qm_winter

irginia

apitol

onnections

, W

inter

2016

SHAV Cultivates

Student Advocacy

The weather was perfect in Richmond

on November 4th, 2015 and it was a great

day for the Speech-Language-Hearing

Association of Virginia’s very first Student

Advocacy Training Event! SHAV’s goal

with this event was to cultivate advocacy and

create a training that was specifically geared

toward students so that they would feel knowledgeable and more

confident about important legislative issues impacting our professions

of speech-language pathology and audiology. This training would

then empower the students to join the rest of the SHAV membership

for our annual Advocacy Day event at the state capitol in Richmond

on January 18th, 2016 (MLK Day).

SHAV worked diligently with our Lobbyist,

David Bailey, to coordinate an event that would not

only be educational, but also useful and impactful for

the students. We strategically planned for the student

advocacy training to coincide with the meeting of

Joint Commission on Health Care (JCHC) in hopes

that the students might have an opportunity to see

some legislators in action. We hoped the training

would not only educate the students about the

legislative processes, but it would also help them to

see how legislative issues impact all of us and the

public that we serve.

David Bailey, SHAV’s lobbyist, and members

of our Executive Board opened the training session

by explaining the importance of advocacy, how

grassroots advocacy works, and how it can indeed

make changes in laws. The Board members then

discussed the background and history of some of

the current professional issues within our state

(i.e. provisional licensure of clinical fellow SLPs,

regulation of speech-language assistants, and limited

cerumen management for audiologists), and the

impact of the legislation on the public that we serve.

SHAV wanted to be certain to provide the

students with more than just a lecture about

advocacy. Therefore, it was crucial that the students

have a chance to observe legislative action first hand,

and be given the opportunity to connect directly with

legislators and their staffers. We did this initially by

ushering the students into one of the Senate rooms at

the Virginia Assembly to see a committee at work.

The room was so packed with interested stakeholders

that the students had to line the wall in the back of

the room as they observed the Joint Commission

on Health Care (JCHC) in action. While there, the

students heard the committee discuss timely topics

such as the voluntary, inpatient psychiatric treatment

of minors, as well as the funding and treatment for

geriatric psychiatric treatment facilities within our

state. Many of the students reported that this was

their favorite part of the training, and it made the

legislators and the issues seem “more real” to them.

The students appeared to truly enjoy learning

about advocacy in this interactive way. The

momentum was continued when Abby Phillips,

Legislative assistant to Delegate Jennifer McClellan

and Gail Henderson, Legislative assistant to Louise

Lucas shared their own real life experiences with

the students about working with legislators and the

public on important issues within our state. Abby

and Gail’s friendly and approachable demeanor quickly engaged

the students in a way that was both informative and definitely made

them feel at ease. Senator Louise Lucas then further reinforced the

notion that legislators are “real people” when she made time in her

busy schedule to speak to the students about the importance of getting

involved and the impact of advocacy. Her passion and enthusiasm

about serving the public were absolutely contagious!

The turn-out for the student advocacy training was quite good

with 33 students and 3 faculty members from Longwood University

and Hampton University attending the event. Each student was given a

SHAV swag bag of goodies and a certificate for attending the training.

The advocacy training day concluded with a lunch-and- learn session

over pizza, cookies, and beverages. The informal setting allowed the

students to discuss the day, debrief, and ask questions in a pressure-free

atmosphere. The interactive opportunities and real life examples during

Continued on next page