Lamp appoints Salika Elyas to strengthen community mental health advocacy team

Lamp has appointed Salika Elyas as its new community mental health advocate. Salika’s appointment boosts the charity’s team to six full- and part-time advocates. She will help Lamp to support an increasing number of people across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland who require independent advocacy services to help them with their mental health treatment and care.

Salika joins Lamp from her previous role as an NHS complaints advocate for POhWER, where she helped patients, family members and carers with complaints around their treatment or care.

Prior to that, she was a team support worker for Leicester City Council’s social services. Salika was also a manager and senior sales consultant for a local estate agency where she focused on lettings, the Dubai sector and managing third party relationships with the City Council’s housing department, for example.

Commenting on her new role, Salika said:

“As a community mental health advocate, I’ll be dealing with vulnerable people who may need support with any aspect of their mental health journey – whether that’s with their treatment, care or others. We’re aiming to help people to empower themselves and following my own previous health issues, I’m keen to give back to the wider community who helped me and offer support for individuals who may not currently have the capacity to help themselves.”

Emily Coates, Lamp’s Head of Advocacy added: added:

“Salika has a strong advocacy background and will bring this experience, understanding, engagement and empathy to the Lamp team. Her appointment will strengthen our advocacy resources at a time when we’re seeing an unprecedented demand for our services.”