Advocacy That Works

By Robin Loxton

When Mary walked into the Advocacy Access office, she was very ticked off. She had just received a letter from the Ministry of Social Services stating that her application for disability benefits had been turned down. Mary had recently been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The decision to exclude her from the higher benefits levels that persons with disabilities are entitled to under B.C.’s social assistance programme seemed to her like adding gratuitous insult to injury.

The reasons for her having been turned down were all too familiar.

I have been working for Advocacy Access since it started in 1989. Most of the work that my fellow advocates and I do involves assisting persons with disabilities in accessing programmes and benefits from the ministry of Social Services. One of the ministry’s most crucial benefits programmes relates to the designation of who is and is not "handicapped" (although I don’t like the labels "handicapped" or "disabled" used in this context). If welfare recipients qualify as "handicapped", then they receive $739.00 per month instead of $575.00 per month. Those extra dollars can be the difference between scraping by and not making it. I informed Mary that four out of 10 applications for "handicapped" designation are denied the first time around.

My first suggestion to Mary was that she appeal the decision and that I assist her in carrying it forward. (One thing that can be said for the province of British Columbia: its social services include a community-based appeal mechanism.) Since 1989, Advocacy Access advocates have assisted people in filling hundreds of appeals. Out batting average is quite impressive, with an over-80-percent success rate. We arranged for Mary to pick up an appeal kit and obtain additional information from her doctor. Within a week, the appeal had been filled out and submitted to thew Ministry of Social Services to undergo administrative review.

Advocacy Access is a core project of the British Columbia Coalition of People with Disabilities (BCCPD). We got our start four years ago when the Law Foundation of British Columbia broadened its mandate, agreeing to fund community groups providing advocacy services. The only rights that do you any good are the ones you know about! Advocacy Access means that now the BCCPD has paid advocates to help British Columbians with disabilities learn and defend their rights. A large part of my job is to give people information they need to make choices and take charge of their own situation. Self-help is an important part of Advocacy Access.

Bread-and-butter issues are the most important to the community of people with disabilities. Poverty and disability go hand-in-hand. Income, housing and access to support services for independent living are what people come to us about.

Apart from the one-to-one side of the business, Advocacy Access works closely with the board of Directors of the BCCPD to lobby for better access to benefits and programmes. Mary had been turned down for disability benefits. Part of the problem was the Ministry of Social Services’ narrow definition of disability. So, we help people like Mary appeal, plus we lobby the Ministry of Social Services to broaden the definition. By taking part in advocating for social change in this way, we can avoid the pitfalls of agencies that only provide band-aid solutions to individual problems.

We recognize that persons with mental health disabilities have had a particular problem accessing social services. In response to their needs, we have initiated the Mental Health Advocacy Program. We have trained two mental health consumers to be advocates for the mental health community. This project has the additional benefit of strengthening the cross-disability mandate of the BCCPD.

We network with many other groups in the community. We try to increase awareness of the issues that are important to our constituents, but don’t always have the resources or people to hold all the workshops or attend all of the events asked of us. Sometimes we are just too popular! Nonetheless, our first priority always remains assisting people like Mary.

By the way, Mary’s appeal for disability benefits was successful.

(Robin Loxton is with the British Columbia Coalition of People with Disabilities.)