5 Ways Advocacy Improves Informed Choices and celebrating International Advocacy Practitioners Associations World Advocacy Week, Monday 21st to Sunday 27th September 2026

Advocacy in the AISee Approach means helping people express their experiences, understand their options and influence decisions that affect their lives. It combines lived experience, respectful challenge and practical collaboration so individuals, families and professionals can improve practice and make informed choices about individuals and the decision impacts of the lives of the said individuals, their families and their partnering professionals where applicable. At AISee we have a focus on Autism, ADHD, and their associated co-occuring conditions.

What does advocacy mean in the AISee Approach?

Advocacy is more than speaking on someone’s behalf. It is a process of listening, identifying barriers, clarifying information and supporting people to communicate what matters to them. Where appropriate, it also means challenging assumptions, questioning ineffective systems and helping decision-makers understand the consequences of their choices enhancing inclusive and informed partnership decision making.

The AISee Approach places person-centered advocacy within a wider cycle:

• Advocating: empowering people to express their views and rights.
• Identifying: recognising needs, strengths, barriers and opportunities.
• Solutionising: developing practical responses with the people affected.
• Educating: sharing accessible information that supports understanding.
• Empowering: increasing confidence, choice and participation.
• Collaborating: bringing different perspectives together for better outcomes.

This approach is particularly valuable in our work associated to autism, ADHD, Learning Disabilities, where people can be misunderstood, excluded from decisions or expected to adapt without suitable support. Advocacy helps shift the focus from “what is wrong with this person?” to “what needs to change so this person can participate and thrive?”

Why is advocacy important for neurodivergent people?

Neurodivergent people may encounter barriers across education, healthcare, mental health services, employment and public life. These barriers can include inaccessible communication, assumptions about capacity, inconsistent support, long waiting times or decisions made without meaningful involvement.

Effective advocacy helps by making the person’s perspective visible and relevant. It can support someone to:

• Explain their communication preferences, strengths and support needs.
• Prepare for meetings, assessments or significant decisions.
• Ask questions and understand professional recommendations.
• Challenge inaccurate records, unsuitable adjustments or unfair treatment.
• Identify achievable next steps rather than feeling overwhelmed by a system.

Advocacy does not remove a person’s autonomy. Its purpose is to strengthen self-advocacy wherever possible, while providing additional support when someone wants or needs it. This distinction matters: empowerment is not making decisions for people; it is helping them participate in decisions with clarity and confidence.

How does the AISee Approach empower voices?

Empowering voices starts with listening without rushing to interpret, correct or categorise. A person’s experience is evidence. It may reveal a service gap, an unrecognised need or a more effective way of working.

The process can include:

1. Listening to lived experience: creating space for the person’s priorities, concerns and goals.
2. Making information accessible: using plain language, visual supports, written follow-up or alternative communication methods.
3. Checking understanding: ensuring that people know what has been discussed and what choices are available.
4. Supporting participation: helping individuals contribute before, during and after decisions.
5. Turning insight into action: agreeing who will do what, by when and how progress will be reviewed.

This is useful for individuals and families, but also for practitioners and organisations. When services listen systematically, recurring experiences can identify patterns and guide improvement. The result is advocacy that supports both personal outcomes and wider change.

For a practical introduction to AISee’s values, explore Advocating and Empowering .

What does advocacy improve in professional practice?

Advocacy can improve practice by connecting policy, professional knowledge and lived experience. Professionals work under pressure, with a high volume of individual case loads, with unfortunately on ocassions incomplete information and competing responsibilities. A person-centred advocacy process helps ensure that decisions reflect the whole situation rather than one assessment, incident or administrative target.

It can improve practice in five ways:

• Better communication: people receive information in ways they can use.
• More accurate understanding: professionals hear context, not just presenting behaviour.
• Stronger relationships: trust grows when people feel listened to and taken seriously.
• Earlier problem-solving: concerns are addressed before they become crises.
• More accountable decisions: actions and rationales are clearer to everyone involved.

