The Family Center on Technology and Disability

Re:Self-Advocacy

This message was posted by jjohnson@faast.org on Dec 15, 2006.

What a great point - and what a wonderful success story.

You are absolutely right about the importance of learning self-advocacy. I have found over the years that most of the issues we work on at the state level come from issue that people have encountered at the grass roots level. When a self-advocate bumps up against a barrier that can't be solved at the local level, the role of an effective disability coalition should be to examine that issue and develop strategies to overcome it and take it to policymakers at the state level.

Ineffective (and sometimes damaging) policies are usually the result of people making policy decisions at the 30,000 ft level, without the input from the people on the ground to tell them how those policies will actually play out in real life. When self-advocates can demonstrate an ability to constructively communicate and collaborate with policymakers, they are more likely to be asked to come to the table when policy decisions are being made, which should result in better decisionmaking.