Informal Advocacy Plan – Step by Step

Blog one: Skills and Strategies for Effective Self and Peer Advocacy

Step 1: Problem Analysis Questions to ask yourself:

• What is the problem or issue? If there is more than one, focus on one at a time.
• What is my goal?
• What facts do I know?

We all have been overwhelmed at one point or another by something or somethings that we want to change in our lives. All good advocacy starts with a good understanding of the problem. You must understand what you want before you can do anything about it. It sounds simple, right? Well, not necessarily. Sometimes the problems can be complicated to break down.

First, it’s a good idea to keep your issues separate. Have you ever heard the saying “when it rains it pours?” Life is often complicated. There can be more than one problem at a time. When planning how to advocate for yourself on an issue, you should make sure that you notice each separate problem.

Once you identify the basic issue, you may need to break down the problem even further. Let’s say that you asked your boss if you could work from 9:00 AM until 5:30 PM instead of from 7:00 AM until 3:30 PM because the symptoms from your disability are worse in the early morning hours. Your boss is aware of your disability, but still denies your request, stating that he does not want to give you any special treatment over other employees. You have spoken to your doctor about your concerns, but you feel she has not taken you seriously. To make matters worse, your doctor has been out of town, and so you have not had a chance to talk with a medical professional about the change in your symptoms and you are feeling worse by the day.

The problems you are having at work can be broken down into smaller parts such as:

• Your request for an accommodation has been denied;
• You have not been feeling well;
• Your doctor is on vacation and your symptoms are getting worse;
• You feel your doctor has not been taking your medical concerns seriously.

To resolve the problem, you may choose to advocate for your employer to allow you to change your schedule, for your doctor to take your concerns seriously, or to be seen by another doctor right away. You also may want to change your doctor all together.

Once you clarify the problem you should ask yourself the question “what is my goal?” If your goal is to feel better, for example, you may decide to focus your energy on working with your doctor or finding a new doctor with whom you are better able to communicate, rather than to work with your employer to permanently change your work schedule, because once you feel better you hopefully will be able to function well in the early morning hours.

When deciding what aspects of your problem you want pursue, it is important to remember:

• Some problems are easier to resolve than others
• Not all problems can be solved, or easily resolved.
• You may decide you do not want to address all the problems that you identify, and that’s OK. Remember, you should pick the battles that you want to fight.

The key is to pick out the problems that are the most important to you and address those first. In any event, breaking down the problem will help you to move on to the next stage in the advocacy process.

Identify the facts

Once you know which problems you want to work to act, you should identify the facts that you know.

Identifying the facts, you know is as simple as recalling what you know about the situation and outlining the events of what has happened so far. Using the example above, some facts of the problem are:

• You have told your boss you would like to modify your work schedule;
• Your boss is aware you have a disability, but you did not tell her that you want to change your schedule because of the symptoms you are experiencing;
• You spoke to your doctor about the increase in severity of your symptoms;
• Your doctor is out of town.

When you answer the question “what facts do you know?” you should avoid inserting judgments such as “my boss is stupid,” or “my doctor does not care about me” as facts of the problem. These statements are not helpful and will distract you from focusing on what is most important -- resolving the problem you face.

Once you have outlined the problem, identified your goal, and identified the facts of your problem, you are ready to move on to the next step – information gathering.