What is Advocacy?
Advocacy in the social and health care sector can be defined as the support that people need who are unable to take care of themselves or ensure their best interests. Social workers ensure the best interests of such people are taken care of. The importance of the advocacy workers lies in ensuring that the voices of such people are also heard and they are treated with care and utmost respect (ena.co.uk 2022).
Advocacy means helping people to speak up and make their voice heard. Advocacy is defined as allowing those vulnerable or disadvantaged people to make their choices and encouraging them to make their own decisions and exercise their rights to have their own choice or make decisions. Through advocacy, social workers aim at building self-esteem and re-building self-confidence in them. Advocacy is not about letting people talk or having a meeting with them and imposif views on the vulnerable people considering that they are unable to make their own decisions. Advocacy is also not about quickly fixing problems, (Oliver and Sapey 2018).
Advocacy is all about promoting empowerment. The concept means helping the vulnerable people in gaining their power by helping them to make their own decisions and choices that they think is best for their interest.
Advocacy also ensures development of autonomy. The aim of advocacy workers to ensure that the vulnerable people are self-determined and can direct their life in terms of their own choice.
Advocacy is involved in the community. Social workers are aimed at making the vulnerable community participate in social matters.
It also encourages the people to enjoy equal rights and become valued citizens (Oliver and Sapey 2018).
Advocacy is a method of promoting empowerment in society. There are various forms of advocacy. Some of them are as follows:
- Self-advocacy
- Representative advocacy like Group advocacy, Peer advocacy
- Professional advocacy
Self-advocacy is where a person speaks for herself or himself. In this is the best kind of advocacy where the person feels empowered and they are willing to speak up for themselves and make their choices (scie.org.uk 2022).
This means where someone else is encouraged to speak on behalf of the person as the person is unable to speak up for himself. (bild.org.uk, 2022),
Empowerment is about making people with disabilities gain control over their lives and to maximize the quality of their lives. Empowerment is about enabling them and helping them gain the power to have control over their lives and let them have their choices. Autonomy means establishing the true sense of inclusion and helping them to be independent. Role of advocacy is to empower the people and make them hopeful for their future. For example, it is the role of empowerment to make the individuals learn to express their anger and think critically thereby making them see things differently (Oliver and Sapey 2018).
There have been several changes made in the Irish legislation which works for the vulnerable people or people with disability. The Legislations that safeguard the rights of them includes: Equality Act 2000-2004, Employment Equality Acts, Citizens Information Act 2007, European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003, Assisted Decision Making (Capacity) Act 2016, UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also works for the people with disability. Through these legislation acts, the social workers work towards gaining support for the people with disability and make their voices heard and exercise their rights in the society.
Promoting Empowerment and Autonomy
It is the role of the social workers to promote quality of life of the people with disability and help them learn skills that will help them define the importance of their lives. Social workers who are working for advocacy of the diabeldc people are playing an important role in helping them to come out of a closet which they have or feel to have got confined in. social workers promoting advocacy also helps in increasing the positive self-image among the vulnerable people and also help them fight the stigma that is associated with them (Oliver and Sapey 2018).
Conclusion
Hence, it can be concluded that advocacy for people with disability is important as it promotes better quality of life among them and helps them make their own choices as they are best judge of their own needs and thus, they need to be encouraged to take initiatives to support themselves. Advocacy involves helping the people with disability to make their choices and make their own decisions. Advocacy promotes human rights being achieved, and inclusion.
Disability affects an individual’s quality of life throughout their lifespan. Many children who experience disability during childhood need care throughout their lifetime. There are specialized outpatient services available to serve the disability throughout the lifespan. Disabiltyhas its challenges that enompases every lifespan stage. Thus, Social care workers have a crucial role to play when they are working with people of different age groups. The paper will focus on models of support and challenges of different age group.
Lifespan can be defined as the study of the development of an individual from conception to their old age. The definition establishes the fact that every person paasses through various developmental phases throughout their lifetime. According to Erikson, the oral-sensory stage develops from birth to 18 months and ends with old age when they might feel satisfaction, and fulfillment. Anal stage marks the infants development of autonomy or shame and doubt. Then at a later stage, they develop independence. During the Adolescent phase, they suffer from identity versus role confusion. During young adulthood, they experience Intimacy or isolation (Maree 2021).
There are various models which explain disability and the role of social workers to help the people with disability and advocate their needs. Disability is often stigmatized and thus, when social workers work for the development and advocacy of the population, the Social model promotes that disability is socially constructed and not the problem of the individual. Individuals with disabilities can continue to enjoy human rights and happy life. Medical model of disability explains all aspects that the persons with disability cannot do, and thus social workers provide them motivation and promote their strengths (pwd.org.au 2022)
Disability refers to the interaction between the health conditions of the individual and their health conditions. Disability has its own characteristic challenges which are specific to their age.
