People want to know what navigating the human rights tribunal system is going to be like for them. If it is going to be a lot work, or how many hours they will they need to have available for them to do it.
It all depends.
It depends on what your goals are.
Do you want a settlement for your child with specific remedies for them? For example, more EA support, a new school district policy, and/or settlement money. Currently, with the complaint process, the settlement meeting option is coming before anything else. Document disclosure, applications, case conferences, etc. Those all come after if the settlement meeting didn’t bring the parties together on an agreement.
If you want to take your case to a hearing, now we are talking about a whole other level. You are going to need to self-educate yourself more.
Everyone’s experience isn’t exactly the same and their cases aren’t exactly the same. Some parents are absolutely LIVID and that anger propels them forward into action. Some people are sad about how everything has unfolded, and they just want this to be over and move on. Some people need certain things to happen in order for them to move on. I find it also depends if you are in a public school or a private school. If you have a lawyer or if you are self-representing. It depends if your child is still in the school or if you have already pulled them out. It also depends very much on the complexity of your case, and how much learning you are going to need to do. Some people fear retaliation, while others see this process as protecting their child from retaliation. It also depends on who you are as a person and how much experience you have navigating systems. Some people have already been self-representing themselves in family court and so they already know how to regulate their emotions and go through the system. Their confidence levels are higher. Some people have support systems and are already part of advocacy groups, and/or they have other forms of emotional support in place. It all depends on so many factors. Some people navigating the tribunal system have had experiences of closure and peace, feeling heard. Others have felt it didn’t bring what they were looking for and it was a waste of time. For some people it feels like a big deal to file a human rights complaint, other people don’t think anything of it, just do it, and carry on in their day. It all depends.
There are a few common themes in people who file human rights complaints, that I have seen so far.
They want change. They never want another child to experience what their child did. They want to change the education system.
They want accountability. Having these people get away with what they did, they cannot accept. Part of this, I have noticed, is that people fear that they will just keep doing what they are doing and so this does come back to point #1, and not wanting another child to have the same experience.
They want to be seen and heard. Having their child pushed off to the side, discarded as unimportant, just eats them away. Many of these parents have been receiving nothing but the silent treatment and filing a human rights complaint is a way of saying, HELLO!
Sometimes people want to know everything before they start something. Others feel it’s better to not know everything and just do it. Deal with things as they come up. For example, some people want to go to business school to learn how to start a business and some people just do it. It’s very interesting how people approach things.
What I do want to say is that you can’t depend on your experience being like someone else’s. It really can be so different depending on so many factors.
It’s impossible to predict the future. I don’t know what this experience is going to be like for you. One thing that I think is true for everyone, is that you will learn more bout yourself by navigating this system. You’ll find out where your boundary lines are, and what triggers you and moves you forward. Or, what you are willing to live with. I think there is potential for it to be an interesting journey, nonetheless. Advocacy always is.
Are you curious as to how much the school district was willing to spend on fighting you in the human rights tribunal system?
You can submit an FOI and find out.
This is a case where the parents of a Deaf child won a human rights complaint. When they were done they submitted an FOI request (Freedom of Information), and they found out that the school district spent $681,917.00 on legal fees to oppose them.
“Todd and Kimberly Churchill filed an access-to-information request with the school board following their win at the province’s human rights tribunal in March. They discovered the district had spent $681,917 on legal fees to oppose the family’s complaints dating back to 2017, when Carter was in kindergarten.”
“In the end, the human rights commission ruled the district violated Carter’s human rights by not offering him an education in American Sign Language and ordered the school board to pay an additional $150,000 to the Churchill family.“
“I think it’s completely disgusting, because the Department of Education will say there’s no money for teachers, no money for supports, no money for children with exceptionalities,” said Todd Churchill. “But yet there’s money, almost three-quarters of a million dollars … to defend the discrimination of a five-year-old deaf child in a wheelchair.”
I have written blogs before about how much money is being spent on human rights complaints. I have done a couple of FOI requests with the Ministry of Finance to get access to the information.
The Ministry of Education doesn’t even track this kind of information. They are being told how much the district’s legal fees are, but how much of that is human rights complaints against families, they don’t know. Or won’t tell.
I have also started tracking lawyers’ fees in general, mostly focusing on the school districts in the Lower Mainland. You can obtain all of the information from their SOFI reports that they have to publicly post on their district website.
(**Human rights cases can take years, so when high numbers are back to back, that looks interesting to me. Not all legal fees are human rights complaints against families.)
I bet the school district in N. L never saw Kim and Todd Churchill coming.
“The family said the school was “dismissive” of their concerns and repeatedly said he was receiving a quality education, despite being in an environment where he could not communicate. They were afraid for his well-being, they said, and he was socially isolated because he was unable to communicate with his peers and teachers.“
Sound familiar?
It’s quite ironic to me that school districts tout all these anti-bullying messages and messages of kindness and yet, this is the kind of stuff that they are famous for across the country.
So for anyone interested, FOI away!! You can always do an FOI to the Ministry of Finance at the same time, and see what you get. If they refuse to give it to you, you can file a complaint with OIPC and see what the OIPC thinks about that.
In order for you to convince the tribunal that your child has experienced discrimination, the first part of the test will be to prove the 3-part discrimination test.
This is from the website of the BC Human Rights Tribunal
they have a characteristic protected by the Human Rights Code [Code];
they experienced an adverse impact with respect to an area protected by the Code; and
the protected characteristic was a factor in the adverse impact.
Once a complainant proves these three things, the respondent can defend itself by proving its conduct was justified. If the respondent proves its conduct was justified, then there is no discrimination. If the respondent’s conduct is not justified, discrimination will be found to occur (para. 33).”
In the context of disability, you will need to prove that they have a physical/mental disability that the school was aware of, that they experienced harm, and that this harm was connected to their disability.
We already have it written in a decision that not all negative experiences are discrimination. Their disability must be a FACTOR in the conduct.
X by Y v. Board of Education of School District No. Z, 2024 BCHRT 72 110] ….I accept that these incidents which X relayed to Y were upsetting to X. I appreciate that the interactions may have fed into X’s general feelings of unease at school, but the fact alone that these events may have happened is not enough, in itself, to establish that X’s disability factored into them. Not all negative experiences are discrimination. Even accepting that these incidents occurred, I did not hear evidence that could establish, on a balance of probabilities, that X’s disability was a factor in the conduct of the adults involved in these interactions.
We need to be able to communicate to the school and connect the dots for them, that what they are doing is creating harm.
As parents, we need to communicate to the school that our child is struggling and this struggle is connected to their disability. This will trigger MEANINGFUL INQUIRY. They must investigate and come up with solutions to try and decrease the impact of harm.
[99] Next, in B v. School District, 2019 BCHRT 170, the evidence supported that the school district provided the child with the recommended supports and accommodations. The Tribunal found that it was “only with hindsight” that it was possible to say that the child could have benefited from more support: para. 81. It dismissed the complaint in part because there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the school district reasonably ought to have known that the child required more: para. 98. In contrast here, I have found that the District had sufficient information to trigger some kind of inquiry or response beyond asking the Student how she was doing and, assuming the counsellor did this, advising of available supports.
[100] In short, I agree with the District that the Parent and Student were obliged to bring forward information relating to accommodation. The Parent did that, when she communicated that the Student had anxiety and trichotillomania and that school was taking a significant toll on her physical and mental health. That information should have been enough to prompt a meaningful inquiry by the school to identify what was triggering the Student’s symptoms and what supports or accommodations may be appropriate to ensure she was able to meaningfully and equitably access her education. The failure to take that step was, in my view, not reasonable. As a result, the disability-related impacts on the Student, arising from conditions in her Language 10 class between April 24 and June 27, 2019, have not been justified and violate s. 8 of the Human Rights Code.
We don’t need to necessarily say overtly, that we are considering filing a human rights complaint. We can communicate in a way that shows them we are taking these issues seriously and one way of doing that is to provide them with evidence of the harm.
It may be through pictures of what has happened or video, but it can also just simply be statements the child has made at home about school or drawings they have done or things they have written down. Feel free to quote your child. Emailing this to the school does create an evidence trail so that if things are not resolved and you do decide to file a human rights complaint, all of these emails will form part of your document disclosure and you can bring them to your settlement meeting.
The respondents (the lawyers defending the school district) are going to make arguments that the school’s actions are justified and that reasonable accommodations were provided.
However, if your child is still experiencing harm, how can they argue that reasonable accommodations were provided? That’s why we need evidence of the harm.
The school district also has the final decision-making power with your child’s education. Parents have a duty to facilitate. Even if we don’t agree with their decision we must not become a barrier to their decision or if in the future we file a human rights complaint, it may be dismissed. Here is the case that created the duty to facilitate.
[248] The School District is not the only party with obligations in the accommodation process. Rather, the parents were obliged, as the Child’s representatives, to work towards facilitating an appropriate accommodation: Central Okanagan School District No. 23 v. Renaud, 1992 CanLII 81 (SCC), [1992] 2 SCR 970. If the School District initiated a reasonable proposal that would, if implemented, accommodate the Child, then the Parents were obliged to facilitate that proposal. Failure to do so is fatal to their complaint of discrimination.
So, if their decision is creating harm, we are going to need evidence of that to show that what they decided isn’t working.
I know this piece of collecting evidence can be really hard for parents. They don’t feel that they “should” have to do this. They feel that this is being too aggressive and they don’t want to upset people at their child’s school. I get it. No one wants to feel that they are in an adversarial relationship with their child’s school. Jumping the shark can be really hard.
When you advocate you can still be pleasantly persistent and communication doesn’t need to be adversarial. However, I haven’t known of any effective advocacy when parents put being viewed as “nice” as their priority, over effective communication.
Here is the Inclusive Education Manual created by Incluison BC for helpful information on how to communicate with your child’s school. Here is Family Support Institute’s Toolkit Resources on education advocacy. And I would also just want to add, that if things get intense…which sometimes they do. Please read my blog on 5 Rules on How to be Untouchable
History is full of challenges and unfairness. It is also full of legends, advocates, activists, heroes, and system disruptors. Relentless fighters for the good.
Let us start off this week by soaking in the words of the poem I Rise by Maya Angelou. This is a video that I have watched many many times.
With so much happening right now, we need each other now even more. We need community. We need collaboration. We need friends. We need support. And so, like air, I’ll rise. We’ll rise.
I Rise
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may tread me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you? Don’t you take it awful hard ‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.
If this blog were a construction road sign it would say “tough but necessary conversations ahead”.
Exclusion has been brought into the front and centre of society. The media coverage has been wonderful. Thank you so much for all of the brave families who have come forward and shared their stories. We need it. A big thank you to all of the families sharing their stories with Ombudsperson. A necessary and important step in the process.
There are uncomfortable conversations that lie ahead when figuring out how to evolve the education system. We have mixed success.
There will always be that one person, or multiple people, who stands up and says something that makes our hearts sink. When you think of it, this is actually what we fought for. Embrace it. It’s going to get dirty and messy and uncomfortable, but all of this is extremely necessary in order to get where we want to get. Equity. We all need to talk about disability. The tough conversations need to happen and we need to grow as a society. Ableist beliefs are going to surface. It’s not going to be pretty.
Currently, the buzz and rumblings in the education profession is that segregation is a topic that people want to talk about. They question inclusion. They don’t think it’s really working, and we need to re-think separate classrooms. This is actually not anything new. It’s been a conversation that has been happening for a while, it’s never really left us, only whispered in the background. No one was saying it out loud, only now they are. I can understand why those working in the system doubt inclusion because, let’s be honest, our system is failing, for many people, for a very long list of reasons. They witness this failing every single day. Some people are experiencing great success. I wish we heard more of those stories. But many people are struggling immensely and experiencing great harm. Hence the exclusion investigation.
These types of hard conversations are inevitable. Human systems, specifically social issues, swing like pendulums all the time. Conservatives to Liberals back to Conservatives to back to Liberals. Human rights will increase, decrease, increase, decrease. You get the picture. Every country/society experiences the pendulum swing. It is continuous and it will never stop. Some are moving at a faster or slower rate than others. But we all swing. Humanity never stands still. We are always moving. What is that line about change? The only constant is change…something like that.
Stopping the swing would be like standing in front of Niagra Falls with a teacup, trying to stop the water from flowing. BUT, we do get a say and can advocate for how far we swing, and what it’s going to look like when that swing lands.
Re-making very old traditional systems to bend like blades of grass is going to be work. Not going to lie, this is going to require a SHIT SHIT SHIT ton of self-care, community care, and emotional regulation on our part. But it needs to happen. We need the hard parts to happen in order to arrive at where we want to arrive because it is going to take all of us. It needs to be a community effort. Sometimes things need to get really messy before they get better.
We do not want to go backwards in time. We want to move forward.
There is a group theorist who views teams that go through cycles like this, which came from my early university classes over 20 years ago. This visual has never left my mind, though his name has and I have been trying to find it with no success.
The group theory is that we all process change as a society like this.
Teams develop moving up and advancing but we cycle back and hit topics again and again but never in the same way. Never in the same spot.
This is 2025, not the 1980’s. Where would you place inclusive education on the line?
If people think that inclusion isn’t for all kids and some kids benefit from alternative learning spaces and this concept should be expanded to manage exclusion, then what forward-thinking or inclusion-thinking design are we going to create?
Because….
And yes, this is for all of you in the back.
We do not want to go back in time.
Segregated classrooms were accused of literally warehousing people. Making sure students were physically alive at the end of the day. Schools are not mini prisons. Or at least they shouldn’t be. In fairness, EA’s who currently work in the system, have said that even with “inclusion” they still feel like they are babysitting and the students they are supporting aren’t learning anything without explicit pull-out instruction. In the study done by Fraser and Shields (2010) they report that students mainstreamed in classrooms have been “treated as ghosts (virtually ignored), guests (respected but not integrated) or pets (cosseted and pampered) (p. 10).
In 2025, what COULD inclusive education evolve to look like?
Separate classrooms do bring up knee-jerk reaction fear in me. I wonder if people will use this as a loophole to not try as hard. To not invest in professional development. Will we go back to specialist teachers and not insist on disability education for all new and incoming teachers? Some communities need specialist teachers. The Deaf community is an excellent example. If Deaf schools didn’t exist they would lose their language and culture. We can never let that happen. Dyslexic advocates have been screaming for pull-out education time for remediation. It’s never all or nothing for everyone.
Everything in life is on a spectrum. Everything. Sexuality, personality traits, mental health, gender, humour, height, weight, cognition processing, neurodivergent thinking, disability, etc, etc, etc, We are all a natural part of human variation. No one is a mistake. You just literally need to find yourself where you fit on the multiple spectrums that all combined to make up who you are, and I guarantee you, there is a group of really cool people waiting for you.
We cannot have a system that is binary in thinking and design. It’s either this or that.
Humanity doesn’t work like that. We don’t. It’s very interesting to me that we are a species that cannot be compartmentalized and yet this is how our brain works. We need to compartmentalize everything in order to mentally understand things. How ironic is that? Our brains are wired to root for the underdog and absolutely need fairness, yet life is never fair. It leaves us in a constant state of continuous dissatisfaction that propels us forward to have our needs met.
Having systems that force people into binary groups, will not work.
So here come some really bumpy conversations.
If you are reading this blog and you are not a part of the disability community and think you are immune to the discussion of accessibility, oh phew this topic doesn’t impact me, I can promise you, that you are not.
The reality is, that you and your children are one car accident or one medical emergency away from needing an accessible inclusive equitable society.
So, let’s get cracking folks!
Fraser, F.G., & Shields, C.M (2010). Leader’s roles in disrupting dominant discourses and promoting inclusion. In. A.L. Edmunds & R. B Macmillian (Eds.). Leadership for inclusion: A practical guide (pp.7-18) Rotterdame: Sense Publishers.
I have added this case to my list under the human rights cases tab. I have picked out some paragraphs, but I really encourage you all to read the full case to get the context of what happened to this child and family. The respondents applied for a dismissal and the human rights tribunal decided the complaint should continue.
There are a few paragraphs in this decision that got my noodle thinking, but for this blog, I want to focus on this paragraph below. Paragraph #52.
[52] From the materials before me, I am satisfied that the School District was actively and intensively involved in attempting to accommodate Student Y’s disabilities from the time that Student Y was in grade one up until the time that she was excluded from school in grade three. However, the question before me on this application is whether the School District is reasonably certain to prove that it “could not have done anything else reasonable or practical to avoid the negative impact on the individual”: Moore at para. 49 [Emphasis mine]. In my view, there is a lack of information in the materials before me that would allow me to conclude that the School District is reasonably certain to do so.
The author of this decision decided to emphasize the words anything else. It wasn’t me that bolded that in the paragraph.
So, this is my guess.
When the human rights tribunal emphasizes ANYTHING ELSE are they eluding to an alternative learning space?
A lot of districts have alternative learning programs for students who need alternative learning spaces. There has been a recent uproar over the closing of a learning centre in the Surrey district with parents and students very upset over its closing with media coverage and rallies. The school districts report funding issues. There was also another family who was in the media, and their son was in a life skills program, and he was excluded due to lack of resources. Without systemic financial planning from the Ministry of Education to keep these alternative programs running, they end up closing and students are still being excluded.
In the face of complete exclusion for some students from schools, will school districts be required to provide alternative learning spaces as their ANYTHING ELSE or face human rights complaints? The school districts already have the power to choose the education program for the student and choose classroom placement. This is from the Supreme Court decision Eaton v. Brant County Board of Education, 1997 CanLII 366 (SCC), [1997] 1 SCR 241 (Notable paragraphs are: 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81)
What does the tribunal mean by ANYTHING ELSE? They have already acknowledged the school district was “actively and intensively involved in attempting to accommodate Student Y’s disability”.
We are at the brink of having Ombudsperson and possibly the Human Rights Tribunal (if this case goes to a hearing), set forth some expectations around the topic of exclusion.
After you read this case, what is your guess? What do you think anything else means?
Due to parents filing external complaints to the Ombudsperson BC department, they have decided to launch an investigation to see if these exclusions are fair.
Today makes me think of Judith.
Judith Heumann, the late disability activist has said “Change never happens at the pace we think it should. It happens over years of people joining together, strategizing, sharing and pulling all the levers they possibly can. Gradually, excruciating slowly, things start to happen, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, something will tip.”
Today it tipped.
THIS is why filing external complaints is so important.
We are all grains of sand that make up a beach. Every complaint matters. It becomes data. Change will never happen if we just suck it up, swallow the circumstances that we are in, and never speak up.
We can never SHUT UP! EVER!
File
File
File
Our lived experience needs to spread far and wide.
Everything we do matters. All of it. Nothing is ever wasted. It builds over time. We will never truly know the full extent of the impact that we have on people and how think and may see things differently. We need to keep going.
To all of the parents who have filed over this topic in the past YEARS, you have all been building blocks to make this happen. ALL of you.
BC CAISE (BC Council of Administrators in Inclusive Education) in their “A Guide to Meaningful Consultation” manual on page 8 defines it as:
“Meaningful consultation is an ongoing, collaborative effort involving students, families/caregivers, and educational staff, focused on open dialogue and joint decision-making for educational matters. This inclusive process works towards ensuring all voices are heard and decisions are well-informed and clearly communicated. All parties work together towards a balanced outcome, emphasizing recurring dialogue rather than consultation being a single event.”
“When done well, meaningful consultation ensures families/caregivers feel that the school team listens to them and that their experience, knowledge and ideas have been considered.”
“Meaningful consultation encourages open dialogue; it does not mean all parties will agree.”
“When a mutual agreement is not possible, the school team will provide a rationale for their decision-making with regard to the educational programming of the child and ensure ongoing consultation and follow-up.”
If this rationale is not being provided and they refuse to provide it when you ask, you can use this manual and file an Ombudsperson complaint.
I also want to acknowledge that the consultation process can trigger a lot of emotions in us. In order to keep advocating and keep the dialogue going, there are certain rules we parents need to know to navigate this system.
What is an indication of social change for you? There are TONS of them all around us. Pick one. What is it?
For me? One of the many things I see is that more people from marginalized communities are willing to be noticed. To not blend in… as much. People are more willing to be transparent about themselves and use their own lives as a way to advocate. In small ways and big ways. More people are willing to take up space and be seen and heard. Many have taken up blogging and writing books. The internet for disabled individuals has had a huge impact on our ability to connect with other people who are like us. Technology allows us to express ourselves like never before. Sharing our stories is changing the temperature of the water. By connecting with other people we are forming social groups that are often leading to coordinated advocacy projects.
It’s so interesting to me that when you are on the outside of “typical” societal expectations, or you don’t measure up to the ideal measuring stick, just your existence alone is defiance and a daily protest. If you are trying to live your best life, then you are a change-maker. Attempts to fully participate in society is advocacy.
Being transparent and noticeable can be work. You never know how someone is going to respond to you and you need to be ready at a moment’s notice. That kind of constant vigilance can be tiring. You are also more under surveillance, as all eyes are on you. You are representing a community of people, whether you asked to take on that role or not. You are also more vulnerable to discrimination and you need to be ready for that.
On the plus side, it can be nothing short of pure freedom. To be a caged bird, released.
Masking and blending in with the wallpaper is work too. Feeling trapped is not fun emotional work either. That too can be tiring. It’s really just a question of what kind of work and on what scale do you want to be doing? The work of being noticed or the work of masking? For a lot of people, there is no option to hide. Sometimes not having a choice is simpler. You are forced to dive in. This is your reality and now it’s time to run with it. For those with maskable invisible disabilities, I think it’s very natural to sway from side to side and this decision-making is fluid even within a single 20-minute social interaction.
Whatever decision you make about your willingness to be noticed, and on what scale you decide to share yourself with the rest of us, I wish you all the best in living your best life, whatever that is. Happy New Year!
I have recently had someone publicly tell me that the information I post “is already out there and readily available, and what is the point of providing information if it won’t help anyways?”
And “Being NICE and COLLABORATIVE so they will like you is the wrong approach”
And “this is exactly the response system is hoping for: having parents spend a multitude of energy and hours on researching and getting information to “help their child” in the classroom, so they can self congratulate themselves in showing how collaborative they have been with parents.“
This person feels the human rights system is a waste of time. What needs to occur are legislations changes only and anything less than that is a waste of time. They feel the only response parents should be doing is pulling their kids out of the education system.
Here is my response:
Not to toot my own horn, but for this blog, it’s important I place myself in this topic before I dive in. I don’t want anyone to think I am just making this stuff up. It is an informed blog. One of my degrees is in Human Relations from Concordia University, Montreal, with a certificate in family education. I graduated with honors and an award. This degree is about human systems. How people function in groups of all sizes from families to large organizations and societies, systemic change, and how to intervene when systems become toxic.
Some people when they advocate can reach a point when they are beyond frustrated, angry and bitter. Some people have decided to lash out at other people. The very people they are in the trenches with. They end up making it harder and more emotionally draining for parents who are advocating. I don’t think they realize the impact and how upsetting it is for other parents to hear their comments. Crabs in the bucket. My perception is that there is a lack of understanding of how human systems work, and how systemic change occurs and they are frustrated because how they think they should be able to make systemic change occur, isn’t occurring. The wider the gap between our expectations and reality, the more depressed or angry we will become.
I can’t fit everything in this blog about how human systems work, so for this blog I am going to focus on macro-level and micro-level aspects. Macro-level systems are the big ones. The government bodies that include hundreds and thousands of people. They are our political system, the structure of our economy, the structure from the Constitution of Canada and the impact on our system, democracy, our education systems with public schools, private schools, online schools etc. The large groups of multiple moving parts that involve many complex layers, and are maintained by many layers of legislation, policy, and guidelines. Think of many many gears all locked together. They are all moving. Wish to change one gear, and they will all be impacted. These systems have formal codes of conduct and contracts. Also, the unwritten social contracts and social rules that glues everyone together. These systems are tidal wave systems that do not get pushed off course unless something massive happens. I haven’t even mentioned the topic of power. That’s a whole other blog. Systems that are oppressive like to remain that way, unless it’s detrimental to themselves to not change.
Micro-level changes are things that happen on one-to-one individual levels. Individual social interactions. A 20-minute conversation is a micro-level interaction. This is when we advocate with our child’s teacher and they learn something new about ADHD and now they are adapting their teaching and accepting of movement breaks because they understand things differently.
Some people think, that if we only change this one law, or have this one human rights case, or if we change one piece of legislation then everything will be solved for all of the following generations.
I can promise you, if this is how you think, this is where your pain is because that will never happen. Change will never happen because of one person. Ever. We are dealing with way too many macro-level systems all connected and interacting with each other, AND we are dealing with way too many micro-level individual interactions of ableism and lack of information about disabilities. One person is not going to swoop in and solve it all. The education system provincially has hundreds of thousands of people working in these systems. There is not one solution. If we are waiting for a hero to ride in on a horse and save us all, we’ll be waiting for a very long time.
One person cannot change a human system. It takes teams. Plural. And in our society, it is going to take multiple teams all working together with a common goal for a sustained period of time. These teams are going to have to cover ALL different areas and all different aspects of the multiple gears.
There are 4 elements to a social movement.
There is a trigger event that inspires an intense reaction from the community
ALL of the already established community groups come together and work together as ONE
They have a common simple message that the public can understand. (Eg. Black Lives Matter)
The advocacy of this one common message and connection of all of the groups needs to be for a sustained period of time. A long time.
That is a social movement.
Think of the women’s movement in the 70’s. We still have women’s issues today. But women entering the workforce was quite the shift that started it all off. The different professions women are working in today is because of that social movement.
We need to work at both a macro-level and a micro-level. Even if we had a piece of legislation change or a fantastic policy manual from the government we are still going to be dealing with the individual people who are ableists and want power over. Any change coming from the top down and they will figure out ways to get around it, ignore it, and we will still be struggling with the same shit.
It’s not that we just need to get EA standards and everything will change.
It’s not that we just need to get legislation changed.
It’s not that we just need this one class action human rights case.
We need everyone. We need ALL of it. It is all hands on deck. We need every disability organization, we need all parents, we need trustees, we need educators, we need PAC’s, we need unions, we need everyone working in their own corners advocating for accessibility and inclusion.
Anything less than that, and we will not be able to move the needle enough to notice change in this generation.
It takes a micro-level AND a macro-level response.
Social change, where people really feel that the needle moved, that is noticeable… usually takes 3 generations. But not always…
We are in a catch-22 when it comes to legislation changes. The government won’t enact legislation or funding commitments to items that they feel the majority of their constituents don’t want. Their goal is to get re-elected. If they don’t get re-elected they can’t pursue any of their goals. So, if the public doesn’t care about kids with disabilities and their access to an equitable education…. the government isn’t going to put a massive amount of money into that. They need to make their constituents happy. We also know that society is generally ableist. And oppressive. We are also dealing with evolutionary instincts. Humans are complex. We are a mix of beautifulness and survival instincts. When resources are tight, we want them for ourselves.
Everyone’s advocacy efforts are all part of the work. It all matters. Every single one of you. There is no one single solution or even one single group that is going to just fix everything in a couple of years. It takes massive amounts of people ALL advocating in our own corners. Micro-level and macro-level advocacy work. We can’t just change legislation. We need to change the hearts and minds of everyone to uphold and embrace the legislation even if it does change.
Having said all of this: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has” -Margaret Mead
Very true. It all starts somewhere. Seeds get planted by small groups that grow over time.
If you are someone who is belittling other parents’ advocacy efforts. Telling them there is no point to any of their work, and that the system will never change. Which is actually impossible, because systems always change. They are maintained by people and society changes all the time. Please, and I say this with love in my heart. Please find counselling or keep your comments to yourself. The human rights process may have been a waste of time for some people, which I am truly sorry. The human rights system enforces the Human Rights Code and creates the Duty to Accommodate which is the strongest piece of advocacy tool that we have as parents, and those cases that advanced the Code were because of parents who sacrificed. You are not helping anyone by belittling all of parent’s advocacy and telling them there is no point. You are now the one making this worse for them. When you make statements telling people to give up, you are now oppressing them. I have zero tolerance for that.
This is a marathon. Not a sprint.
It’s a team sport. We all need to train individually but run together.
Let’s build each other up and be supportive.
For further reading on social change I recommend the book: Let’s Move the Needle. An Activism Handbook for Artists, Grafters, Creatives, and Makers. By Shannon Downey
