This week is Advocacy Awareness Week, a special time to celebrate the power of advocacy in creating positive change, lifting up voices, and building stronger communities. Advocacy is all about speaking up for those who may not always be heard, standing together, and making a difference in ways both big and small.
As part of this week, we’re catching up with Cloverleaf staff members to hear their stories — why they chose advocacy, what it means to them, and what they find most rewarding about being an Advocate.
Today we caught up with Peter Barclay-George, who turned his passion for helping people as a police officer into a new career in advocacy.
How long have you been an Advocate?
I have now been an Advocate for 13 months and have just completed my first Annual Appraisal.
What does advocacy mean to you?
Providing support for others to be able to advocate for themselves, wherever possible, and enabling them to have a voice and positive impact on their own lives.
What first made you interested in becoming an Advocate?
I served as a police officer for 39 years and, on retirement, continued to work in the area of private security. On moving to Yorkshire, that work (mainly in London and abroad) effectively ended due to logistics.
I had a lifetime of experience in helping people, often when they were desperate for help from somewhere and when they were feeling that they were lost and nobody cared. I was looking for something that would allow me to carry on in that vein (preferably without all the chasing people through back gardens, over fences and along alleyways in the middle of the night!) I did some research into the role of an Advocate, which led me to the Cloverleaf website, which led me to the job application.
What do you find most rewarding about being an Advocate?
I don’t see what we do as being an ‘us vs the establishment’ sort of role. I find it rewarding building relationships with both the advocacy partner and the complaints teams and investigators from the PHSO office.
Whilst always being aware of professional boundaries, I find it particularly rewarding when, on speaking to someone from any of the above categories, they sound pleased to hear from me and feel reassured that we are going to deal with things in a professional manner, regardless of the outcome. It is rewarding to know that I can build trust with the people with whom I interact.
