Patient Advocacy Services

• Advocacy for Adult Secure Services <br/>Secure services provide treatment for adults aged 18-years and over with mental disorders, these include mental illness (MI), personality disorder (PD) and neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) including learning disabilities (LD) and autism. There are three levels of secure services with specific criteria for each, High, Medium and Low.

• Advocacy for Children and Young People <br/>While it is anticipated that this procedure is for children and young people making or intending to make a complaint, it covers representations which are not complaints. For example, children and young people should be able to secure the support of an advocate in putting forward <br/>representations for a change to be made in the service they receive, or the establishment <br/>they live in, without this having to be framed first as a specific complaint.

• Advocacy for Women’s’ Health <br/>Although women in the UK on average live longer than men, women spend a significantly <br/>greater proportion of their lives in ill health and disability when compared with men. <br/>Not enough focus is placed on women-specific issues like miscarriage or menopause, <br/>and women are under-represented when it comes to important clinical trials. There are also far too many cases where women’s voices have not been listened to; the responses to the Women’s Health Strategy for England from the Department of Health & Social Care found 84% of respondents felt that this was the case.