Hi guys! This is your director of Advocacy writing, and I wanted to let you know what this Section is and isn't for, and some rules specifically for this section (you should also adhere to the Forum Rules, of course.)

What Is Community Advocacy?

Community Advocacy is, of course, advocacy that you do in the community. This ranges from taking on an issue with a policy at the local school board to State level work such as sitting on a board or protesting in your state capital about a state policy. You are representing more than one individual with community advocacy, often in hopes of changing a rule or policy that effects the community in some way. Or you may be organizing a group of individuals on the same issue in order to speak out about a local issue.

What is not Community advocacy is a specific case, unless it is being used to organize around an issue. National level work is, for the convenience of this site, not included in this section. For more info on what does not go here, click here.

Formatting

In order to keep this area easy to access, please follow the following guidelines when you post. If you don't, you won't be penalized- I can always move things or ask you to add or delete things- but it will make things easier to find.

• If you are posting about a local or state level issue, please put the postal abbreviation for the state in the Subject line. For example, If there was an open meeting of the PA Autism Bureau, I'd post Autism Bureau Open Meeting, PA
• If you are posting something that only effects a specific county, parish, or region, make sure that is clearly stated within your post. For example, if there was a meeting for my County's Children's Roundtable, I would write in my post at the top "In Venango County" or for a regional Roundtable, "Northwestern PA"
• If it is a meeting that repeats, do not post a new thread- instead, update the old one. Topic changes (Such as having one session be about seclusion and restraint and the next about Child Services involvement) do not require another thread. Meeting types or changes in Audience, however, do.
• You may Start another thread if the meeting usually doesn't have a big speaker and they bring in someone special. For example, when the Children's Roundtable of Venango county brought in Judge Pratt of Indiana to discuss a new practice, it was a bigger deal and was open to anyone in the state, so that would get it's own thread instead of being under the "Venango Children's Roundtable" thread.
• If you are looking for info or are stuck on something, Please include the words "Help" or "looking for" in the subject line along with the state and the subject. 
• Feel free to post impressions about a specific meeting you attended in its own thread- so long as there hasn't already been an impressions thread on that same meeting by another user. 

What doesn't belong here

• Requests for personal advocates. We have another section for Offering or Requesting Advocacy services for an individual. You may of course use this area to organize individuals on a larger issue- for example, if several people realize they have issues with the same policy or issue and choose to come together instead of fighting alone- but not for individual cases.
• Chat about a larger advocacy issue. For example, if you want to discuss the subject of seclusion and restraint- or national level policy- you should go to the Issues and Hot Topics section. But if there is a meeting  you'd like to post about ON a larger issue or state specific issue, this is the right place for it.
• Things that belong in other sections, like talking about a fan petition for your show or advocacy for non-autism related subjects (Example: PETA, Comic book defense league, Starving kids in Africa, etc.) I WILL allow things that are somehow related to ASD, or will have irrelevant topics moved. 

If You need to contest something, please PM me instead of posting to the thread. This will hopefully cut down on drama.

*This is still being worked on. If you have suggestions or feedback, please let me know.