[The
Office | The
Vision | The
Mission | The
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Principles]
We
have found that it's helpful to think of the Georgia Advocacy Office less as the
first definition given in Webster's,2
"a place in which professional
activities or business is conducted" and more as the second meaning,
"the function or duty assigned to a thing or person."
Thinking of that definition, the function or duty (the Office) was first
assigned in 1977 at the convergence of several streams or mandates.
These streams were a growing consciousness about human rights; a body of
knowledge about the deep-seated devaluation of people with disabilities; and the
first federal legislation and funding to provide protection and advocacy for a
group of people with disabilities.
The aim of the original plan was to carry out the office by putting as
much into place as possible that had a chance of outlasting the funding; by
maximizing the number of voluntary advocates since there was so little money; by
minimizing dependency on staff since there was no guarantee of continuity; by
sharing much information in the way of values based training since it was all so
new; by giving anyone very little control or power because the risk of
unintentional consequences had become obvious from the major lawsuits of the
times; and by staying low key and separate to try to avoid raising unrealistic
expectations.
Twenty-two years have passed.
New
advocacy and protection legislation has also passed, and the Georgia
Advocacy Office has increased to include responsibility for providing or
securing protection and advocacy for three new populations of people with
disabilities and mental illness.
While funding has been added, disproportionate to the number of people
who qualify, the money is less and requirements are tighter.
While some large institutions have been dismantled so has any semblance
of publicly operated, appropriately funded, rationally organized and governed
community services.
While more people with disabilities are exercising more autonomy and
voice and have more access to the physical world, substantial numbers of people
with significant impairments continue to be abandoned and segregated and to have
the value of their lives debated either verbally and openly or silently and
invisibly.
Twenty-two years later,
the number of complaints about rights being denied has continued to grow
and seems to be endless.
People calling often ask for professional or legal assistance.
And so the Georgia Advocacy Office profile has come to resemble that of
most Protection and Advocacy agencies in the country -- more staff, including
attorneys, doing direct service and a lot less citizen participation, sharing
and clarifying of values, and thinking about long-term outcomes.
Add to this that only one type of citizen participation program was
developed -- Citizen Advocacy -- and it turned out to have recruited many fewer
people than had been hoped for and expected.
From where we stand, at this time, it seems clear that neither paid staff
nor citizen volunteers will do the job alone, and that many paths and types of
protection and advocacy for people continue to be needed, as described in A
Multi-Component Advocacy and Protection Schema by Wolf Wolfensberger.3
The Georgia Advocacy Office, then, is to stay true to the values on which it was founded; to fulfill the legal mandates for which it has taken responsibility; and to support a range of advocacy forms.
2 Webster’s International Dictionary
3 Wolfensberger, Wolf. A Multi-Component Advocacy and Protection Schema.
[The Office | The Vision | The Mission | The Values | The Principles]