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    About The Irish Advocacy Network Ltd.

We are currently working on an updated history of The Irish Advocacy Network Ltd. In the meantime you can read this essay which was written by the then Director of Advocacy and pivotal figure  - Paddy McGowan. It details the early years of the network and the people involved.

The Time is Right

The Irish Advocacy Network was born in November 1999 in Derry, Northern Ireland. A number of people came together under the umbrella of Mind Yourself, a peer led and run advocacy organization in Derry. Martha McCleeland, myself and others came together and thought about how we were going to develop the process of peer advocacy on an island wide basis. We talked over a number of meetings on how this was best-- to bring the concept of advocacy right across the island in the mental health field. And we drew the conclusion that the only way we could do this effectively was to organize a conference. That conference took place in Derry in 1999. At that conference we drew together approximately 270 individuals, most of those individuals were people who use the mental health services or survivors.

Although the term "Mental Illness" is something that we have never liked, but it was the term that was used within a medical context. We would rather have seen the people who came to this conference termed as survivors. It was a hard task to try and bring survivors together on an island wide basis for the first time, but we set out about doing that. Paddy Masterson and myself traveled the country on a two-week basis calling with health boards all across the Republic of Ireland. Talking with survivors, talking to health board staff and mental health employees. At first nobody really wanted to listen to us, nobody really wanted to engage, the doors were quite firmly closed. Although in saying that we also encountered some very good people within the mental health
professions who were prepared to listen and try and understand where we were coming from and did in many ways support us. The conference was pulled together, the people attended. Survivors discussed for the first two days with no other outsiders and allowed people time and space to tell their own stories. We all needed to start to understand that we are not alone. There are a lot of us out there.

And I must say that it was probably one of the most liberating experiences of my life to date. Seeing all these people coming, making their way to Derry from all parts of Ireland. People who had been given no hope that they 1. could make it there, or 2. that they could survive within that arena without a range of professionals overseeing them. But we overcame it and there lay the birth stone for the Network. The Steering Committee was elected democratically for the conference, a management committee of 12 individuals, 6 from the north, 6 from the south, 7 women and 5 men. Out of that beginning the Network was born.

The task in front of us was enormous: where do we go, what do we do, how do we start, all these questions posed in front of us. Once the 3 day conference finished, I had been elected to chair the Network so the task began getting out on the road. Knocking on doors, making the acquaintances, talking to people, explaining the process taking the fear away of survivors actually doing something for themselves. We did this with very little money, in fact we had no finances, we had no understanding of where we were going to draw finances from. We had no understanding of who to approach or what road to go about it, but that did not deter us. We moved on, we did the visits, knocked on the doors, had the arguments and the debates, but we still managed in our own way to move the process forward on a daily basis. And for the next 3 years it was much of the same. It was about getting out there, meeting the people, talking to survivors, persuading survivors that we had to come together to form a Network of people and that we had to bring advocacy to the fore within mental health.

We were fortunate in the fact that we had a training programme developed by Mind Yourself, with input from Marty Daly from LAMP in Belfast, and myself and my own background. Martha put a lot of work in putting the training programme together. That training programme has been invaluable in training peer advocates north and south and this process in itself has been the tool that has liberated a lot of people. We would fully understand that there is a lot more people that could and will avail of the training and we would see that as our way forward, our move, something that we've been doing for ourselves, by ourselves. With our own combined strengths, the training will lead us towards our own recovery path. We have fostered the concept of peer advocacy on this island, we have fostered the concept of recovery, and we have fostered the sense of our own liberation. No longer do we see ourselves as oppressed people, no long do we see ourselves as being on the margins of society.

The Network has grown in many ways and has still a lot of growing to do. I would equate the Network at present to be in its adolescence and like any adolescent we will make mistakes, we will then learn by our mistakes and move on. But no more can we go back to being victims of our oppression, no more can we go back to being a people who are not understood, no more can we go back to being defenseless. We have to really take power again, to take our own individual power and combine our collective power. We are all human beings who have been hurt in many ways and some of the people we have come into contact with over the years have been so brutalized, so demeaned by the system and by society. In many ways we had to do that for our own defense, for our own survival.

