How volunteering got me into Advocacy

In Volunteers Week Gill Edgar tells the story of her journey through volunteering to becoming an Independent Advocate.

The short version of my journey into the role of advocate is “volunteering got me into Advocacy”. The longer version is that originally, (when I was desperate to get away from a small market town aged 18) I wanted to work in the business world as I thought it might pay well and I felt I would look good in pinstripe. It turns out (after a degree in Business and Finance, the obligatory post degree stint in a call centre and a couple of roles in purchasing/client account management) that manufacturing is actually a bit boring and not really what I wanted to be doing. I also don’t look good in pinstripe.

Through my regular Thursday perusals of the Chronicle’s job page, I noticed that there were jobs that I had never heard of such as Housing Officer, Support Worker, Fundraising Officer, Advice Worker. There were also jobs that I thought I knew what they were such as Project Worker, that turned out to have nothing to do with manufacturing when I read the advert.

Further investigation and a bit of shadowing with a very lovely neighbour of mine who worked in Social Care and I decided I wanted to work in this sector myself. However, nothing about my qualifications or current work experience really made me suitable for any of the roles I was looking at.

So I left my full time manufacturing role, got a part time admin role in a charity and volunteered with Citizens Advice in Wallsend (a better option might have been to get the part time job before leaving my job – but hindsight is a wonderful thing).

Volunteering at Citizens Advice introduced me to literally a whole new world that I didn’t know anything about. I discovered the benefits system, what happens if you are in debt, what a social care assessment might involve, what you can do if you are at risk of eviction, what your rights are in relation to the threats from Bailiffs and how to negotiate repayments on Council Tax arrears. I also met people from so many different walks of life experiencing so many different situations that I could never have imagined. It was quite literally life changing and was my gateway into my first Social Care role in August 2005.

From a starting point as Floating Support Worker in substance misuse, I had a few different roles in different organisations which I really enjoyed. However, it did occur to me that I had absolutely no qualifications in Social Care and that one might be quite useful. It was while I working towards a completely unconnected qualification I came across the role of Independent Advocate. I was absolutely taken with what the advocates I worked alongside did – they worked solely for their clients to get across the client’s views and were not hindered by the organisation role or remit and the conflicts of interest that they might cause. It took a few more years to find an opening into the role of Independent Advocate – and volunteering was the first step into this role (well the second really - deciding I wanted to find out more about the third sector was the first!).