Individual Advocacy
Individual advocacy is when an advocate supports an individual person to stand up for their rights and needs.
The Department of Communities funds CoMHWA’s independent advocacy service to help people with psychosocial disability/mental health challenges who face complex issues or who are unable to advocate for themselves, to access advocacy support. Advocacy needs can be broad and unique to each individual. Advocacy support is available for a single issue only, however people may complete an additional referral once their first advocacy issue has been completed.
Our advocates have lived/living experience of mental health challenges and distress.
Our team aims to support you to understand your rights and identify how these rights can be met and upheld.
How can we help you?
Whilst we provide advocacy in relation to a range of issues, our team has a special interest and experience within:
- Mental health services (including hospital inpatient and community mental health)
- Access to justice
- Matters relating to Guardianship and Administration
- Accessing your medical records and understanding your rights under the Freedom of Information Act.
Unfortunately, our service cannot assist on matters relating to:
- NDIS
- Government payments (Centrelink, Disability Support Pension, etc)
- Employment
- Disability service complaints (however we provide guidance where possible)
If our service is unable to assist you, we will explain why and do our best to find you a service that can.
Who do we support?
We are funded to support individuals with a psychosocial disability who are living in the Perth Metro area. Please contact us if you’re not sure if you meet these criteria.
Our advocates work directly with the individual, which means that we are unable to provide advocacy assistance to carers or service providers. Carers and service providers are welcome to assist individual consumers to contact the service.
Accessing the service
Thank you for your patience as we continue to receive high demand for our individual advocacy service. We have made the difficult decision to close the individual advocacy waitlist for a short period.
During this time, we will be continuing to work through our current case load and aim to re-open our waitlist at the end of June.
If you are looking for alternatives to CoMHWA’s advocacy support, or mental health service navigation in general, we encourage you to reach out to Peer Pathways on 9477 2809.
Alternatively, please click here to download this handy resource on disability advocacy services.
If you’re unsure what kind of support you’re looking for, you are also welcome to call the CoMHWA office on 9258 8911 or email admin@comhwa.org.au and we can point you in the right direction.
Please note that neither CoMHWA Admin or Peer Pathways can provide direct advocacy services.
