Advocacy

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NARRATOR: Advocacy and change are closely intertwined. In this video program, Dr. Judy Lewis defines advocacy and explains the roles of counselors advocating for change. Dr. Lewis also describes barriers counselors may face as they advocate for change, and how to overcome these barriers.

DR. JUDY LEWIS: At its most basic, advocacy is simply the act of speaking up on behalf of someone else– maybe speaking up for someone who is voiceless or powerless.

When it comes to the counseling profession, advocacy is particularly important for two reasons. One is that part of our process of working with clients is to help them gain the strength and the skills so they can advocate on their own behalf. The other part of it is that once we realize that the client might not have the power to be able to speak up on his or her own behalf, sometimes we may have to be the ones that speak up on behalf of the clients.

This happens especially when we see a lot of different clients all having similar problems, and we realize that there is a systemic reason for it. There is something in the community environment that is standing between these clients and what they need.

So as counselors, when we’re oriented toward advocacy, what we are doing is changing the lens through which we see the client. Instead of looking through a microscope at the individual client, we’re looking through a wide-angle lens. So that we’re seeing the context of what’s happening in the client’s life.

When counselors carry out advocacy, they do this at several different levels. One level is the level of working with the individual client or family. When you’re working with an individual client, you have two alternatives. One is to work in an empowering way with the individual so that he or she learns to advocate for himself or herself.

The other possibility– when that doesn’t provide all the answers– the other possibility is to do advocacy on behalf of that individual. When we’re working with the clients in an empowering way, what we’re helping them see is the degree to which some of the problems that they’re having may not be totally their fault.

When people start feeling as though they’re so much at fault, sometimes they just get stuck and can’t seem to move beyond their current situation. If they can begin to see for themselves what some of the barriers are that are preventing them from getting to where they want to go, and where sometimes they’re not

Advocacy

completely at fault– they’re not completely guilty– we can start to teach them some of the skills that they need. So they can speak up on their own behalf and have some success.

Sometimes they might not have the power to do this on their own. They may need help. So we may be involved in individual advocacy where we are standing up to the system on behalf of certain clients. So at the individual level, we work with the client and we work on behalf of the client.

The same thing happens when we’re working at the level of the community. Ideally, if there are problems in the community, we can work closely with other community members who are trying to bring about change. We can be consultants and helpers and communication processors, so that they are more successful in bringing about the change that they’re trying to bring about.

And sometimes, we also need to work on behalf of the community. Sometimes we have something special to offer so that we can take more of a leadership role in bringing about change. But again, we are working with the community. And sometimes, as needed, we’re working on behalf of the community using the skills that we have to advocate for change.

In the broader public arena, again, we work with the population, and we work on behalf of the population. The best way to work with the population is to provide some scientific basis for some of what they’re trying to do. We are good at getting information about problems. And we’re good at communicating about those problems.

Sometimes though, communication isn’t enough. Sometimes we need to get active ourselves. Sometimes we need to go and lobby on behalf of policy changes. Sometimes we need to address, very directly, problems that we see around us. And again, at that broader public level, which may be at a state or a national level, we are working with the populations that we serve, and sometimes working on their behalf.

Let me give you an example of how the advocacy competencies come into play when you’re working with a client or a family.

This is an example of a high school student, a young African American who had gotten into trouble in school. He had been involved in something that happened where there were a lot of white kids who were involved in the problem. And he was the only one who was identified by a teacher in the school. He got into trouble in school. And his family was very upset. And so the school asked a local family counselor to work with the family.

Now maybe what the school was trying to do was to get the counselor to calm the family down. But the counselor recognized that the family had some real

Advocacy

concerns that there had been racism involved. And the fact that this young man had been the one who had been singled out, although other kids had been involved in the same situation.

The counselor understood that it’s important to give people a chance to work through their thoughts about this kind of issue. Rather than pushing them to focus on what should the young man have done that was different, what should the family have done that was different. And working through their feelings about the racism that was involved, the counselor was able to help them get past that and start to think about some different things that they could do to help the student get back into good graces in school.

But I must say that the counselor realized that there were some real questions about school policies. There were some real questions about whether racism was involved in the student’s situation. The counselor was in a position, having had this referral, to be able to go back to the school administration and raise some questions.

In working with this client, and this family, and this school, the counselor began to realize that some of these policies are not just school by school policies. But they’re a result of state or national policies. So the counselor got involved with some other groups who were raising questions about school policies, and especially about the relationship between school policies and how they affect, differentially, students of color. So it ended up, I think, being a good learning experience– not just for the client or the school, but for the counselor.

When it comes to doing advocacy, one of the most difficult things to get past is the counselor’s inner question about, is this really part of my job? Is this something I should be doing? Or is this something that’s just tacked on to the work that I do directly with clients?

Counselors enter the profession because they have a view of themselves sitting in an office with a client, making a close personal connection, being able to help an individual. Their daydreams about what it’s going to be like to be a counselor usually don’t see them with signs up on Capitol Hill. So for a lot of people, it feels uncomfortable. Am I really supposed to be doing this? Is this really part of what I need to be doing?

And that’s why it’s important, I think, to have a seamless connection between what you’re doing as a counselor working with your client, and what you’re doing on behalf of your client. When you work with your clients– if you’re a good counselor– the better you are at counseling, the more likely it is that you’re going to notice that there are things going on outside the client’s area of control that need to be addressed. You can see that close connection between what you’re doing to help your client individually, and what you need to do on your client’s behalf.

Advocacy

So I think it becomes more comfortable as you get more experience with counseling and see what the need is that your clients have. They do need more from you than just that direct service. They need you also to be able to see what’s getting in their way outside of their own skin.

A key factor in overcoming the challenges related to advocacy and the advocacy role is what happens as counselors are educated. I think the more we can infuse the idea of advocacy as part of how counselors are educated, the more likely it is that they’re going to feel more comfortable with this as part of their role once they get into the profession. So sometimes it might be possible that, with good education behind them, counselors will feel more ready to move into this part of their role right from the beginning, rather than waiting until experience shows them that something has to be done.

Here’s something I would suggest for counselor educators. We would never think that we could train a counselor to be a counselor without the counselor ever having practiced counseling someone. We wouldn’t think that someone could become a counselor just by taking courses without ever having a practicum or an internship. But yet, advocacy now is really considered to be a part of the mainstream role of counselors. But to what degree do people have opportunities to practice advocacy while they are being educated as counselors?

So I think for counselor educators and their curricula, I think it’s important to look at this question and to see whether there might be more ways to get people involved in practicing advocacy while they’re still students. So it becomes really a comfortable part of what they expect to do as professionals.

The purpose of advocacy is to bring about change. In some situations, you cannot have change without advocacy. So advocacy and change are so closely involved. Sometimes I think you can’t have advocacy without change. And you can’t have change without advocacy.

Advocacy Additional Content Attribution

FOOTAGE: WAL_MMPA6850_542003 National Archives. Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. [Leaders of the march leading marchers down the street.], 08/28/1963. Retrieved from: http://research.archives.gov/description/542003

WAL_MMPA6850_542010 National Archives. Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. [Leaders marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial], 08/28/1963. Retrieved from: http://research.archives.gov/description/542010

Advocacy

WAL_MMPA6431_LOC_Capital Carol M. Highsmith

WAL_EDUC7306_MP900422593 Microsoft Corporation

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