There are 11 people who work in the Carlisle People First office. First is a group which is run by and for people who are labelled as having a learning difficulty.
Advocacy is about people speaking up and having their own say.
We provide Self, Citizen and Crisis Advocacy and also a Circles of Support scheme throughout North East Cumbria. We started an advocacy group in the local Adult Training Centre but now we meet in the community so that more people can come and we are independent of services. Our organisation has grown a lot over the last seven years. We started with about 100 which we fundraised. In the beginning there were 12 people in the group.