Advocacy should not be treated as an adversarial activity. Constructive challenge can be respectful and evidence-informed. Asking “what has been tried?”, “whose perspective is missing?” or “how will we know this is working?” can help a team improve without assigning blame.

The AISee Approach encourages professionals to consider not only whether a service is available, but whether it is understandable, accessible and genuinely usable. This is an important difference between offering support and achieving better outcomes.

How can advocacy inform better choices?

Informed choice requires more than being given several options. People need relevant information, time to process it, a way to ask questions and freedom from pressure. Advocacy supports these conditions by helping people understand both the opportunities and limitations of each option.

A useful informed-choice conversation should clarify:

• What decision needs to be made?
• What options are available, including choosing to wait or decline?
• What are the likely benefits, risks and practical consequences?
• What support or adjustments would make participation easier?
• Who can provide further information or independent advice?
• When will the decision be reviewed?

This approach is relevant to a child’s education plan, an adult’s employment support, a health appointment, a mental health intervention or a service redesign project. The details differ, but the principle remains the same: decisions are stronger when people understand them and can influence them.

AISee’s Identifying and Solutionising work can help move from uncertainty to practical next steps. The aim is not to promise a perfect answer. It is to create a transparent process for reaching the most informed and workable answer available.

Advocacy as a route to improving systems

Individual advocacy can reveal issues that affect many people. If several families report confusing referral pathways, or practitioners identify the same gap in training, those experiences can inform service development and policy discussions.

System-level advocacy may involve:

• Gathering anonymised experiences and identifying recurring themes.
• Reviewing whether policies work in practice, not only on paper.
• Sharing recommendations with service leaders or decision-makers.
• Designing information with the communities expected to use it.
• Measuring whether changes improve access, understanding and outcomes.

Good system advocacy avoids presenting people as problems to be fixed. Instead, it examines structures, environments and processes. It asks whether expectations, communication styles or service models are creating unnecessary barriers.

This is why collaboration is central. Practitioners contribute professional expertise; families contribute context; individuals contribute lived experience; organisations contribute resources and influence. Combining these perspectives can produce solutions that are more realistic, respectful and sustainable.

Read more through Collaborating or review AISee’s Informed Solutions for Better Outcomes Summary Report for related learning.

What can individuals and organisations do next?

Advocacy becomes meaningful when it leads to action. Individuals, families and professionals can begin with small, specific steps rather than waiting for a complete solution.

Individuals and families can:

• Write down priorities before important meetings.
• Request information in a preferred format.
• Ask what happens next and when.
• Keep a record of agreed actions.
• Seek support from an advocate when communication or decision-making feels difficult.

Professionals and organisations can:

• Build lived experience into planning from the start.
• Offer multiple ways to communicate and contribute.
• Check whether people understand choices and consequences.
• Treat challenge as useful feedback.
• Review outcomes with the people affected.

AISee’s Talk to an Advocate page offers a route to explore advocacy support. Organisations may also find Educating and Test for Change useful when developing learning or improvement activity.

Key takeaways

Advocacy in the AISee Approach connects voice, information and action. It helps people communicate what matters, supports professionals to improve practice and gives organisations clearer insight into the barriers affecting outcomes. It is especially valuable when decisions are complex, systems are difficult to navigate or a person’s experience has not been fully understood.

The next step is to identify where advocacy could make the greatest difference: an upcoming decision, an inaccessible process, a repeated service problem or a missed opportunity to collaborate. Listen first, make information usable, agree practical actions and review what changes. That is how empowering voices can lead to improving practice and informing choices.

Turning collaborative learning into professional standards and training.

Beyond AISee Collaborative, a recognised advocacy and training centre, the team has been working with fellow pracitioners in the co-creation of the framework of an international advocacy practice manual. This coming week will see AISee launch range of 46 training modules in non-legal advocacy which lead to dual accreditation at different levels at:

•  Introduction to Advocacy
• Peer Advocacy
• Certificate of Advocacy Practice
• Diploma in Professional Advocacy

Each of the modules will reflect a component part of the framework and the for the coming manual.

More information will be available in the coming weeks.