Principles, standards and code of best practice

Principle 1: Independent advocacy is loyal to the people it supports and stands by their views and wishes.
Principle 2: Independent advocacy ensures people’s voices are listened to and their views taken into account.
Principle 3: Independent advocacy stands up to injustice, discrimination and disempowerment.

Standards that underpin Principle 1 (Independent advocacy is loyal to the people it supports and stands by their views and wishes):

Standard 1a: Independent advocacy follows the agenda of the people supported regardless of the views, interests and agendas of others.
Standard 1b: Independent advocacy must be able to evidence and demonstrate its structural, financial and psychological independence from others.
Standard 1c: Independent advocacy provides no other services, has no other interests, ties or links other than the delivery, promotion, support and defence of independent advocacy.

Standards that underpin Principle 2 (Independent advocacy ensures people’s voices are listened to and their views are taken into account):

Standard 2a: Independent advocacy recognises and safeguards everyone’s right to be heard.
Standard 2b: Independent advocacy reduces the barriers people face in having their voice heard because of communication, or capacity, or the political, social, economic and personal interests of others.

Standards that underpin Principle 3 (Independent advocacy stands up to injustice, discrimination and disempowerment):

Standard 3a: Independent advocacy recognises power imbalances or barriers people face and takes steps to address these.
Standard 3b: Independent advocacy enables people to have more agency, greater control and influence.
Standard 3c: Independent advocacy challenges discrimination and promotes equality and human rights.

1. Enable your advocacy partner or advocacy group to understand their rights, and ensure that they are recognised by others.
2. Ensure your work promotes equality and challenges discrimination.
3. Reflect on your practice and be aware of your own opinions, prejudices and discriminatory views and values and not let them affect your practice.
4. Identify and challenge any attitudinal, structural or environmental barriers to accessing, using or taking part in independent advocacy.
5. Address any power imbalance between yourself and your advocacy partner or the advocacy group, or within the group.
6. Not withhold information from your advocacy partner.
7. Look out for, declare and minimise conflicts of interest in line with the organisation’s conflict of interest policy.
8. Uphold the confidentiality of your advocacy partner in line with the organisation’s confidentiality policy including being honest when the policy should be breached.
9. Act on the issues agreed by your advocacy partner or advocacy group at the appropriate pace.
10. Enable your advocacy partner or advocacy group to outline, record and review their expectations.
11. When advocating in a non-instructed context, make significant efforts to determine the rights, will and preferences of your advocacy partner, and where this is not genuinely practicable then make certain that decisions are taken with due consideration for their unique preferences, rights and perspectives.
12. Support your advocacy partner or advocacy group to gain information, understand options and explore possible outcomes.
13. Practice and promote effective communication with your advocacy partner or advocacy group, especially when they may face barriers.
14. Not take the side of anyone other than your advocacy partner or advocacy group or try to influence them on behalf of others.
15. Ask decision makers to explain why an action is taken where required.
16. Ensure that you seek and are guided by feedback from your advocacy partner or advocacy group members.
17. Support your advocacy partners or advocacy group members to gain more control and influence in the decisions and circumstances that affect their lives.
18. Make every effort to enable your advocacy partner or advocacy group members to have the opportunity to develop skills and confidence to advocate for themselves.

1. Make every effort to support an advocacy group to debate and reflect on the views and experiences of the group members as well as agreeing issues to take forward.
2. Enable advocacy group members to be open and regularly review the way the group works.
3. Support the advocacy group to define and agree the internal and external boundaries of confidentiality.