What is the Advocacy Standards Project?
The Advocacy Standards Project aims to develop an Australian standard that has formal recognition and standing, that is auditable and capable of being deployed across the funded Advocacy sector in Australia as the key benchmark of quality and the driver of continuous improvement and development to ensure consistent and quality services to people we serve.
In the wake of the report from the Aged Care Royal Commission, the role of Advocacy for older people became more prominent, and this was reinforced during the COVID pandemic and its devastating impact on older people. The Disability Royal Commission has also highlighted the violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect of people with disability in their communities and in some specialist service settings, focusing the need for strong independent Advocacy. The two peak bodies representing Advocacy, the Older Persons Advocacy Network (OPAN) and the Disability Advocacy Network Australia (DANA) agreed to work together to create a new Australian Standard specific to Advocacy for Aged Care and Disability, which can be used to strengthen and continuously improve Advocacy, and enable agencies to demonstrate to government departments that they are achieving outcomes for the funding they receive.
The Standard is named MB-031, and has members from OPAN, DANA, disability and older persons’ peak bodies, research bodies, and, of course, Advocacy agencies who will be the users of the Standard when complete. It also has officials from the Departments of Social Services and Health and Aged Care. At this point in the project it has been important to understand whether or not the Standard in its current form will meet the requirements that government agencies might have to use the Standard to certify the quality of those Advocacy services they provide funding to.