The First Year of a Child Advocacy Project

In a child advocacy project funded through a community mental health center, five area residents were trained as advocates and assigned to two elementary schools. The advocates spent much of their first year in training, and in trying to establish themselves as resource persons for children and families, in setting up parent-school councils, and in developing recreational programs. They found it easier to be activists and caregivers than coordinators of services, and they met some resistance from the schools and the community. But by the end of the first year the advocates had made significant progress in helping children and families obtain community services and in increasing contact between parents and the schools.