The role of a Citizen Advocacy Office or program is to make many ‘good’ matches between a Protégé (the person being protected by the relationship) and a Citizen Advocate. By ‘good’ we mean there is every chance the relationship will be successful in terms of the advocate’s ability to understand and respond to the plight of the protégé and the potential that the relationship will be long-term.
Thus, the CA office or its staff do not conduct advocacy themselves, but instead recruit citizens who will conduct that advocacy personally themselves. In doing so, they are ensuring a vulnerable person is receiving the most powerful advocacy available: one without conflicts of interest, one that is independent to act and cannot be swayed by pressure or connection to service providers, and one that is long-term and built on a freely given relationship as opposed to the vagaries of a paid role.
Note; Citizen Advocacy is not opposed to other forms of (even paid) advocacy. CA even believes that people are so vulnerable as to need protection via an array of advocacy measures. However, it believes any system of advocacy would be very much weakened by the absence of citizen advocacy.
