Advocacy Advocacy Program Transcript [MUSIC PLAYING] 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 © 2016 Laureate Education, Inc. 1 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 c.