Overview
This document outlines the concept of advocacy, focusing on its three main types—self-advocacy, individual advocacy, and systems advocacy—especially as they relate to people with disabilities and their families.
Types of Advocacy
- Advocacy means promoting the interests or causes of individuals or groups.
- An advocate supports, recommends, or argues for a cause or policy.
- Advocacy is also about empowering people to express their needs and rights.
Self-Advocacy
- Involves individuals communicating and asserting their own interests, needs, and rights.
- Requires understanding personal strengths, needs, goals, and legal rights and responsibilities.
- Entails communicating personal needs and goals to others.
- Fundamentally, self-advocacy is about speaking up for oneself.
Individual Advocacy
- Focuses advocacy efforts on one or two individuals.
- Informal advocacy occurs when parents, friends, family, or agencies support vulnerable people.
- Formal advocacy is provided by organizations with paid staff advocating on behalf of individuals or groups.
Systems Advocacy
- Aims to change policies, laws, or rules affecting people’s lives.
- Targets can include local, state, or national agencies.
- Efforts may focus on changing written or unwritten policies, depending on the problem and authority involved.