A Day in the Life of a Statutory Advocate/Manager

Gill Valentine, one of our Advocacy Managers gives us an insight into what a typical day is like for her.

“My name is Gill Valentine and I currently manage the advocacy service at Healthwatch Halton as well as delivering an active case load. We currently provide statutory advocacy services for clients residing in Halton in areas of Independent Mental Capacity Advocate (IMCA), Independent Mental Health Advocate (IMHA), IMCA/DoLS (Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards), and Care Act and Independent Complaints Advocacy Services (ICAS). The advocacy service is a small team and is made up of two full-time advocates (one of whom is me) and two part-time advocates.

My typical day will include the list below and then some!!

·       Start of my day 7.00am

·       Coffee x 2

·       Turn on Pc and check calendar for planned events

·       Check emails send replies as needed

·       Check Company email account for incoming referrals and assign to Advocates as necessary

·       Access Answerphone to check for new messages and forward onto appropriate Advocate

·       Completed an IMCA Serious Medical Treatment report as IMCA advocate and forwarded password protected to the decision maker.

·       Contacted a secure mental health unit as the IMHA advocate and spoke to a patient I currently support with an upcoming Manager’s Hearing meeting.

·       Contacted another secure unit as the IMHA advocate after receiving a new referral and supported their rights under a section 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983 and began the process of sourcing legal support for their case.

More Coffee and a biscuit!!!!

·       Checked the answerphone again and forwarded the messages on

·       Received a call from one of the advocates requesting advise on a DoLS case. I sourced the appropriate documents under the Mental capacity Act 2005 from the Government site and sent to the advocate.

·       Started work on a IMCA/DoLS acting as the Relevant Person’s Representative (RPR) and as the case was nearing the Expiry date of their Standard Authorisation I began working on a RPR report which covers the advocacy support provided whilst the client has been on a DoLS. This is then sent to the DoLS Safeguarding Team for their perusal and for the Best Interest Assessor if required.

·       Received a call from a social worker asking for advice on a case. This was then identified to be a Care Act referral and a referral form was sent out for completion.

·       Contact with 2 care Homes to request welfare updates on non-verbal clients. Another call was made to another supported care complex and I was able to talk to the client and ask how they were doing. No issues were identified at that time. A new meeting was arranged for in four weeks and the client was able to record this in their diary. I also added this to my diary.

·       Sent invites to all advocates for their next supervision session.

·       Received a question about our new data base and was able to sort the problem for the advocate on the system.

·       Added all my case notes onto client files and closed cases sent over to me for closure on the system.

·       Finally I checked the phones, e-mails, completed my calendar and completed my rather long ‘To do list’ ready for tomorrow!!!”

Sleep Eat Repeat

We’re really grateful to Gill for this insight into the daily working life of a Healthwatch Advocacy Services manager. It certainly shows the time, effort and dedication that she puts into her job.