Empowering people with physical disabilities through advocacy skills training

Abstract

Members of an advocacy organization for people with physical disabilities were trained to identify and report issues at group meetings. In addition, two consecutive chairpersons were trained to conduct action-oriented meetings. Measures of group members' activities outside meetings and related outcomes on identified issues were also collected. Results indicated increases in the number of disability-related issues reported by trained members and consistent improvements in chairperson performance following training. Retrospective interviews and permanent records showed that advocacy activities, as well as the outcomes of members' actions, increased after training. These findings and their implications for the empowerment of people with disabilities are discussed.

Introduction à l’intervention centrée sur le pouvoir d’agir

“…Le pouvoir d'agir des patients diabétiques dans un hôpital du Canada (Feste, 1992) s'exprimerait différemment si ces personnes se trouvaient dans un pays dont l'infrastructure médicale était moins développée ou encore si elle était entièrement gérée par le secteur privé. Il en va de même pour des personnes handicapées (Balcazar, Seekins, Fawcett et Hopkins, 1990), des résidents de bidonvilles (Serrano-Garcia, 1984) ou encore des parents d'élèves (Delgado-Gaitan, 1991;Gruber et Trickett, 1987).…”

“…Il s'agit notamment des minorités visibles, des personnes ayant un handicap, des personnes analphabètes, des itinérants, etc. Tous ces groupes se trouvent limités dans leur accès aux ressources en raison de leur différence (Balcazar et al, 1990). Par exemple, des usagers de services en santé mentale peuvent éprouver des difficultés à ce que leurs besoins soient pris en considé-ration (Wilson, 1996) ou à obtenir le respect de leurs droits (Rousseau, 1993); des anciens itinérants peuvent se retrouver dans l'impossibilité de trouver un hébergement salubre à des conditions acceptables (Cox, 1991); des parents d'enfants handicapés peuvent avoir de la difficulté à obtenir les informations concernant les résultats des traitements appliqués à leurs enfants (Koren, Dechillo et Friesen, 1992), etc.…”

Advocacy Campaign for the Rights of People with Disabilities: A Participatory Action Research within a Community-based Rehabilitation Project in Vangani, Maharashtra

“…As per the WHO-CBR guidelines, "role of CBR is to contribute to the empowerment process by promoting, supporting and facilitating the active involvement of people with disabilities and their families in issues that affect their lives" (WHO, 2010). Many research studies have been published that underscore the process of empowerment of people with disabilities through advocacy skills training and Participatory Action Research (PAR) within CBR programmes (Balcazar et al, 1990;Balcazar et al, 1994;Fawcett et al, 1994;Balcazar et al, 1998). Participatory action research has been defined as an approach to empower people through the process of constructing and using their own knowledge to increase the relevance of the research process (Whyte, 1991).…”

Empowerment of athletes with cardiac disorders: a new paradigm

“…In recent decades, patient empowerment has been gaining increasing momentum in clinical decision-making [4]. In this paper we consider the issue of athletic disqualification in the full spectrum of cardiovascular disease, including cardiomyopathies, channelopathies, congenital heart disease, valvular heart disease, among others.…”