Citizen Advisors - Turning Point

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Turning Point Connected Care Report 36 success. This is undoubtedly related to the role of the community mentors as experts by experience. However, if community members, who may not be qualified, are to take on this role, the support infrastructure and training provided to the Citizen Advisors is of fundamental importance. A system such as that adopted in Gloucestershire for the village agents may be appropriate. The village agents attend regular training days where they are updated on local services, and receive talks from organisations who explain their services so that they can pass the details onto clients. For this to occur it is necessary for the Citizen Advisor service to build awareness amongst other service providers, and for them to be seen as providing a professional, credible service. Furthermore, by training and developing the skills of local community members, such projects will contribute to building the capacity of the Citizen Advisor workforce. As has been suggested in Hartlepool for the Connected Care project, there is also great potential for community members to move into providing brokerage and assessment services, thus arming them with more skills to take into their communities. Citizen Advisors should also have the opportunity to further their own knowledge and capacity by developing skills in case management, assessment, outreach, referral and co-ordination. This would position Citizen Advisors as quasi professional members of the community as well as improving service provision for the majority. 2. Their remit should be designed and developed by local communities to help meet the specific needs locally. Communities should be involved in the design as well as the delivery of Citizen Advisor style services to ensure fit locally. Co-production is an important element, which is notable in its absence in many of the examples discussed in this review, and holds great potential for realising the coalition government’s ambitions for a Big Society. Engaging local people and identifying the needs of the population from the perspective of the community can ensure that the service is responsive to local issues and tackles unmet needs. This approach worked particularly well in Hartlepool, where the navigator service was developed in response to the findings emerging from the Connected Care community audit. In this project, not only did the community have their say with regards to local needs, but local people were recruited as community researchers to speak to the community and to become champions for the project and their area. Several members of this original team of community researchers now work as navigators in the Connected Care service. In addition, the service retains its community focus as it has been set up through a community based social enterprise that operates from a local residents association. Social enterprises have distinctly social objectives and allow community members to take control over service provision to build upon their own skills.
Turning Point Connected Care Report 37 Moreover, by working together and drawing upon resources, communities can pool different kinds of knowledge of needs and skills locally, and build on the contribution of existing voluntary groups. Giving individuals in the community the opportunity to shape local services helps to build resilience and empower people to seek help and support when needed, and to expect better from local services. In addition, it is important that a Citizen Advisor service includes space for ongoing consultation with the community, both at the outset of the project in the service design stage and throughout its existence. Service users should be able to review the service to ensure that it is responsive and meeting the needs of the community, and the project should adapt accordingly. This also helps give the community local ownership of the service thus encouraging people to trust it and use it in times of need. Lastly, there is also a role for Citizen Advisors to identify and highlight unmet need and to feed this back to staff at statutory and voluntary sector services in the area. This would provide a mechanism for the Citizen Advisor service to link into the wider system and to gain credibility amongst other professionals and front line staff, thus leading to wider system change. 3. Citizen Advisors should focus on supporting individuals who are in greatest need and/or have not traditionally used local services. Citizen Advisors should focus upon helping disengaged and marginalised members of their communities to access services. In some cases this may be individuals and families who have a range of complex needs such as mental health problems, substance misuse problems and long term health conditions. For example, the Link Worker model has illustrated that having a Citizen Advisor service is particularly important for people with complex needs. It is ‘people’ focused and person centred when addressing peoples’ needs and directing them to services. Furthermore, Citizen Advisor services may also involve assisting people to use services more appropriately, for example, decreasing their reliance on services such as A&E, and utilising more ongoing, preventative support. The IAPT service, for example, takes a long term preventative approach to supporting people with complex needs and mental health problems. A Citizen Advisor service should also be universally available for people with more low-level needs. Many of the examples discussed in this report have a set of eligibility criteria or they are for people of a certain age or with a certain condition only. For future work, it is recommended that a generic model is accessible to all, including families, and meets all levels of need. Within this generic team there could be specialist workers, with expertise in particular fields or in particular groups of people or conditions. This approach could also assist in the management of the Citizen Advisors caseloads. Indeed, there is a danger that with the success of the Citizen Advisor role the size of the caseloads inhibit the ability of the advisor to be effective in their role.
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Citizen Advisors - Turning Point

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