SCIE Guide 21: Commissioning and providing mental health advocacy for African and Caribbean men

Providing advocacy services: Principles to guide positive practice

Drawing on SCIE Knowledge Review 15, the following principles are suggested to underpin the provision of high quality mental health advocacy for African and Caribbean men. They are also important for commissioners to bear in mind when designing and commissioning mental health advocacy. Mental health advocacy provision for African and Caribbean men needs to be:

• Culturally sensitive and promote cultural sensitivity in wider services. This means a developed understanding of issues of inequality, disadvantage, and discrimination and the roots and history of black oppression.
• Independent from statutory service provision.
• Accessible to and visible in the local community, who are consulted and engaged in the process of its development.
• Able to offer real choices in terms of the type of advocacy and the advocate.
• Able to promote choice and protect individual rights in the context of decision making on care and treatment.
• Able to prioritise and promote self-empowerment.
• Have the capacity to meet demands by providing a high-quality service.
• Clear in terms of outcomes, and to ensure these and data on service usage by ethnicity are routinely monitored and evaluated.

Next in this section: Translating principles into practice