Citizen Advocacy of Washington County

Over the years we’ve received countless phone calls about disability advocacy that we were not able to respond to with assistance. Someone’s Mom needed a ride to a doctor’s appointment or a person needed help just keeping their apartment clean. Since many of these calls involved someone with a physical disability not connected to a developmental disability, we had to respond with a “Sorry, but the scope of our program doesn’t allow us to offer advocacy help.

Several months ago Jessica Frederick, our Program Coordinator, and myself met with the Executive Director of InterFaith of Washington County. InterFaith does provide help for folks with disabilities; but only for those over the age of 60. That left a very large number of individuals with disabilities in the county without the help that they needed. They simply fell through the cracks.

After the meeting we met with our Board of Directors to do a Need’s Analysis and the board agreed that we ought to broaden the scope of our mission to include disabled individuals in need who might not have a developmental disability. In many cases they were simply looking for a volunteer to assist them, perhaps even for only a short time. This is how we came up with the idea of Community Connections.

Community Connections serves not only individuals with special needs but it also is designed to frame advocacy within the bounds of groups as well. Currently Jessica is endeavoring to match an area group home with a local church in the West Bend area. It is hoped that one of the church’s Service Groups will step forward and “advocate” as a group on a volunteer basis.

This is an exciting adjunct to our One-On-One Advocacy Program and gives individuals and groups the opportunity to “volunteer” to help as opposed to committing to a “long-term” advocacy relationship that may not suit their current abilities or time constraints. It helps fill those cracks that are apparent within the disabled community in the county as well.

If you are interested in finding out more about Community Connections, please call Jessica at 334-3384 or Mark at 626-2131.

Community Connections is designed to broaden the scope of our program while meeting the pressing needs of community
1. Fills the cracks
There are hundreds of disabled individuals in Washington County under the age of 60 that fall through the cracks. We aim to meet that need head-on.

2. Broadens the scope of our program
As the scope of our program broadens to be more inclusive of disabled individuals in general our program will continue to vibrant and relevant in a shrinking economic environment.

3. Motivates volunteerism
Volunteers become scarce in poor economic times (see below). Community Connections should help us to motivate more people to step forward to be Connections Volunteers.

4. Trains advocates to do more
We believe that once individuals become Connections Volunteers they will be more likely to consider being Citizen Advocates in the future. This program may provide the best resource for finding advocates in the future.

We'd love to have your input. Are you interested in finding out more?
For further information, call 262-334-3384 or contact Jessica Frederick:
Email: jfrederick@cawash.org