Citizen's Advocacy...

The Citizen Advocacy movement  started in America in the 1970s.  Parents  who had  sons and daughters with learning disabilities were concerned about who would advocate for them when they died. The Principles of Citizen Advocacy were  set down by  Wolf Wolfensberger, he is the Director of the Institute for Human Service Leadership, Planning and Change Agentry, Syracuse University , New York. He is the author of Social Valorisation theory and has written extensively about the threats to the lives of people with disability and other marginalised groups.

 

 

Citizen Advocacy is a movement which seeks to promote , protect and defend the rights and interests of people with learning disabilities.

 

Society’s response  to people who have learning disabilities has been to segregate them from their community and congregate them together. For example people who have a learning disability spend their time and live with other people who have a learning disability regardless of whether they feel any affinity for one another. This gives them little opportunity to build up networks of friends whom they can turn to for help or to share celebrations. Segregation also gives the opportunity for myths and assumptions to grow around people who are seen as “different”.

 

Citizen Advocacy works towards inclusion for everyone. An ordinary member of the community creates a relationship with a vulnerable person and discovers ways to understand, respond to and represent that person’s interests as they would their own.

 

People are brought together by citizen advocacy partnerships within their local communities. The supported person is known as the partner and the person providing the support is known as their advocate.

 

Citizen advocates are competent ordinary people who are not “disability experts”. They make a personal commitment to stand by their partner, defend their rights and protect their interests as if they were their own...