Advocacy

What is Advocacy?

The term ‘Advocacy’ means standing up for your rights, standing up for someone else, or an issue you see within the broader community. Advocacy could be speaking up about issues that are impacting you in your life or speaking out on a larger scale to help create positive changes in society for many people. It is sharing your views and opinions with others to create change.

This factsheet will give you more information about your rights, things to consider when you are advocating, ways you can get involved and who you can go to for support.

Rights and the Social Model of Disability

Human rights are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to every person in the world. People with disability have the same rights as everyone else. Rights are universal; each person should be treated equally regardless of who they are, where they are from, what they believe or how they choose to live their life.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) expresses the equal rights of all people with disability. The social model of disability underpins the UNCRPD.

The social model of disability is a shift away from the medical model which focuses on disability as something that needs to be fixed or cured. Instead, it recognises that people with disability are not limited by their impairments, but by the physical, attitudinal, communication and social barriers within our communities. It is these barriers that prevent people with disability from fully participating in society on an equal basis with others. For example:

‘It is not the inability to walk that keeps a person from entering a building by themselves but the stairs that are inaccessible that keeps a wheelchair-user from entering that building’.

https://pwd.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/CreatingAccess_Factsheet_WhatIsAdvocacy_WEB.pdf

Independent Advocacy in the Tropics Inc.

SERVICES HUB CONTACT DETAILS

FreeCall: 1800 887 688 (Australia wide)
Inquiries/Request for Service: intake@ianq.org.au
Self-Advocacy Workshops: selfadvocacy@ianq.org.au

CONTACT DETAILS

Phone: (07) 4725 2505
Reception: reception@ianq.org.au
Administration: admin@ianq.org.au
Finance: operations@ianq.org.au

OFFICE LOCATION

Townsville (NEW ADDRESS)

Suite 1, 1-3 Barlow Street, SOUTH TOWNSVILLE QLD 4810

PO Box 3065 HERMIT PARK QLD 4812

ADA Australia

CONTACT INFORMATION