Hellen Madzingira
Senior Individual Advocate at Advocacy WA
What are our Advocates working on?
Over the past two months the bulk of our advocate work was assisting people with disability with income support applications, particularly the disability support pension. Advocates were also busy working on our clients’ NDIS complaints and appeals. This included helping clients put together the required evidence for cases at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
Our Senior Advocate worked on a couple of tricky legal cases involving compensation and negligence. While Advocacy WA cannot offer legal advice, we can support people with disability to correspond with solicitors. We have a very good relationship with South-West Community Legal Centre and Legal Aid.
Advocacy WA is regularly involved in community events such as GrandFamilies Fun Day organised by the City of Bunbury in May. AWA provided educational activities for children as well as information about our services. When asked about events that Hellen attends for AWA she says, “it is lovely to meet with people face to face at these events, as most times contact is over the phone or via emails”.
AWA Advocates will be doing information sessions across the region in May so keep an eye out for dates, times and venues on our Facebook News or website calendar. Click here to find out about workshops coming up next month.
A case example from an Advocate:
A client contacted AWA about their NDIS plan. The plan was full of errors including incorrect goals. Our client had been trying to get the NDIS to amend the errors for some time, however, their requests were ignored or forgotten. Support coordinators and the local area coordinator were unhelpful, so the client came to Advocacy WA.
One of Advocacy WA’s expert advocates got straight on to the NDIS and requested an immediate conference call between the agency, our client, and an advocate. Our advocate worked with the client to develop a list of changes to the plan, most of which were errors made by the NDIS. Our advocate decided to jump the complaint up to a NDIS supervisor, as this would be the fastest way to get a resolution. Sure enough, within 24 hours a NDIS planner contacted our client, apologised for the problems, and amended our client’s plan, post-haste!
Margaret Fogarty
Intake Officer
Advocacy WA is pleased to announce that Margaret Fogarty has joined our team as Intake Officer. Margaret started her journey with us on 27th March 2023 and comes to us with years of experience working as a National Quality Systems Team Leader for SDA homes and Incident Management Officer for a disability service provider. As the Intake Officer, Margaret’s responsibilities will include conducting intake and assessment with AWA clients. Welcome Margaret!