Usually, an advocate’s work would be instructed by their advocacy partner if they are able to express their preferences, understand information and take part in meetings and decision-making processes. When a person has limited ability to communicate their views and wishes about care and support decisions, non-instructed advocacy can be used.

The Watching Brief

Asist’s non-instructed advocacy process is called ‘The Watching Brief’, it was created in the mid 1990’s and the explanation below given by Asist’s co-founder Hilary Stefanelli details how it came about:

“Asist negotiated the contract to provide advocacy for people with learning disabilities moving from hospital into the community. We were challenged as to how we were going to find out what people wanted when we were unable to communicate with them. Most people had profound communication barriers but were moving to new homes and having to make big decisions about what they wanted.

We thought about it from a human rights, personalised perspective and came across the 8 domains of ordinary living. These principles for ordinary living gave us the framework to be able to look at proposals being made for people and to ask questions which anyone would ask in their situation.

The Watching Brief got taken up by the advocacy sector who had been looking for a way to better represent people and is referred to in the codebook for the Mental Capacity Act.  As to why we called it The Watching Brief – the dictionary definition is: a brief held by a barrister to follow a case on behalf of a client who is not directly involved. If you change ‘barrister’ to ‘advocate’ it perhaps explains our thinking!”

If you would like more information about The Watching Brief or would like to enquire about Asist providing training on The Watching Brief, please feel free to contact us.