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Welcome to BCCPAC Advocacy!

Advocacy is about parents helping parents.

Advocacy is a tool that helps people communicate. Whatever the concern, whatever the problem, advocacy can help remove barriers and solve problems.

Advocacy is about speaking up or acting on behalf of oneself or in support of another person or group.

Advocacy:

• Builds better parent understanding of the needs and challenges of youth within the BC public school system.
• Helps everyone focus on the best interests of students.
• Helps school and district parent advisory councils (PACs/DPACs) and individual parents and students solve problems in our public schools.
• Promotes fair, impartial, consistent and effective problem-solving.

Parents as Natural Advocates

Parents are their child’s first teachers and have the primary responsibility for their child's care and well-being. Parents have a natural strong desire to ensure their child's rights, needs and opinions are respected. Parents can provide information about their child(ren) that can help in fair decisions being made to support the child.

Why do we need to speak up for students in public schools?

Many parents don’t know where to begin when they want to solve problems in their child’s best interest. Many are unsure about where they “fit” in the public school system when it comes to speaking up for their child(ren). Some of the problems children face at school can be very complicated. Some parents worry about when to speak up, how to speak up and what will happen if they do.

BCCPAC Advocacy supports parent leaders and individual parents to speak up for children. It helps parents understand parents’ and children’s rights and responsibilities in the public school system, as well as the rights and responsibilities of others within the system. Sometimes it is hard to find out how a school district deals with parent/student concerns. With the support of dedicated volunteers we help students and parents find and use the school, district and provincial policies and processes that are available to help them solve their problems. Where possible, local parent leaders to act as mentors to parents—helping develop advocacy skills among parents throughout their school districts!

PACs/DPACs have a legislated role in the School Act to represent parents in the BC public school system. DPACs that are members of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils (BCCPAC) and want to focus on building advocacy in their districts may choose to send parent volunteers to workshops at conferences or have workshops in their district. When DPACs focus on advocacy activities, they learn more about the challenges students and parents face in our public schools. With this information, DPACs can influence school boards to make decisions that support students and parents.

What happened to the BCCPAC Advocacy Project?

The BCCPAC Advocacy Project was an initiative of BCCPAC, which began in 1994, when BCCPAC received funding to run a pilot project. Funding from the Ministry of Education increased and continued until 2009 when all project funds were eliminated. During the 15 years the Advocacy Project operated many volunteers were trained and developed advocacy skills and thousands of parents in BC have been helped to speak up for their children. Their experiences have helped the project identify systemic problems in the public school system and enabled BCCPAC to pursue positive change at the provincial level. BCCPAC is proud to continue to offer advocacy to parents through our advocacy call in line operated by dedicated volunteers. 

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