That has to change. We have the strength within ourselves collectively and individually to know that if we want to change the system, if we want to get equality, justice and our own liberty we will have to fight. That fight has already started.

A lot of work has to be done and a lot of work is being done. We have to start at societies attitudes towards people with emotional distress. We have to start with families, to make families understand that this is not the end of the road, this is only the starting point. This is only somewhere where we are at that minute and that we're moving towards that change.

We have to start to work with professionals and in particular with psychiatrists to give them an understanding that people can and will recover if they are given the right support. Medication is only one tool that can be used within recovery. We also have to demonstrate that there are other models out there, that there are pathways that we can use. Maybe it takes more time to put them in place, maybe it takes a little more skill, maybe it takes a little more understanding but most of all it has to be genuine. We have to play our part in making this happen. We can no longer afford the luxury of sitting back and saying everything is wrong. We know the things that are wrong but we have to take responsibility, we have to be the foot soldiers of change. We have to be the very people that are going to lead by example. In that perspective we have to demonstrate that we can be the architects of our own change.

The Network has moved along very, very slowly, step by step. We are now in the position that we have 9 full time employees including 5 regional advocates, an advocacy director, a director of development and 2 administration staff. A team that is starting to grow. Hopefully in the years to come that team will grow to a bigger work force. We are hoping that we can attract volunteers, trained volunteers, support volunteers, to bring this organization to the fore of the mental health field. Our aims is to have as many advocates on the ground paid to do the jobs, skilled, trained professionals within their job, within their role. But we understand that is going to take time, a lot of time, and hard work. But we need these people as this entire organization is survivor to survivor.

We have started from a base point but need people and goodwill to drive this forward. We need to know that in our time of distress there is a strong network there, that can support and assist us in our own individual recovery and also in the protection of our rights and liberty. For too long we have depended on others to do that for us. Some very good people have done it; some very good people have stuck their head above the parapet and within the professions have lost the chances of promotion. Careers have been shattered and ruined because they said enough is enough and that they had the humanity to come in behind us.

But now it is our time. Everyone has a time; everyone gets a time that they have to stand up and take control for themselves again. I believe that time is now, now that it is started it can't stop. We must move forward and can change a lot of things within our own lives. By changing things within our own lives, that will ultimately lead us to be in a position that we can enable others to change things within their lives. The Network will always be here. "We're in it together" Breda Lawless said on one of my very first meetings; "We're in it together for
the long haul". In many ways she was right, it is going to be a long haul. For history dictates to us that this struggle is going on for hundreds of years. We haven't really moved in the last 150 years but now we have the opportunity and the tools, the skills and more than anything, the people. Time does many things. Time has taught us to be silent, to be defenseless, when to be quiet. But time can also be used the other way. The time is right, the time is opportune; the time is ours and if it is ours now we can move with a strong united voice. This organization is the voice of survivors of emotional distress throughout the island of Ireland.

I would like to take this opportunity to encourage all people who have used mental health services, all people who have a mental health diagnosis, all people who want to see change within the present system to unite under the banner of the Irish Advocacy Network. Then we will become a strong voice, a voice that won't go away, a voice that will represent people on this island, a voice that will be the driving force of all our liberation. People who have mental health problems have been victimized. The victimization has to stop and here.

Life can and will be good. Life will throw certain obstacles in our way but
because we are united in our determination to change the day to day problems that people meet. The very fact that we are there to support one another, that will be our rallying call. We will support, we will enable people to emancipate themselves, to be able to break the chains of our past without forgetting its history. We can look into the sunlight of tomorrow and say yes; yes the Irish Advocacy Network has the determination to be the voice and the watchdog of people who encounter emotional distress.

So once again I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who have stood shoulder to shoulder and also the opportunity to thank all those who at first had problems around us being on the ground, around the idea of us being organized. When people support each other, the justification of our fight and our struggle is justified, rightly justified and it can never be taken away from us. We never again will be prisoners of our past destiny.

Onward and forward we will march. We will march to the sound of feet, and those feet are the survivors of emotional distress. The time is now, the time is right and I would encourage everyone to take that step, that first step and reap the rewards of your own liberty and that of your fellow survivors.

Paddy McGowan