As more and more children are being diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (AS), more parents are wondering what the future will be like for their child. Because of the challenges faced by youth with AS, it is important for parents and teachers to work together to guide high school students with AS through a successful transition to the adult world.…

This paper looks at the history of self advocacy in England. Self advocacy has helped many people with learning difficulties to speak up and gain more confidence. But now it is associated with Government policy. After Valuing People, people expect self advocacy organizations to speak up for everyone with learning difficulties. This might mean…

The Indian Institute for Cerebral Palsy (IICP) has been providing education and other services in Kolkata, Eastern India, for children and young adults with cerebral palsy and related disabilities for over 30 years. IICP started by providing education for just two children, and was highly dependent on western expertise. Described is the history of…

In this paper I describe how self-advocacy has grown in the Czech Republic. First, I talk about how services for people with learning disabilities have begun to change in the last few years. This is because voluntary groups have lobbied and campaigned for change. I learned about self-advocacy during a visit to the UK in the 1990s. I went back to…

Service-user groups whose goals include the promotion of self-advocacy for people with an intellectual disability aim, among other things, to encourage service users to identify problems and find solutions. However, service users' contributions to group sessions may not always be full and spontaneous. This presents a dilemma to the facilitator. In…

In this paper the small body of research which looks at how people labelled as having learning disabilities view this social identity is considered. The author argues that this research has implications for our assumptions about self-advocacy groups for people with learning disabilities.

A content and methodological review of the literature of 25 self-advocacy intervention studies was conducted. First, each article was analyzed in terms of purpose, participants, design, dependent variable(s), independent variable(s), and results. Second, each manuscript was reviewed in terms of the quality indicators for single subject (n = 11),…

Many people with learning difficulties want to tell the stories of their life and have done so in collaboration with academic researchers. Life histories of people with learning difficulties are a good way to learn about self-advocacy. Life histories can tell us about how self-advocacy began and the support people need to be self-advocates. Tom…

This article is about life story work with people with learning disabilities. It talks about reading and writing stories, and listening to them. Telling your life story, writing it down and talking about it with others can be an important part of self-advocacy for people with learning disabilities. Life stories are helpful when they are told or…

This article tells us about the history of self-advocacy in Denmark. It also gives some information about how services for people with learning difficulties in Denmark have changed over the past 100 years. In this article, I talk about "movements" of self-advocacy, which means the different types of self-advocacy groups that have grown…

When students leave high school equipped with self-advocacy and self-determination skills, they will be more likely to disclose their disability and ultimately gain access to the services they need to support their learning needs in the educational environment. Yet, many students with disabilities do not enter college equipped with the tools they…

This article focuses on teaching students specific disability related self-determination skills, rather than activities that can be used with non-specified populations. In this design, lesson plans are used and suggested as a systematic means of instruction for students with deficits in learning (i.e., learning disabilities, mild mental…

In Japan, there is a growing network of self-advocacy groups. Some groups are involved in campaigning. Other groups are involved in social events and education. The age of de-institutionalization is gradually arriving and community living for people with learning difficulties is becoming an urgent political issue. Self-advocacy groups can help…

Transition is a dynamic lifelong process that seeks to meet individual needs as a person with disabilities moves from childhood to adulthood. Per laws in most states, once an individual becomes 18 years of age that person is considered an adult regardless of the level of his or her disability. Initiating planning for adult living activities and…

Special education literature abounds with a challenge to special educators to promote the acquisition of self-determination skills in their students. A critical component of self-determination that can be readily addressed in the school setting is self-advocacy. The authors believe that meeting the challenge of enhancing student's self-advocacy…