a wide range of professionals
  • They need help to prepare for and speak up at meetings with service providers
  • They need support to access services and build networks

An advocate will agree a plan for the advocacy so that everyone is clear what the advocacy is about and when it will end.

Issues-advocacy-small

Find out more:

If you want to find out more about advocacy:

01273 421921

Drop-in Advocacy

At our Drop-ins, people can meet our 1-1 Drop-in advocate in private. They can support people to deal with a problem.

They can support people to:

  • Understand information
  • Make calls to professionals and services
  • Send emails
  • Talk about their options, if they need to make a decision
  • Link to other services
  • Represent their views
  • Build self-confidence and self-advocacy skills

We have drop-ins across central, east and west Brighton. To find out more about when and where our drop-ins take place, please click here

Drop-in-advocacy

Find out more:

Please contact Louise:

01273 421921

07832 266270

Parents Advocacy

We provide advocacy for parents with a learning disability involved in Child Protection proceedings.

An advocate will support individuals to:

  • Understand their rights
  • Understand information shared by professionals
  • Be involved in decisions about their life and their child’s life
  • Have their voice heard by professionals
  • Access to support services and build support networks
  • An advocate will agree a plan for the advocacy so that everyone is clear what the advocacy is about and when it will end.
Parents

Find out more:

01273 421921

Care Act Advocacy

Care Act advocacy is a statutory right for individuals who experience substantial difficulty or have no one appropriate to support them.

We provide support to individuals to prepare for and become involved as much as possible in:

  • Care assessments
  • Care and support planning
  • Care and support reviews
  • Safeguarding
  • Transition planning
Reasonable Adjustments: A person with a learning disability being supported by someone to read an easy read document that has been translated by Speak Out

Find out more:

Referrals are accepted on The Advocacy People's Care Act referral form:

ICAA Referral Form

Or contact The Advocacy People: https://www.theadvocacypeople.org.uk/contact

Citizen Advocacy

Citizen advocates support their advocacy partners in many ways, including:
  • Offering longer term advocacy support
  • Building the skills and confidence to speak up for themselves
  • At care review meetings, making sure that they have a say about their care plan
  • Helping them speak to staff, professionals and family about things that important to them
  • Making sure they get the services they need including; health, education, employment and leisure opportunities
  • Supporting them to take part in their community
  • Building networks of support

At present we are only able to support a small number of Citizen Advocacy partnerships.

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Find out more:

Please contact us for more information:

01273 421921

Sussex Advocacy Partnership

From 1st July 2025 The Sussex Advocacy Partnership will be providing advocacy services across Sussex. 
The partnership is by The Advocacy People, alongside 6 local partners: Brighton & Hove Speak Out, Mind in Brighton & Hove, MindOut, Royal Association for Deaf people (RAD), Switchboard and Trust for Developing Communities.

The partnership will provide the following services for people across East Sussex, West Sussex and Brighton & Hove:

All areas:

  • Independent Mental Capacity Advocacy, Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), Relevant Persons’ Representative (RPR) and Rule 1.2 Representative
  • Advocacy for the Deaf, Deafblind and BSL user community across all advocacy strands

Brighton & Hove:

  • Independent Care Act Advocacy (ICAA)
  • Independent Mental Health Advocacy and Community Mental Health Advocacy
  • NHS Complaints Advocacy
  • Community (non-statutory) Advocacy
  • LGBTQ+ Advocacy
  • Bilingual Advocacy

You can contact The Advocacy People by:
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 0330 440 9000
Website: http://www.theadvocacypeople.org.uk/

 

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