AFDO has agreed to produce or facilitate the production of articles for the National Link Disability Magazine. Below is the first article written by our Chair, Samantha Jenkinson that features in the April edition. Look out for future articles and specific AFDO conference advertising. We would like to Thank Denny Rosey – Link Disability Magazine Editor - for the opportunity to contribute to Link.
Standing up for the rights of people with disability: From advocacy to inclusion.
by Samantha Jenkinson, AFDO Chair
What do people with disability know about advocacy? Or the general public for that matter?
If you have a look in the dictionary or on the Internet you can find lots of definitions of advocacy. You can also find lots of discussion about the types of advocacy there are available. Put simply an advocate is someone who speaks on behalf of someone else.
People with disability experience discrimination, and barriers to participation everyday. Some to the degree that it is considered abuse or neglect, and most missing out on some human rights.
Many people with disability need help to know what their rights are and to stand up for their rights. Sometimes people have a friend or family member or volunteer who can speak on their behalf. They may not even think of it as advocacy, but just helping out.
People with disability stand up for themselves all the time but don't always call it advocacy or self-advocacy.
In Australia in 2003 there were 2.6 million people with disability under age 65, and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has estimated that 677,700 of these people had a severe or profound disability.
How many of these two and a half million people with disability needed support from an advocate through a funded organisation? When you feel you are not being listened to and others aren't giving credit to your choices and decisions then often this type of support is needed. It is a full time job just understanding the maze that is our service system in the disability sector, and even more to get through the bureaucracy of generic services. Add on top the discrimination experienced when accessing generic services due to peoples lack of understanding about disability and it is no wonder many people with disability need an advocate.
In fact our complicated service system and the lack of understanding of disability in the general community means that often people with disability are not listened to if they don't have an 'advocate' speaking for them.
So what do people with disability get out of advocacy? An individual would hope to get their issue heard and resolved. It is hoped they will learn about their rights and know that someone will listen to them. It is hoped that the next time they are faced with discrimination or an abuse of their rights they will feel more able to speak up for themselves. It is hoped that the advocate has educated the service provider, or government department, or business so that next time they encounter a person with disability the same problems do not arise.
What often happens is that individual advocates and individuals standing up for themselves often find they are experiencing the same barriers over and over. This is when systemic advocacy is needed to change the way things work so the same problems don't keep occurring.
Systemic advocacy is advocating to change the system to benefit more than one person and to benefit future users of the system. There are different levels of systemic advocacy though. There is systemic advocacy:
People with disability are an extremely diverse group. How do you represent people with disability on these issues that affect us all differently?
When you look at a lot of issues, no matter what level it may be at, you can see some root causes that keep coming up. Attitudes, physical access, poor or inaccessible communication, poverty, segregation etc. Addressing the root causes of an issue is called radicalism, radical meaning root. Whoever you are advocating to if you are advocating systemically then I believe you should be radical.
In the disability sector itself there are barriers which make it difficult to do effective radical systemic advocacy. Barriers for the sector are information sharing and giving room to diversity. Advocacy organisations and peak bodies representing different groups of people