Cloverleaf Advocacy
Cloverleaf took over the running of Wakefield Mental Health Advocacy Service at the beginning of April 2005 (from the old Richmond Fellowship).
Over the last year the service has expanded, and we now also do forensic advocacy work in Newton Lodge, and we do user involvement work. We provide a range of support to people using mental health services, and our community-based work is increasing. We do have referral criteria and we prioritise those most in need.
Increased resources and new staff
Added to the existing experienced staff, two new associate advocates were recently employed, giving all 3 hospital wards access to an advocacy service. Cloverleaf's effective use of the existing small budget has brought greater flexibility and increased resources – enabling the team to respond more quickly and effectively to more clients. There is a positive, forward looking feel to the service.
New Advisory Group
Another positive development is the formation of our Advisory Group. This group is made up of local people who use or have used mental health services, and they will help us to identify unmet needs for Advocacy in the district, and how to meet them. The aim is to enable members to play a strong role in guiding future plans.
Service User Involvement
We also have two specialist staff based at the same office supporting a network of Mental Health Reference Groups to enable more service users to play a bigger role in developing the services they need. This has also been a very positive development and Cloverleaf is negotiating to extend their role so they can achieve even more.
For more information or to make a referral, contact:
Cloverleaf Advocacy
25 King Street
Wakefield
WF1 2SR
Tel.: 01924 305760
Email: advocacy@cloverleaf-advocacy.co.uk
Background - Cloverleaf in Kirklees, Calderdale, York and Hull
Cloverleaf Advocacy was established in 1995 in Kirklees. Cloverleaf Advocacy 2000 Ltd (as it became) provides an independent advocacy service for people with mental health problems, people with learning difficulties, disabled people and older people.
The service includes a combination of open access advocacy groups, both in hospital and in the community, and one to one specialist confidential advocacy. We operate in Yorkshire. We deliver a full range of all the above services for all client groups in Kirklees. We provide advocacy for people with mental health problems in the Wakefield District. We provide support to a self advocacy service for people with learning disabilities in Calderdale. We are currently in the process of developing a service for all client groups in Calderdale. We offer advocacy in the forensic units of Newton Lodge (Wakefield), The Humber Centre (Hull) and we offer advocacy at Stockton Hall and the Retreat in York. We also support and facilitate service user involvement projects in Kirklees and Wakefield.
Cloverleaf is a person centred organisation with an emphasis on action learning models. It has drawn on and learned from a number of creative and post modernist organisational models. A number of authors have influenced our thinking. The strength of these approaches is that the assumption is made that there will always be changing, unpredictable demands made on the organisation and that the organisation needs a structure which is creative, innovative and flexible, thus enabling it to tailor responses, based on consistent standards, to each individual situation in order to deliver a quality service.
As a consequence of this many of the organisational systems are facilitative in nature. There is an emphasis on an action learning approach. Supervision is person centred and based on coaching and mentoring styles of supervision and there is investment in staff development as an integral part of organisation development.
Head Office
Cloverleaf Advocacy
1st Floor
9 Wellington Road
Dewsbury
West Yorkshire
England
WF13 1HF
Tel: 01924 438 438