The Brain Injury Network operates the SABI Policy and Advocacy Forum (SABI stands for Survivor Acquired Brain Injury and Survivor Advocate Regarding Brain Injury.) First, there are plenty of good survivor support groups, Internet chat rooms and Internet groups for survivors. So why this one? We want input and views from one group, the survivors, on one thing, issues of importance to our collective brain injury survivor community. So we promote discussion between survivors about broad advocacy issues. It was our little all-survivor organization here in Sonoma County, California that got talking about criminal conduct in a college program for people with brain injuries, and that got us going on national standards for college programs designed for people with brain injuries. We are building a consensus on issues here, in addition to our lobbying for national standards for college programs. We are commenting on many other areas that impact upon our whole brain injury survivor community. We have already developed an extensive public policy platform and we continue to add to it.
Survivor, it's your perspective we want to know about. It's your perspective, and yours alone, that we want to share with the world. There are plenty of organizations that advocate for us, but at the same time they also advocate for other stakeholders such as service providers, caregivers, professional associations, school systems, medical institutions, personal injury attorneys, the rehabilitation industry, etc. We want the survivors' pure views. We have already seen in our group that even among survivors there can be many differences of opinion. ("Right to life" verses "right to die" for people in the persistently unaware state comes to mind.) But here we find that there are issues upon which we can and do fashion a collective viewpoint and an advocacy agenda.
So, our forum, the SABI Policy and Advocacy Forum or SABI for short, focuses on survivors' views on advocacy related topics. If you are a survivor of acquired brain injury, please visit our forum. Perhaps you would like to join and have your say on an ongoing basis. If you get comfortable here it will help others get comfortable. It might even help some of us get comfortable with the world. And we might collectively be able to do some good. That's what it's about.
You might also care to look at our Advocacy and Public Policy Index to see our current public policy statements.
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