At Cygnet Joyce Parker there is an independent mental health advocate, Martin Hawthorne from Advent Advocacy. Martin visits the service each week and offers every young person an opportunity to access the advocacy service for support in a variety of areas. To celebrate Advocacy Awareness Week Martin ran a series of workshops across the wards to raise awareness, with the support of the occupational therapy team.
The five core themes that the workshops focussed on were:
Many of the young people took part in the workshops, learning more about how advocacy can support them on their journey through services and feeding back how advocacy has helped them se far. Martin and the young people were able to generate ideas together which will create a series of posters to be displayed throughout the hospital.