Advocate for Persons with Disabilities

The Advocate represents the rights, interests and viewpoints of persons with disabilities.

Overview
The Office of the Advocate for Persons with Disabilities represents the rights, interests and well-being of Albertans with disabilities. The Office’s dedicated staff build relationships with community members to understand the issues and concerns they face every day.

The Office helps children, youth, adults and seniors with disabilities find and get access to the supports and services available to them. By building relationships with people and stakeholders in the disability community, the Advocate’s Office can learn about and bring important issues and concerns to the government with recommendations.

The Advocate’s Office can help
The Advocate’s Office acts as a point of contact between the community and government. Contact the Office by emailing advocate.disability@gov.ab.ca or calling 1-800-272-8841. Let us know if you require any support related to your disability.

The Office of the Advocate for Persons with Disabilities can help:
Resolve concerns
Guiding people to find available disability supports and services.
Helping to find resolutions to challenges.
Educate
Promoting the rights, interests and well-being of people with disabilities through awareness and education.
Bringing awareness of programs and services available to the community.
Inform
Engaging with the community and building partnerships to understand issues.
Identifying gaps in programs and services and delivering expert advice to senior leadership.
Collaborating with other provincial advocates and advisories.

The Office of the Advocate aligns with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was ratified by Canada and supported by Alberta in 2010. The principles include full and effective participation and inclusion in society, respect for difference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity, equality of opportunity and accessibility.

Note, the Office of the Advocate for Persons with Disabilities is unable to:
provide counselling for individuals
make decisions on behalf of another person
provide formal mediation services or represent individuals at a court or tribunal hearing
provide ongoing case management support

Connecting with Albertans
For a number of years, many Albertans have requested an advocate who could be the voice for people with disabilities. In 2018, after public consultation throughout the province, the Alberta government created the Office of the Advocate for Persons with Disabilities and appointed an Advocate.

One of the top priorities identified for the Advocate was to build relationships with people living with disabilities. In addition to connecting with Albertans with disabilities, their families and caregivers, representatives from the Advocate’s Office are able to attend and present at disability-related events, such as community meetings, annual general meetings or discussion groups. Presentations may cover the work of the Advocate specifically, or critical issues affecting Albertans with disabilities.

The Advocate and staff have been building partnerships with community groups, advocacy organizations and people with disabilities to better understand issues and changes in disability supports in Alberta. Ongoing input from the public is used to provide information and