APRIL2002

I am a family member. I would like to be an advocate for families like my own. What sets a great advocate apart from the rest?

As a family member, you have already learned the complex process of care coordination for your child across multiple systems. This experience has allowed you to grow in knowledge, skills, and the ability to get what you need and want from child-serving agencies and systems. I suspect you feel quite comfortable with yourself in this work or you would not want to pursue becoming "a great advocate" for other families.

You also demonstrate an appetite to know more about your work and the field in general. This curiosity is an invaluable trait, as you have already learned. You are the kind of expert families seek to help them navigate complex systems and painful situations. However, you are also right when you imply there is more to this profession than meets the eye.

A repository of strengths is instantly evident in all effective advocates. I have compiled the following from several documents so you might get a broad vision of what it is, beyond knowledge and skill, that great advocates seem to instinctively know. They recognize:

• What it is to be a family with a child (or children) who has chronic and severe mental illness, emotional and behavioral disorders, or what it is to be a person with mental illness;

• That "what the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must the community want for all its children"-John Dewey;

• How to listen, protect, guide, follow;

• That each of us ".must be the change (we) wish to see in the world." -Mahatma Ghandi;

• That the stage for change is set by focusing on individuals in the family first, improvement second, and environment third;

• How things fit together; they then personally and immediately begin to improve the way services are provided to families;

• That each of us has the capacity to meet challenges and new opportunities;

• The profound impact on families of:

• Few prevention programs

• Physical abuse

• Mental abuse

• Sexual abuse

• Alcohol and drug abuse

• Neglect

• Violence

• Poverty

• The importance of federal mandates and state laws.

There are other important attributes that will help you along your new career path. For instance, it helps to remember that there is always more than one solution to a problem. Learning how to become comfortable with conflict is important, but it is equally important to ask yourself if you are someone who maintains harmony at all cost. This is not always productive for an advocate who is by identity and role a change agent.

I encourage you to access mentors whom you hold in high regard. They will recognize your special strengths and attributes and help you become the best you are capable of becoming. And that is great enough!