In early childhood, children with disabilities suffer from physical and emotional stress. They may suffer from new impairments and fail to get proper medication which enhances their disability (who.int 2022). Later childhood can suffer from social and environmental barriers inside or outside the school system. Exclusion from schools of students with disabilities might occur. Adulthood and later adulthood with old age also suffers challenges, (Nielsen et al. 2018).
Different Forms of Advocacy
Social models suggest that people are disabled more due to the barriers that are imposed on them by society than by their physical features. Social models provide support to the challenged people by identifying the challenges that they face and thus removing the barriers to make them more independent (afdo.org.au 2022).
The model is at the core of the social work values. This approach reduces and urges to eliminate oppression from getting service access (basw.co.uk 2022).
Role of family is to promote inclusion, provision of respect to choice.
Being an advocate, it is the role to promote support to the needs of vulnerable people. Role of advocacy is to bring change in the lives of the people who are often discriminated against or disempowered of their human rights due to their disabled physical or mental state. It is the role of advocacy to promote welfare of the individuals. As social workers, it is important to enable individuals with challenges to get access to various services that they are entitled to for example, social workers help people with substance abuse get relevant substance-abuse therapies,( Weiss?Gal 2017).
Social legislations are used to empower the social worker and legislations act as the tool for advocating and empowering the basic human rights among the disabled individuals. Capacity Act is issued for advocating in favor of the disadvantaged people, and empowering them to protect the individuals. The act encourages them to make their own decisions about what treatment or care they expect to get for themselves. The principle of the act is person-centered. It promotes least restrictive care and is the most sought after social work practice. The act has five principles, (skillsforcare.org.uk 2022).
Conclusion
It can be concluded that individuals with disabilities face challenges and the challenges are often subjective to the age group they belong to. For example, in later childhood, children might get stigmatized due to their disability in their schools, and inclusive policies might not be used. This might lead the parents to not continue with the education of the children. In later adulthood, they might be stigmatized at the workplace, for example not getting recruited.
References
afdo.org.au, 2022. Social Model Of Disability | Australian Federation of Disability Organisations. [online] Afdo.org.au. Available at: <https://www.afdo.org.au/social-model-of-disability/#:~:text=The%20social%20model%20of%20disability%20says%20that%20people%20are%20disabled,can’t%20do%20certain%20things.> [Accessed 24 April 2022].
basw.co.uk, 2022. [online] Basw.co.uk. Available at:
<https://www.basw.co.uk/system/files/resources/basw_25529-2_0.pdf> [Accessed 24 April 2022].
bild.org.uk, 2022. bild. [online] bild | Our vision is a society where everyone can enjoy the same rights and opportunities. Available at:
<https://www.bild.org.uk/> [Accessed 24 April 2022].
ena.co.uk, 2022. What is an advocate in health and social care? | ENA. [online] ENA Care Group. Available at: <https://ena.co.uk/news/what-is-an-advocate-in-health-and-social-care/#:~:text=Health%20and%20social%20care%20advocacy,and%20treated%20with%20appropriate%20respect> [Accessed 24 April 2022].
Maree, J.G., 2021. The psychosocial development theory of Erik Erikson: critical overview. Early Child Development and Care, 191(7-8), pp.1107-1121.
Nielsen, K., Andria-Habermann, K., Richards, T., Abbott, R., Mickail, T. and Berninger, V., 2018. Emotional and behavioral correlates of persisting specific learning disabilities in written language during middle childhood and early adolescence. Journal of psychoeducational assessment, 36(7), pp.651-669.
Oliver, M. and Sapey, B., 2018. Social work with disabled people. Macmillan International Higher Education.
pwd.org.au, 2022. Social model of disability – People with Disability Australia. [online] Pwd.org.au. Available at:
<https://pwd.org.au/resources/disability-info/social-model-of-disability/> [Accessed 24 April 2022].
scie.org.uk, 2022. Advocacy: inclusion, empowerment and human rights. [online] Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). Available at: <https://www.scie.org.uk/advocacy/commissioning/inclusion> [Accessed 24 April 2022].
skillsforcare.org.uk, 2022. [online] Skillsforcare.org.uk. Available at:
<https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Documents/Learning-and-development/social-work/psw/Pt1-Mental-Capacity-Act-in-Practice-Accessible.pdf> [Accessed 24 April 2022].
Weiss?Gal, I., 2017. Social workers’ policy engagement: A review of the literature. International Journal of Social Welfare, 26(3), pp.285-298.
who.int, 2022. [online] Apps.who.int. Available at:
<https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/75355/9789241504065_eng.pdf;sequence=1> [Accessed 24 April 2022].
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