Age UK Gateshead‘s four new volunteer advocates recently enjoyed a half-day training session entitled ‘What is Advocacy?’
The session, delivered by Alan Davison Advocacy Co-ordinator at Age UK Gateshead, aimed to equip the advocates with a basic knowledge of the principles underpinning successful advocacy. They discussed a number of case studies in group work and were able to demonstrate at the end of the session that learning had been effective and had achieved what it had set out to achieve.
(l to r) Volunteer advocates Kenneth Bell, Rose Gillard, Christine Mann and Audrey Wood with Alan
Afterwards Ken commented “the training was absolutely fantastic! It gave me a good insight into advocacy”
Audrey said “ I thought advocacy was about speaking for people and after doing the training I discovered it’s about supporting them to do it themselves. I enjoyed working as a group on a case (case study scenario) as it was helpful to consider all options in a person-centred way”
Rose fed back “the training gave me a useful overview of the different ways advocacy is done and also it clarified the boundaries of what advocacy covers and what it doesn’t”
On a personal note, I very much enjoy facilitating training of this nature.
Alan Davison
Gateshead Cancer Advocacy
Age UK Gateshead
Older People Living with Cancer 