Self-advocacy

Effective rehabilitation prepares individuals to provide their own disability-related care and/or to supervise others in doing so and to advocate for themselves. During or after a major disaster, people with disabilities need to use their self-advocacy skills to get the assistance they need. For example, individuals should be certain that their caregivers are not separated from them. They should also be assertive in finding out whether specific congregate situations can meet their individual needs and, if not, what other resources are available. 

These last two points - communication and democracy - combine to form the need for self-advocacy, and it is this important facet of inclusion which is discussed next. 

On the question of how schools can move towards achieving self-advocacy for the children they educate. Gamer and Sandow (1995) make some useful practical suggestions. They note the value of various aspects of school life which can promote self-advocacy, such... 

Estabhshing a circle of fiiends in the inclusive classroom can be one way of addressing this difficulty. Such a circle functions ideally not oidy as a means of mutual support but as a way of promoting challenge and self-advocacy. It may also be used for making action plans -that is, enabling teacher, class, family and student to plan the individual s curriculum jointly (see O Brien and Forest, 1989). The initiation of such a circle should take place before the child s arrival in school, and can involve support for parents from a network in the community, and the planning of a welcome for the child in the first few days of attendance. 

As we noted in chapter 1, the principle of self-advocacy is one against which the activities of any inclusive project must be judged. Consistent with the notion of inclusion is the principle that children and young people should be allowed and enabled to determine their own future, and that they should have a say in the way that their schooling proceeds. The alternative to self-advocacy, as Mittler (1996) points out, is a continuation of a situation in which professionals dominate decision-making about people with disabilities. In such a situation, children s abilities are often underestimated and they are put in situations which are inappropriate and in which they are open to indignity and injustice. 

Mittler (1996 280) quotes from the FEU (1990) the core components of self-advocacy, namely... 

Mason and Rieser (1995) emphasise that the needs of disabled students as individuals cannot be met unless they are encouraged to have the confidence to explain the personal implications of their disablement and discuss the sort of support they feel they need. A school pohcy addressing the aspects of self-advocacy outlined below would, they suggest, help to nurture this kind of confidence ... 

While the emphasis here is on ways of enabling self-advocacy for children with disabilities, the ethic of self-advocacy apphes with equal force to all children in an inclusive school. Indeed, it is only through equality of approach that children with special needs will not be identified through the singular use of a procedure especially for them. 

The entitlement to self-advocacy - or rather the lack of entitlement - afforded to children and young people in the UK is brought into focus if the legislative framework here is compared with that operating in Massachusetts in the USA. There, the particular version of PL 94-142 (the Education for All Handicapped Children Act) is known as Chapter 766 and it contains the following provisions for students who are over fourteen (taken from Vaughan and Shearer, 1986) ... 

Techniques of communication are indeed important for self-advocacy in schools. However, perhaps more fundamental to the development of practice which articulates the feelings and desires of the student involved are core changes to the way that the learning process at school is conceived. A key development in enabling self-advocacy, therefore. 

The title of a chapter by Walsh (1993), How disabling any handicap is depends on the attitudes and actions of others , makes clear the importance of being able to speak up for oneself enough to influence those attitudes and actions. The author, a disabled ex-student, describes how her parents encouraged all their children to think hard about their own needs and interests and to communicate about these needs and interests to other people. She was able, perhaps unusually, to carry this process into school life and, with her family s backing, to challenge staff decisions made for her, for example that she couldn t do sport or learn Japanese. Involvement in discussions about subject choice is a crucial area for self-advocacy policies in schools. 

There are few illustrations in the hterature of the direction in which school-based advocacy proj ects might go. Gamer and Sandow (1995) make some helpfiil suggestions on the way that self-advocacy can be developed in schools, highlighting the importance of promoting effective school councils (as opposed to notional ones), and communication systems with parents and children. 

A self-advocacy organisation run by and for people with learning difficulties. Has a range of publications, runs conferences and offers training. 

FEU 1990)Developing Self-advocacy Skills with People with Disabilities, London Further Education Unit. 

Gamer, P. and Sandow, S. (eds) (1995) Advocacy, Self-advocacy and Special Needs, London David Fuhon. 

Preparing for self-advocacy , in B. Carpenter, R. Ashdown and K. Bovair (eds)Enabling... 

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