Community Pot Project 2019/20: Action for M.E.
People with M.E. can experience many barriers to accessing health and social care support. We are delighted to have received funding from Healthwatch to deliver advocacy workshops and support to people in BANES, ensuring they have their voices heard and rights respected when it comes to care.
Action for M.E.’s purpose is to end the ignorance, injustice and neglect experienced by people with M.E. They do this by providing the support needed now to improve the lives of 250,000 children and adults with M.E. in the UK while working to secure change for the future.
They restructured on 1 April to respond to the increased demand for services as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic and launched an integrated Crisis, Support and Advocacy Service to meet the needs of people across the UK. Alongside their support service, they inspire others to take action through their policy, influencing and education work with health and social care providers, and invest in change through funding PhD studentships and working collaboratively to increase funding and interest in M.E. research.
The aim of the project
Action for M.E. will address health and social inequalities for adults with M.E. They will do this by:
- Facilitating two self-advocacy workshops for up to 24 people in total to develop self-advocacy skills and collate data about people’s experiences of health and social care services in B&NES. They will be provided online to enable those who are more severely affected and are housebound to participate
- Provide direct, one-to-one casework/issues-based advocacy to 15 adults with M.E. to help them redress barriers to accessing health and social care services and support
- Use the views, wishes, feelings and experiences of people participating in the workshops and advocacy, alongside data from Action for M.E.’s ‘Big Survey’ (2019) with over 4,000 people in the UK to feedback to commissioners and service providers, to create systemic impact/influence from service provision
Talk to us
What are your experiences of using services in BANES? You can speak to one of the team or provide feedback online. Giving feedback, both good and bad, can help improve services. #BecauseWeAllCare
