Our special services

Our Dementia Advocacy Workers

WASSR is becoming known as an organisation with expertise in advocating for people with dementia. The knowledge and experience needed to support older people living with dementia has been developed at WASSR over several years and Francoise Bathews and Lorraine Slee both work with our clients with dementia.

Our Dementia Advocacy Network Manager, Jan Kendall, delivers training in dementia advocacy for organisations who want to learn more about this specialised area of work. WASSR also developed and runs the Dementia Advocacy Network which provides support, networking and learning opportunities to dementia advocates and others working with people with dementia. We are very pleased that the work of the Dementia Advocacy Network is now funded by the Department of Health.

Jan works with advocates to develop their abilities to assist someone living with dementia to retain a sense of well being, make choices, express themselves and access the services they need to enhance their quality of life. Training focuses on the challenges of exploring the perspective of and advocating for the person with dementia. We have published an introductory guide to this work and a further guide, soon to be published are available from the WASSR office.

Our Housing Advocacy Worker

For many older people there are big decisions to be made about moving into more appropriate housing - perhaps sheltered housing or transfer into a residential home. Or the issue may be claiming the right housing benefits, problems with a landlord or getting repairs or adaptations done. In all of these situations, WASSR provides a skilled advocate who will help a client find the answer that is right for them and negotiate with the appropriate authorities. And backing up the work of the advocate is the knowledge and experience of WASSR Housing Advocacy Worker, Sarah Reilly.

This post in WASSR is unique in advocacy services nationally. The Housing Advocacy Worker normally accompanies a WASSR advocate on a first visit when the problem is around housing and will advise on housing law, on the options available locally in Westminster and on contacts. She also shares her expertise as part of the WASSR training programme.

Outreach to hard to reach groups

WASSR’s policy is to reach out to a whole range of people who for different reasons find it difficult to access services. It is part of the work of all our advocates to make contact with people who are more isolated in the Westminster community.

The hard to reach groups include

• Members of black and ethnic minority communities are a key part of our expertise. Most often we will work with existing community organisations, already known and trusted by members of their communities, helping to develop their workers and volunteers to provide a professionally focused advocacy for their clients. But we also work with pensioner groups and through community workers in the health service to ensure that our service is widely known.
• People with challenging behaviour or people with mental health problems, whether formally recognised or not, can often present very difficult problems to agencies and this often means that by the time they reach WASSR there problems are very complex. Such cases are handled by Hazel Williams, Lorraine Slee and Francoise Bathews as key members of the WASSR team with substantial experience in mental health and related issues.
• The three members of our Outreach team also work across the whole of the borough to ensure that as many members of the community as possible know about WASSR’s services and can benefit from them. They meet members of the public in sheltered housing complexes, social groups and lunch clubs and give presentations and information to a wide range of groups. The can also be seen staffing stalls and meeting the public at various festivals around Westminster.