Independent advocacy for independent lives

Published: 4 February 2025

Our latest report – a groundbreaking evidence base to grow inclusive support services for people with learning disabilities and autistic people 

In 2022 The Henry Smith Charity set up a £2.6M fund, giving grants to 15 organisations providing independent and non-statutory advocacy to support people with learning disabilities and autistic people across the UK.

Social Finance was the learning and evaluation partner for the programme and over three years we worked with the grantees and people with lived experience, to build evidence of practice and to assess the benefits of non-statutory advocacy services to people with learning disabilities and autistic people. 

We also wanted to understand the financial impact and the benefits to wider society of growing this kind of inclusive support. 

1.5M
people in the UK have a learning disability 
700, 000 
people in the UK are known to be autistic 

The 15 grantees* (list below) used the funding to reach 1,667 people through a variety of different forms of advocacy, including one-to-one advocacy, self-advocacy and group advocacy.

People were supported across all age groups, with those aged 30–39 forming the biggest group (24.1%). There was an even split between males and females. 89.9% of the people participating in advocacy were of White ethnicity. 

59% had a learning disability, 25% were autistic, and 16% reported having both learning disabilities and being autistic.

Key findings

As part of our research, we undertook a financial analysis for advocacy services. This showed that for every £1 spent on advocacy services, there were savings of approximately £7 to the National Health Service and £5 to local authorities.

Advocacy can potentially contribute to wider economic benefits by helping people improve their well-being, gain greater independence and participate more actively in society (including employment). Future research could potentially use a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) or quasi-experimental methods to further assess the attribution or economic costs and benefits of advocacy services.

Non-statutory advocacy provides support for a wide range of issues that do not currently sit within the remit of statutory services. 

Non‑statutory advocacy can take various forms (e.g. one-to-one, self-advocacy groups, peer advocacy) and is characterised by its flexible issue-based support that relies on building long-term trust and relationships with people. 

Unlike statutory advocacy, it is less constrained by requirements to end support after a predetermined period of time.

The most common advocacy goal types were related to: 

  • accessing services (e.g. health services, social services, or other services)
  • supporting people with accommodation-related issues (e.g. applications to move to independent living facilities or resolving disputes with landlords or neighbours)
  • helping people navigate family‑related situations (e.g. supporting with difficult relationships with partners and parents, or navigating child protection procedures). 

People also had goals related to mental health and wellbeing. 

Advocates played an active and important role in supporting people to prepare for and have their voice heard in meetings with professionals. They also supported people in additional ways, such as signposting to services, helping people to contact services, making information more accessible and helping people to digest it and plan next steps. 

Taken together, these elements of support ensured that people got the right care at the right time to prevent issues from escalating.

Services provided individuals with the skills and confidence needed to live more empowered, independent and fulfilling lives. An outcomes framework for this project was co-produced with the grantees and Speakup to capture key data. This included seven core outcomes that advocacy aims to improve:

• Speaking up

• Knowledge of rights

• Knowledge of local services

• Good relationships

• Happy with life

• Feeling listened to

• Learning new skills

Data from this programme demonstrates the impact of non-statutory advocacy support on people’s chances of achieving their advocacy goals. The vast majority of the 963 people with goal data achieved (58%) or made progress (35%) towards their goals. 

These findings strongly suggest that advocacy is often a critical factor in enabling people to break through barriers and secure their fundamental rights.

While progress on advocacy success outcomes appeared to be positively correlated with goal achievement, the small percentage of people who did not make progress towards their advocacy goals still made substantial progress in their advocacy success outcomes. 

Average scores across the seven advocacy success outcomes still improved by 0.31 on a scale of 0–2 among this group. 

This serves as compelling evidence that participation in non-statutory advocacy resulted in wider benefits to people which were separate to their success in achieving their advocacy goals.

Data collected through this programme suggested that Asian ethnicities were underserved by grantee organisations, which may be indicative of a wider trend in the advocacy sector. 

Reaching these communities may require greater prioritisation and additional funding, as well as culturally sensitive support. 

Grantees did well to engage with people who identify with a gender other than that which they were assigned at birth, and there might be lessons here on reaching marginalised communities.

Non statutory advocacy has allowed me to have a meaningful voice… It has inspired me to live the life I wish to live rather than the life professionals thought I could live… This report shows clear evidence of the importance of non-statutory advocacy and also shows impressive figures of how it saves money in the long run to other services.

Amy Telford, Expert by lived experience & self advocate, Speakup

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