Understanding Advocacy For Children And Young People

This book arises from the growth in the development of independent advocacy services for children and young people in the last ten years. This growth is reflected in the changing requirements of social work education which clearly set out the need for social workers to support individuals to represent their needs and circumstances. Social workers need to able both to advocate for service users and to understand when to help them to gain support through contact with independent advocacy services. To date, the existing literature tends to focus on particular aspects of advocacy rather than integrating theory, policy and practice. Understanding the provision of independent advocacy and its relationship to professional practice inevitably requires a critical appraisal of anti-oppressive practice and childrens rights. Therefore it is timely to bring together advocacy theory, policy and practice within a framework of anti-oppressive practice..