Advocacy & Your Rights

At Dumfries and Galloway Advocacy Service, we will help you to find the right support if we cannot provide it ourselves. Watch the SIAA’s short film – A Voice to Trust – to find out more about the different types of advocacy.

Advocacy is about:

Protecting your rights when you are vulnerable
Listening to you
Ensuring that you are listened to
Providing you with information so that you can make informed choices and decisions
Helping you to express yourself and take part in decisions which affect you
Respecting your right to make your own choices
Being there for you without conflict of interest

Advocacy is not about:

Providing you with legal representation or supporting you in court
Suing for financial damages or compensation
Welfare Rights support
Befriending
Counselling or Treatment

Advocacy must:

Be Accessible to all who require it
Be Accountable to those who use it and fund it
Put those who use it first
Be as free as possible from conflicts of interest

Advocacy is not, primarily about complaining or seeking confrontation. It is about:

Communication
Resolution
Helping you to be heard

We believe that all people who are faced with vulnerability are entitled to have an advocate, someone who can help them to say what they want when relating to or seeking to access services. We focus our services on the most vulnerable person in any situation.

What do we mean by Vulnerable?

Some of us are vulnerable because of a physical or learning disability, or perhaps a sensory impairment.
Some of us are vulnerable because something has happened to us, perhaps we have become ill, or a loved one has.
Maybe you have become homeless, or cannot access a service.
Perhaps your child has been placed on the Child Protection Register.
Perhaps you are vulnerable because of your age.

Additional circumstances where Independent Advocacy may apply include: