13 Advocacy and Action

Ushvinder Kaur Popli

Contents

1.  Introduction

2.  Definitions of advocacy

3.  Models of advocacy

4.  Forms of advocacy

5.  Advocacy groups

6.  Standards for advocacy services

7.  Advocacy as a tool of social action

8.  Advocacy as identified as a professional tool of social action.

9.  Components of advocacy in social action and social work

10.  Strategies used in advocacy in social action

11.  Summary

1) LEARNING OUTCOMES

After studying this module, you shall be able to

·         Understand the basic concept and context of advocacy

·         Analyse the relevance of advocacy in social work and social action practice and

·         Evaluate the role of advocacy in social change and development

2)  INTRODUCTION

Social workers often work with people who are disempowered and disenfranchised. A core aspect of their role should therefore be to understand peoples need, and work with and on their behalf to help them achieve them to best possible outcomes. Advocacy is a crucial part of this process; it is about taking action to help people say what they want, secure their rights, represent their interests and obtain services they need (Action for Advocacy, 2002).

Advocacy supports a variety of methods through which service user needs can be expressed and includes: self advocacy- where individual are empowered to speak for themselves; group advocacy- where people who share a common experience work together to bring about change; citizen advocacy- where a paid advocate or befriender speaks up on behalf of an individual. These can contribute to change in many levels, for the individual, a defined group, or more structurally, impacting on policy, legislation and the upholding of the basic human rights (Bateman,2000).

Advocacy can take many forms, but mainly it can be divided into two broad types: people who take action for themselves as individuals, or groups; and volunteers or paid professionals speaking up on behalf of others who are unable to do so through difficulties in communication, capacity, discrimination, or powerlessness. The key aspects of advocacy that relate to social work practice are self-advocacy, the role independent advocates, and social workers as play an advocate.

Advocacy is seen as one of the key roles of social worker and social workers are expected to challenge and lobby services in order to ensure fair access and treatment. Social workers are often state officials and must take into account their statutory obligations, budgetary and organizational policies, procedural guidance and their code of practice. All of these may constrain their ability to fully advocate on behalf of the person they are working with (Leadbetter, 2002). Advocacy is taking action to help people say what they want, secure their rights, represent their interests and obtain services they needed.

3) DEFINITIONS OF ADVOCACY

David Brandon defines “advocacy involves a person(s), either a vulnerable individual or group or their agreed representative, effectively pressing their case with influential others, about situations which either affect them directly or, and more usually, trying to prevent proposed changes which will leave them worse off. Both the intent and outcome of such advocacy should be to increase the individual’s sense of power; help them to feel more confident, to become more assertive and gain increased choices” (David Brandon, 2001).

Another definition of “social work advocacy is the exclusive and mutual representation of clients or a cause in a forum attempting to systematically influence decision making in an unjust or unresponsive system” (Schneider & Lester, 2001).

Advocacy can be described “as the process of identifying with and representing a person’s views and concerns, in order to ensure enhanced rights and entitlements, undertaken by someone who has little or no conflict of interest” (Henderson and Pochin, 2001)

“Advocacy is the pursuit of influencing outcomes-including public policy and resource allocation decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions — that directly affect people’s current lives” (Cohen, 2001). Therefore, advocacy can be as a deliberate process of speaking out on issues of concern in order to exert some influence on behalf of ideas or persons.

In short “Advocacy” means:

• Action directed at changing the policies, positions or programs of any type of institution.
• A pleading for, defending or recommending an idea before other people
• Speaking up, drawing a community’s attention to an important issue, and directing decision-makers towards a solution
• Working with other people and organizations to make a difference
• Putting a problem on the agenda, providing a solution to that problem and building support for acting on both the problem and solution.
• Aim to change an organization internally or to alter an entire system.
• Involve many specific, short-term activities to reach a long-term vision of change.
• Consisting of different strategies aimed at influencing decision-making at the organizational, local, provincial, national and international levels
• Including strategies like lobbying; social marketing, information, education and communication (IEC), community organizing, and/or many other tactics
• Process of people participating in decision-making processes that affect their lives

4) MODELS OF ADVOCACY

Prior to considering what works, it is important to establish the key models of advocacy identified within the literature. What follows is an overview of each model and the associated key features. They are mainly categorised in to four. They are,

A. Self-Advocacy Peer Advocacy

Individuals represent and speak up for themselves, with support, either individually or collectively. This support can be in a paid or unpaid. Key features include:

·         Outward-facing model aimed at securing services and supports for the individual.

·         Focus on ensuring the person’s voice is heard

·         Promotes  confidence,  skills  and  knowledge  and  protection  of  individual  rights (Lawton, 2009).

B. Peer Advocacy

The advocate and the person have a common background, for example, they may have shared experience of service provision, i.e. “experts by experience” (Monaghan, 2012). Peer advocacy can be conducted on an individual or collective basis and often develops spontaneously, for example in care homes or day care centres. Key features include:

·         Focused on common problem solving

·         Lessens the imbalance of power between the advocate and their advocacy partner as they have shared experiences

·         Most effectively used with specific groups, for example, people with substance

abuse problems or mental health problems, as they can prefer advocates with similar experiences (SIAA, 2008).

C.  Volunteer Citizen Advocacy

Volunteer Citizen Advocacy involves volunteers (unpaid) who are recruited, trained and matched with an individual -generally only one at a time. It involves a one to-one relationship over an extended period and goes beyond befriending – the volunteer represents the views of the person. The partnership is independent, supported, but not influenced by, the advocacy organisation. Key Features:

·         The relationship between the advocate and the individual (the partnership) is viewed as an outcome in and of itself

·         The relationship continues regardless of any presenting ‘issue’

·         Citizen advocates are suppose to use their own networks, as well as community organisations to support them to develop their social networks.

D. Independent/Professional Advocacy

It’s a partnership between a paid advocate and a person who accesses support. The advocate provides support, information and representation, with the aim of empowering their partner and enabling them to express their needs and choices. This type of advocacy can be undertaken on a short-term or long-term basis. Long-term advocacy work may be required due to changing needs over time and the complexity of issues, for example, with parents with learning disabilities involved in the child protection system. Key features include:

·         Separation from other forms of direct service provision, eg social work

·         Independent governance • Independent funding arrangements (e.g. services are not directly funded by public bodies but via other indirect means, such as pooled budgets)

·         Free from conflict of interest • Individual rather than group advocacy

·         Support often provided on a specialist basis, eg capacity, treatment for mental disorder, child protection issues or for specific groups, eg families and/or carers (Townsley et al, 2009).

E.  Non-Instructed Advocacy

Advocacy can be provided to those who are, for reasons of capacity, unable to personally instruct their advocate. This may be because of the person’s limitations in grasping concepts or because they are not able to make others understand their wishes because of significant communication barriers. Capacity to instruct or understand can be diminished for a number of reasons, for example mental health problems, dementia, acquired brain injury, or learning disabilities. However, it should be noted that having one of these conditions does not automatically mean a person lacks capacity. An advocate will observe the partner and their situation, look for alternative means of communication with the partner, gather information from significant others in the partner’s life, if appropriate, and ensure the partner’s rights are upheld. Key features include:

·         A focus on upholding the persons rights

·         Ensuring fair and equal treatment and access to services

·         Making certain that decisions are taken with consideration for the individual’s unique preferences and perspectives

• Using as a last resort only when all other attempts at communicating and understanding adults wishes have failed
• Trying out a range of methods of communication to ensure the person’s wishes are clear
• Using a number of core qualities of life domains, together with relevant legislation, to make comparisons and consider what quality of life or experiences would be usual and acceptable to the general population.

5) FORMS OF ADVOCACY

There are several forms of advocacy, which each represent a different approach in the way change is brought into society and the most popular form is social justice advocacy. Although it is true, the definitions does not encompass the notions of power relations, people’s participation and a vision of a just society that promoted by social justice advocates. For them, advocacy represents the series of actions taken and issues highlighted to change the “what is” into a “what should be”, considering that this “what should be” is a more decent and a more just society. Those actions, which vary with the political, economical and social environment in which they are conducted, have several points in common. They are:

Advocacy Some of the other forms of advocacy include:

Ideological advocacy: In this approach, groups fights, sometimes during protests, to advance their ideas in the decision-making circles.

Mass advocacy: Is any type of action taken by large groups like petitions, demonstrations, etc.

Interest-group advocacy: Lobbying is the main tool used by interests groups doing mass advocacy. It is a form of action that does not always succeed at influencing political decision-makers as it requires resources and organization to be effective

Bureaucratic advocacy: People considered “experts” have more chance to succeed at presenting their issues to decision-makers. They use bureaucratic advocacy to influence the agenda, however at a slower pace.

Legislative advocacy: Legislative advocacy is the “reliance on the state or federal legislative process” as part of a strategy to create change

Media advocacy: as a “the strategic use of the mass media as a resource to advance a social or public policy initiative”. Public Insurance campaigns illustrate how media advocacy was used to fight alcohol and tobacco-related health issues (Jernigan and Wright, 1996.).

6) ADVOCACY GROUPS

Advocacy is led by advocates or, when they are organized in groups as is the case most of the times advocacy groups.

Advocacy groups are different from political parties, which “seek to influence government policy by governing” (Young and Everritt). They are “any organization that seeks to influence government policy, but not to govern”. This definition includes social movements, sometimes network of organizations that are also focused on encouraging social change. Social movements try to either influence governments or, like the environmental movement, to influence people’s ideas or actions. Today, advocacy groups contribute to democracy in many ways. They have five key functions of advocacy groups:

7) STANDARDS FOR ADVOCACY SERVICES

In order to ensure that advocacy services are provided in a way that effectively meet the needs of people who access support and operate in a way that is underpinned by an evidence base, standards for generic advocacy services have been developed by Action for Advocacy (2006). These standards relate to:

Figure 4 Showing the Standards of Advocacy

These themes are further reflected in the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance (SIAA) and Principles and Standards for Independent Advocacy (SIAA, 2008).

8) ADVOCACY AS A TOOL OF SOCIAL ACTION

Advocacy in social action is pleading and fighting for the service for the client(s), whom the service system rejected by using the agency’s services. Before engaging in advocacy, a worker must be sure that the client(s) desire(s) the worker to intervene.

The client should clearly understand the risk involved and the worker should motivate to use the service(s).

Social action advocacy is exclusive and mutual representation of a client(s) or a cause in a forum, attempting to systematically influence decision making in an unjust or unresponsive system(s). Advocacy as identified as a professional tool of social action.

• 9) COMPONENTS OF ADVOCACY IN SOCIAL ACTION AND SOCIAL WORK

The five key components advocacies in social action are,

1. Cause: Whether advocacy is done on behalf of an individual or population, there is always a party or cause that is to be the beneficiary of advocacy efforts
2. Outcome: Advocacy efforts are done in order to bring about some change in the status of the beneficiary from being able to receive benefits in the event of case advocacy to changing policies on state or national levels in the event of policy advocacy
3. Target Audience: Given the party that is being advocated on behalf of is not considered as being able to bring about these changes in outcomes on their own, advocacy efforts are directed toward specific parties who are considered as able to bringing about these changes in outcomes. This could entail a case worker at a local social service agency helping a client to access services to the United States Congress passing a new law on the provision of services to a certain population.
4. Strategies and Tactics: This consists of the plans and activities that the advocating entity will engage in to hopefully influence the target audience and bring about the desired outcome.
5. Evaluation: This component has typically not been highlighted in the advocacy literature as McNutt (2011) noted. Yet, without this component, the advocating entity will be “flying blind” in terms of having formative and summative feedback about their advocacy efforts.

10) STRATEGIES USED FOR ADVOCACY IN SOCIAL ACTION

The word strategy comes from the Greek word “strategia.” It is a broad plan for achieving an end. Often citizens and their organizations use a combination of several different strategies to achieve their advocacy goals. These advocacy and empowerment strategies are classified into six categories based on their main purpose or core activity. They are:

I.        Building the Constituency for Change: Main purpose is to raise political awareness, organize and mobilize those directly affected by the problem/issue, or

who are interested in it, to get involved and take action.

II.         Co-Operation Strategies: Main purpose is to build collaboration between community groups, the state and/or business sectors to disseminate innovations, provide state services, or improve local infrastructure.

III.         Education Strategies: Main purpose is to educate and raise critical consciousness by providing information and encouraging analysis for the development of policy alternatives; involves strengthening citizens’ capacity to

raise their voices, and to collaborate in the gathering of data to use as evidence to build the case for change.

IV.        Persuasion Strategies: Main purpose is to use information, analysis and citizen mobilization to press for change. Often involves lobbying and using the mass media and new media to influence policy makers and public opinion and create the momentum for change. Strong communication and negotiation skills are the keys to success in using this strategy.

V.        Litigation Strategies: Main purpose is to promote social and economic change by using the court system to test and challenge unfair laws and institutions.

VI.        Confrontation Strategies: Main purpose is to use direct action to challenge and draw attention to negative policy impacts and to bring greater pressure for political change than in other strategies; can involve non-violent or violent approaches to direct action.

11) TACTICS USED FOR ADVOCACY IN SOCIAL ACTION

Tactics are the immediate steps or activities pursued to achieve objectives. Some of advocacy tactics used in social action are,

·         Conscientization and awareness campaigns using popular theatre, puppets, songs

·         Lobbying to influence policymakers or for legislative change

·         Civil disobedience to prompt court action to challenge existing laws

·         Networking and coalition building

·         Co-operation between public and private sector institutions and other civil society groups

·         Mass media events, press conferences, news releases, editorial mailings

·         Coordinated national and international actions: global marches

·         Non-violent direct action: demonstrations, sit-ins, information pickets, hunger strikes, padyatras (foot march)

·         Virtual activism through ICTs: e-petitions, virtual sit-ins, e-actions, e-conferences

·         Participatory action research

·         Public awareness workshops

·         Conferences, seminars, “alternative” summits

·         Public hearings

·         Voter registration and voter education

·         Accountability sessions with government officials, elected representatives

·         Model projects or pilot programs

·         “Alternative” policy reports and budgets

·         Public opinion polling

·         Letter writing to editors, decision-makers, policymakers

·         Petitions

·         Consumer and other economic boycotts

·         Eco-terrorism: blockades

·         Stockholder buy-ins

·         Charters (Peaceful Schools)

·         Fact sheets and information kits

·         Buttons, T-shirts, colour ribbons for visual identity with a campaign

12) SUMMARY

Social action as a practice is not nascent in India. The tradition of influencing public policy, for eradicating social evils, goes back to the nineteenth century social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy. The legacy of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi, Thanthai Periyar and Ambedkar gives significant insight into the indigenous and effective advocacy methods practised. In India, there have been social action efforts on issues related to environmental degradation, rights of the Dalits and Tribes, women’s rights and civil rights, nuclear installations, land alienation of tribes, child labour, unorganised working sector, drug and forest policies and many other issues. In many of the relatively effective social action efforts, mass mobilisation, improvised methods of non-violent protest and persuasion, public interest litigation, legislative advocacy, lobbying the bureaucrats and media advocacy were strategically and simultaneously used to build up an effective public argument. In some of the ongoing campaigns like Save Narmada Movement, grassroots mobilisation was combined with other advocacy strategies such as activating global pressure through international advocacy groups and development lobbies (Srinivasan 1992).

References

• Ø Action for Advocacy (2002) The Advocacy Charter. London: Action for advocacy
• Ø Advocacy (2008) Encyclopaedia of Social Work 20th Edition (Eds) Terry Mizrahi& Larry E. Davis, Volume 1, Oxford University Press (Pp. 59-65).
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• Ø Bateman, N. (2000) Advocacy skills for Health and Social Care Professionals, London: Jassica Kingsely Publishers.
• Ø Lawton A (2006) Supporting self-advocacy, Stakeholder Position Paper 06 London: SCIE http://www.scie.org.uk/ publications/position papers/pp06.asp
• Ø McNutt, J. (2011). Is social work advocacy worth the cost? Issues and barriers to an economic analysis of social work political practice. Research on Social Work Practice, 21(4), 397–403.
• Ø Monaghan J (2012) Advocacy resource exchange: Achieving excellence in advocacy services: an evaluation report 2009-2012 www.advocacyresource.org.uk/file. php?filename=/…2012-1.pdf

• Ø SIAA (2008) Principles and standards for independent advocacy, Edinburgh: SIAA: http://www.siaa.org.uk/images/ stories/siaaprinciples%26standardsforweb.pdf
• Ø Srinivasan S. (1992) Content and Context of Advocacy in India, DISHA, Ahmedabad.
• Ø Townsley R,  Marriot  A  and  Ward  L  (2009) Access  to  independent  advocacy:  An evidence review, London: Office for Disability Issues http://odi.dwp.gov.uk/docs/res/iar/iar-full.pdf

• Ø Leadbetter, M (2002). Empowerment and Advocacy, in R. Adam, L. Damnclli and M. Payne (eds), Social Work Theme Issues and Critical Debates: Basingstoke: Palgrave. Pp. 200-208.
• Ø Schneider, R. and Lester, L. (2001) Social Work Advocacy: A New Framework for Action, Belmont CA, Brooks Cole.
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