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Early Childhood Education
Advocacy and Leadership in Early Childhood Education

Content: Internal advocacy occurs when teachers, social workers, health care workers, or others use their positions within schools, hospitals, day-care centers, and other child-serving organizations to speak on behalf of children and families. These professionals attempt to improve the way the institutions in which they work meet the needs of their clients, patient, and customers by arguing for more responsive, accessible, and affordable services. External advocates are those who are not employed by the organization of concern or who do not live in the immediate community but who identify systematic injustices or inequities that they believe should be addressed. Often, internal and external advocates form alliances to put pressure on administrators or elected officials in order to stimulate change. Individual versus organizational advocacy. Advocates may work on behalf of individuals or through formal advocacy organizations. In the former, friends, allies, guardians, or lawyers speak on behalf of a child or family that does not otherwise have the skills, knowledge, or confidence to speak for themselves. This is especially effective when a child or family is confronted with a complex bureaucracy with multiple regulations that require expertise to negotiate or receive the desired service. Formal advocacy organizations are concerned with practices or policies that affect groups of individuals or multiple communities. The Children’s Defense Fund cited earlier is perhaps the most widely known of these advocacy organizations.