right to advocacy for benefit claimants in scotland

be interested to see what the views are of advisers who this may have passed by as its a devolution issue.

part of the draft of the social security bill in Scotland to take on devolved benefits is on advocacy and there is a debate on a persons automatic right to it.

very much personal opinion here but I cant see much weight in having it in there if there is no recourse if someone doesn’t get it as its not available.

there also isn’t a clear dividing line in the debate between advocacy and advice.

at present there just simply aren’t enough experienced advice workers to provide advice to everyone and it would take several years (as we know) to train people up to operate in a system of reserved benefits and devolved.

I think this is coming from a place of wanting to separate the devolved system from the reserved one as being better (which I hope will be the case) but I have concerns some of this misses the point of primary legislation and its going to open cans of worms all over the place when someone cant access advocacy, has a negative decision and ends up at appeal.

Hi Steven,

It is a really interesting discussion. I find that in the LD & MH worlds ‘advocacy’ has quite a specific meaning, but outside of that it is often used as a more general term which can sometimes be unhelpful.

Could lessons be learned from how the advocacy duty in the Care Act has been set out and implemented? https://www.scie.org.uk/care-act-2014/advocacy-services/commissioning-independent-advocacy/duties/independent-advocacy-care-act.asp .

Jane

thanks for the response.

one of my main concerns here is how tribunals will cope if the right to advocacy was in the primary legislation but simply wasnt available for whatever reason.

then of course there is the general blurring of lines between advocacy and representation.