“I just want someone to actually hear me.”
This line appears near the beginning of a new comic strip developed through our advocacy research. A young person is sitting in a meeting, surrounded by adults, but struggling to get their thoughts out. It captures a problem raised throughout the study: being present when decisions are made does not necessarily mean feeling heard or involved.
The comic is one of several resources developed from Understanding How Advocacy Services Support Care-Experienced Young People to Participate in Decision-Making, a research project led by CASCADE at Cardiff University. The project set out to strengthen understanding of what effective advocacy looks like from the perspectives of care-experienced young people and those who support them.
For children in care and care leavers, important decisions about their lives are often discussed in formal meetings. An advocate can help a young person understand what is happening, express what they want and take part in decisions. This support depends on young people knowing that advocacy is available, understanding the advocate’s role and feeling able to trust the person working with them.
Understanding what makes advocacy work
Our study explored an in-house advocacy service delivered by the Rights and Participation Service at Birmingham Children’s Trust. We wanted to understand how the service supported care-experienced young people to participate in decision-making, what helped advocacy work well and what could make it less effective.
The research brought together interviews and focus groups with young people, advocates and other professionals. We also held four collaborative workshops involving 25 care-experienced young people. These workshops helped us check whether the findings reflected what mattered to young people and translate them into practical guidance.
One of the clearest findings was that good advocacy starts with the individual young person. Participants wanted advocates to ask how they preferred to communicate, where they felt comfortable meeting and how much support they wanted. Some young people may want an advocate to speak on their behalf. Others may want help preparing so they can speak for themselves. These preferences can change depending on the situation.
Trust was also central. Young people valued advocates who took time to get to know them, listened without making assumptions and did what they said they would do. Honest communication mattered, including when an advocate did not know an answer or could not achieve the outcome a young person wanted. Clear beginnings and endings were particularly important because many care-experienced young people have had professionals repeatedly enter and leave their lives.
The study also highlighted the importance of explaining advocacy clearly. Young people may be told that they can have an advocate without being given a meaningful explanation of what an advocate does. Practitioners themselves may also misunderstand the role. Advocates therefore need to be clear about what support they can offer, what remains confidential, when information may need to be shared and how long their involvement is likely to last.
Accessible information can make a significant difference. Young people wanted information that was relevant, easy to understand and available in different formats. This means avoiding professional language, breaking information into manageable sections and using creative resources where appropriate. It also means making sure young people know how to access advocacy, including whether they can contact the service themselves.
Turning the findings into practical resources
Working with young people, we developed a five-part Good Practice Framework. It is written from a young person’s perspective and organised around five messages: Advocacy that works for me; My voice, my choice; Helping me be heard; Information tailored for me; and Someone who has my back.
The framework includes a poster and individual visual resources that advocacy services can use when reviewing their practice, training staff or explaining advocacy to young people.
We also held a creative workshop with young people in the study local authority to develop a comic based on the findings. The completed comic follows a young person from feeling unable to speak in a meeting to choosing how she communicates with her advocate and developing the confidence to speak for herself. The advocate remains alongside her without taking over. Practitioner guidance and a young people’s infographic have been created to help services use the comic as a starting point for conversation.
This was an exploratory study of one in-house service, and further research across different advocacy models would strengthen the evidence. The findings nevertheless offer a practical basis for reflection. Good advocacy can be seen in everyday actions: whether someone takes time to listen, whether choices are genuine, whether information makes sense and whether promises are followed through.
These details shape whether participation feels meaningful and whether a young person leaves a meeting knowing that their voice mattered.
Find out more about the project and download the resources here: Understanding how advocacy services support care-experienced young people to participate in decision-making. – CASCADE
– Samantha Fitz-Symond