Community Campaigning

"Seeking to promote and protect the human rights of children, young people and adults with disabilities / additional needs in their receipt of vital public services, through the empowerment of their parent carers as advocates"

Community campaigning, is a collaborative way of working by members of a geographical community, or community of interest (such as parent carers of children, young people and adults with disabilities/lifelong health conditions) to raise the awareness of people in power, around issues of importance to the community.

Campaigning is about creating a change

Parent Action Campaigns, enables, advocates and empowers parent carers, to make the changes they want to see in their and their children’s lives, themselves, in collaboration with other parent carers and their local communities.

The impact of parent carers campaigning, is the real world change created by our parent carer led campaigns; this is the difference the campaign makes to the lives of our parent carer members, their children and families, and their communities.

Enables

Parent action enables parent carers to have their voice heard for their child's human rights in vital public services, enabling all children to access, early and safely, early education and childcare, school, community health care, social care and direct payments, play and leisure opportunities, jobs and training, in their local communities.

Empowers

Parent action empowers parent carers and public service professionals and teams, to advocate effectively for the human rights of children and adults with additional needs/disabilities, into vital public services.

Advocates

Parent action supports parent carers and public service professionals and teams to advocate effectively for safety and continuous quality improvement in vital public services to children and adults with additional needs/disabilities.

Community Campaigning in Parent Action Connects involves:

Peer advocacy model

Using our peer advocacy model, to connect parent carers with other parent carers, and other stakeholders, including local political representatives, with an interest in influencing and creating change on a particular issue

Enabling and empowering parent carers to:

• Take Action
• To advocate
• To influence
• To raise awareness
• To inform,
on the issue they are campaigning on

Parent Action Independent Advocates

trained to OCN Level 2 in Community Campaigning, with the Womens Resource Development Agency, facilitate groups of parent carers to;

 

Understand the campaign cycle of;

 

• Analysing the issue,
• Developing a Community Campaign Strategy
• Planning
• Campaign Delivery and Monitoring Progress
• Evaluation of the campaign

Why Campaign?

 

Campaigning can be the best and most effective way of achieving your goals.  There are many reasons why voluntary and community organisations like Parent Action campaign as a way of achieving their community benefit purposes, vision and mission.

Campaigning can address the root causes of social problems and not just their effects. Parent Action takes a two pronged approach – we provide our Independent Family Advocacy Training Services, to parent carers and public service providers, to support both groups to take action to reduce the social isolation of parent carers in Northern Ireland and Ireland, while also campaigning to tackle the root causes of this social isolation ie the absence of voice for parent carers in the vital public services that they must engage with, to support their child to reach their full potential, in Northern Ireland and Irelands communities.

Campaigning can shine a spotlight on emerging issues that have not yet been picked up by policy makers.  Because Parent Action is very close to our beneficiary families, we can use evidence from our parent carers experience to highlight these issues.

Campaigning can help to give voice to those whose cannot be heard, such as parent carers, who face many barriers to being effectively involved in policy and other decisions around their children and adults with disabilities.  Our Independent Family Advocacy Training Services, equip parent carers with the advocacy and negotiation skills, used in community campaigning, and we use our collective voice, to create a collective roar!

Campaigning can lead to social change and the provision by the state of resources, services and entitlements that are many times greater than the resources that were used to run the campaign.

Campaigning is sometimes the only action possible, that parent carers can collectively take, as the root causes of our social isolation, are so complex and cannot be dealt with without state intervention in public service transformation.  The combination of our Community Campaigns, the Parent Action Connects platform and our Independent Family Advocacy Services giving parent carers a powerful voice in public service transformation, means community campaigning, is a vital tool for Parent Action to achieve our community benefit purposes.