Advocacy support

Parents Together was an action research project that set up to support parents with learning difficulties, using an advocacy approach, in ways that were non-stigmatising, non-intrusive and responsive to the parents' views of their own needs.

The key lessons for practice to emerge were:

• The principles and practices developed by Parents Together were endorsed by the parents involved in the project and serve as guidelines for all practitioners seeking to work in partnership with families.

• Without an adequate infrastructure of health and social services, advocacy alone is unable to relieve the environmental pressures that undermine parents' ability to cope.

• Advocacy might not be able to relieve the pressures that make life difficult for parents, but it can act to prevent them being compounded by bad practice and competence-inhibiting support.

• Advocates were no more successful than the parents themselves over the longer term at dealing with the failings in the system. In both cases, individuals were worn down by the constant struggle to get anything done.

• The goal should be to get the system working better to support families rather than to get everyone an advocate.

• The advocacy support groups were successful in helping people to work with their problems (if not resolve them) and to feel better about themselves.

Read more:

'Parents Together: action research and advocacy support for parents with learning difficulties', Health and Social Care in the Community, 7(6), 1999, pp. 464-474.