ACWA Disability Community of Practice Webinar and Discussion

This Community of Practice will be facilitated by Professor Amy Conley Wright, Director of University of Sydney's Research Centre for Children and Families.

Amy will be talking about the importance of advocacy and self-advocacy for young people with a disability, recognising that for the most part, children and young people in out of home care do not have access to their family support network to advocate for them. Amy will provide an understanding of social role valorisation. The discussion will centre around how social role valorising efforts can be used in advocacy and to support self-advocacy and how this can be incorporated into the day to day practice of practitioners working with vulnerable children living with disability.

Amy's summary:

Social role valorising (SRV) efforts by family members and service providers help people with disabilities attain socially valued roles (e.g., community member, voter, employee, artist). The premise of SRV is that the good things of life are more available to those with socially valued roles. This session will explore how we can use the principles of SRV in advocacy on behalf of young people with disabilities and efforts to promote their self-advocacy.

In her academic life, Amy has written extensively about the importance of advocacy for young people with disability drawing on her lived experience as a mother of a child with disability.