Individual Health Advocacy Service
What is Individual Health Advocacy?
Individual health advocacy is when an advocate supports a person to stand up for their healthcare rights. An advocate is a person who offers independent support to someone who feels they are not being heard.
A Health Consumers’ Council advocate will stand with you, or speak up on your behalf, to make sure you are being heard.
We will support you to resolve issues or concerns, work with you if you believe you have been treated unfairly, and help you build your capacity to ensure your healthcare rights are upheld.
Health Consumers’ Council provides a free individual health advocacy service to anyone in Western Australia who is having an issue in the health system. You don’t need to be a Health Consumers’ Council member to access this service.
An advocate will:
- Be empathetic and work with you
- Provide support to help you have your needs met within the health system
Please be aware that we cannot:
- Provide medical, legal or financial advice
- Investigate complaints or require services to take action
- Manage or coordinate services (such as finding you a house or applying for a benefit)
- Provide you with personal care or support workers
- Provide mediation or counselling
- Provide crisis support
- Make decisions for you
- Provide support outside of WA
If we are unable to support you, we will explain why and do our best to connect you with a service that can help.
For translating and interpreting services, please call TIS National on
or ask us to organise this for you.