Advocacy and Navigation

Sometimes people don't need another service. They need somebody beside them.

Systems are complicated at the best of times.

Try navigating housing, treatment, benefits, safeguarding, social care, probation, healthcare or family services while experiencing addiction, recovery, trauma or family crisis and they can become almost impossible.

That's where we come in.

KF provides independent, lived-experience-informed advocacy and navigation for people directly and indirectly affected by substance use.

We don't take over people's voices.

We help people find them.

What we do

Our advocacy can include:

• Attending professional and multi-agency meetings

• Helping people understand letters, assessments and processes

• Preparing for difficult meetings and appointments

• Supporting communication with professionals

• Helping people identify what they're actually asking for

• Signposting and making supported referrals

• Treatment and recovery navigation

• Social care and safeguarding advocacy

• Family support and navigation

• Housing and homelessness support

• Benefits, practical and financial signposting

• Healthcare navigation

• Support around criminal justice and probation pathways

• Supporting people leaving prison to reconnect with recovery and community provision

• Helping people understand what services exist and how to access them

• Challenging stigma and advocating for fair treatment when necessary

Sometimes advocacy is a formal meeting.

Sometimes it's sitting next to somebody while they make a phone call they've been avoiding for three weeks.

Both matter.

Through our developing lived-experience navigator pathways, alongside partners across Derbyshire, we also want to strengthen continuity between prison, probation, treatment, mental health, housing and community recovery.

Because releasing somebody from service with a handful of telephone numbers isn't a recovery pathway.

Neither is referring someone between five services and assuming they'll somehow join the dots themselves.

Bridging the gaps

One of KF's greatest strengths is that we work across traditional service boundaries.

We can be the consistent person when several different professionals or services are involved. We can help translate what systems are saying to people — and equally importantly, help systems understand what people are actually saying.

Our lived experience means we understand how intimidating those systems can feel when it's your family, your children, your housing or your recovery being discussed.

Our ambition is to develop this further through dedicated Lived Experience Navigators, strengthening pathways across Derbyshire and ensuring fewer people fall through the gaps between services.

Because being difficult to fit into a system shouldn't make somebody difficult to help.