Changes to Lamp’s services

Client demand has significantly increased over the last six months and client needs have become even more complex. In addition, other services have longer waiting lists which impact our ability to advocate efficiently due to a lag in appointments from NHS clinics and services.

The Lamp advocacy team was operating on an urgent priority basis. However, due to the continued high service demand and increased workload, we now need to change the way that we manage referrals and cases. To ensure that access to the service is fair, equitable and accessible, from 1 September 2023 we will be limiting the active advocacy case hours to eight hours per individual case.

What does this mean?

· Each referral will be allocated eight hours of active support from the point of allocation to an advocate. This time includes all advocacy support, help with calling medical professionals, but excludes advocate travel and case recording time.

· We will be supporting service users to be more empowered to take charge of their issue and reduce the risk of dependency on the service. To do this, we will be offering more tools to help individuals to achieve this.

· Once the allocated eight hours of support is finished, service users will not be excluded from our service. If the service user needs more support, they can refer back in through our phone, website or Chatbot function, and we will treat the referral as a new case.

· We can only deal with one issue at a time and we are asking service users to prioritise the most important issue that needs support from us. This does not mean that we cannot help with further issues a person has – if there are other issues that a person needs support with, any leftover hours can be utilised for such support, or, if more hours are needed, the person can refer back in.

· We ask that all people referring into our service complete the Welcome Pack documents received via email or post and return them to us. These documents enable us to allocate the case promptly to an advocate. Without these, we will be unable to allocate an advocate.

There may be exceptional circumstances where the eight-hour limit does not apply. It will be at the Head of Advocacy’s discretion as to whether a person will receive additional support outside of the eight-hour limit.

We are confident that this new approach will enable our advocacy team to continue to provide an effective service to existing and new clients.

We appreciate your understanding and ongoing support at this challenging time. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Emily, our Head of Advocacy at emilycoates@lampdirect.org.uk who will be happy to assist.