1. Beginning the
difficult debate
The DADHC DG invited a
small group of organizations to a
pre-announcement briefing on 1st November. PDCN
was one of them. Among other purposes, the
briefing was intended to be a 'confidence
building measure'. At that briefing a commitment
was given by departmental representatives to
organise what became an "Advocacy/Information
Workshop" on 26th November. The participants
from the sector were AQA, BIA, CID, Disability
Council, Disability Safeguards Coalition, IDRS,
Illawarra Disability Trust, NCOSS, PDCN and PWD.
Disability Services Aboriginal Corporation and
MDAA were invited to attend but were unable to
do so.
The department issued a
communiqué and notes of the meeting were
prepared from comments recorded on a white
board. Both these documents have been circulated
to PDCN Management Committee members.
The DADHC initiated
workshop was intended to stimulate debate. It
begins a process rather than ends it. It is
conceivable that the debate could take two
years. Not all of that debate will be easy for
disability advocacy, disability information or
disability service providers all of the time.
For that reason, if no other, it seems prudent
to flag at the outset what might be some prickly
issues for all of us as we develop new strategic
directions for disability advocacy and
information services.
There are at least three
big questions that we ought to get clear in our
minds if we are to engage constructively with
the debate that is about to commence:
- What do we mean by
advocacy?
- What's our view of the
relationship between advocacy and
information?
- What about the
relationship between advocacy and service
provision?
2. What do mean by
advocacy?
Participants in the
workshop on 26th November agreed that the
workshop was neither the time nor the place to
debate what constitutes or does not constitute
advocacy. That was a reasonable position to
adopt at the workshop. It is not, however, a
position that can be sustained indefinitely.
If we are going to work
together through a debate about advocacy, which
will sometimes be difficult, the disability
community is going to have to try to reach
agreement about what we mean by "advocacy". Or
we are going to have to agree that we cannot
agree. What we must not do is use the language
of advocacy and definitions, which underpin that
language, as if we are all talking about the
same things. It is crystal clear that we do not
all agree about what is or is not an appropriate
definition of an advocacy service. Our sector is
going to have to tackle this unresolved
question. The sooner we do so, the
better.
I'm not going to attempt
to define anything here, in what is intended to
be a brief paper that raises some questions.
Nevertheless, it seems useful to re-restate some
principles that PDCN subscribes to. In doing so,
however, I can only acknowledge that not every
organization currently funded under the
disability advocacy and information programme
may feel entirely able to sign up to these
principles. That, I feel, merely confirms the
need for us to have the debate:
- Advocacy must be
independent;
- Advocacy must be
autonomous;
- Advocacy must be on
the side of the person or people with
disability;
- Advocacy must focus on
the fundamental human needs and/or rights and
interests of people or persons;
- Advocacy should have a
clear value base of social justice and full
inclusion of people with disability as
contributing/participating members of the
community;
- Advocacy is about
achieving justice;
- Advocacy is about
achieving equity;
- Advocacy must minimise
conflict of interest;
- Advocacy must remain
loyal and accountable to the disadvantaged
party over the long term where necessary;
- Advocacy is distinct
from service delivery;
- Advocacy is not
service provision or personal care
support.
(Slightly revised from The
National Advocacy Workshop "core principles",
June 1994. The key revision is to remove "strive
to" from the first 3 bullet points.)
To the core principles
above I would add the helpful comments by Robyn
Banks and Rosemary Kayess in 'Disability
Advocacy: Too Much Talk and Not Enough Action'
that the goal of advocacy should be to achieve
far-reaching social change through the removal
of disabling barriers and that Government should
support a strong advocacy sector founded on
commitments to:
- Self-determination by
people with disability
- Accountability of
individual advocates (and advocacy
organisations)
- Systemic change rather
than 'fire fighting' and/or crisis avoidance
/ resolution.
To which components I
would add the simple but necessary requirement
that in advocacy, as in everything to do with
our lives, there should be "nothing about us
without us". It ought not to have to be restated
but, if we're about to conduct a far-reaching
reform of disability advocacy sector, we need to
ensure that people with disability are centrally
involved in that debate and in the majority
wherever decisions that involve the sector are
taken about the strategy.
The really difficult
consequence that flows from signing up to the
principles and parameters outlined above is that
not everything that calls itself advocacy in NSW
fits the description. What, therefore, does the
sector do?
3. The relationship
between advocacy and information
services
Advocacy is a good thing.
Information is a good thing.
Advocacy and information
are not, however, the same. A very strong
argument can be made that information is
essential to good advocacy work. An information
service is not, however, and cannot be the same
thing as an advocacy service. Our sectors must
be clear about the distinction between the two
types of services. That probably means that in
setting new directions we must all acknowledge
that we are talking about distinct, sometimes
closely related strands, modules, themes or
components of a broader picture. The development
of new strategic directions for advocacy
services and information services ought to be
autonomous and independent of each other. We
should collaborate and keep one another informed
but we should recognise that a line does exist
between the two types of activity. Identifying
and respecting that line benefits both
sectors.
4. The relationship
between advocacy and service
provision
The whole community has to
find a way to deal with what could prove to be a
fault line in the sector as it is currently
organised and funded in NSW. There is a simple
question that needs to be asked and answered,
not asked and fudged:
- Is it consistent with
the principles and parameters above for any
individual organization to strive to be a
disability service provider and a disability
advocacy service provider?
Different organizations in
the NSW sector will adopt different positions in
response to this question but we must not avoid
a serious debate here because we fear we might
not agree. For what it's worth, as someone who
has worked as both a service provider and an
advocate in disability and non-disability
sectors, I think it is best for organizations to
concentrate on their core business and operate
to their best ability in the core business of
their choosing. That means, I believe, service
providers should provide services and advocates
should advocate. We should respect and value
each other's contribution but it's best not to
try to do both at the same time.
Dougie Herd
PDCN Executive Officer
4th December 2001
