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Advocacy has recently been the equivalent of motherhood and apple pie within the learning difficulties community. Any professionals who care about their reputation always stress what a good thing it is and how they want more of it.

However, some of my professional colleagues now speak of advocacy organisations they have supported, which, when all is said and done, haven't achieved much. These rumblings are still discreet whispers - but they are getting louder.

The better organisations are now highly professional and employ skilled managers. As a result, they are vibrant, enjoy high levels of participation and deliver a range of excellent, often innovative projects. They contribute to the shaping of local services, accepting that sometimes they win and sometimes they lose. The best of these organisations are showing providers how ideas from marketing, such as a total focus on the customer, can help them provide better services to end-users. They herald a coming-of-age of the advocacy movement.

So what about the rest? There are still many organisations that resemble a student union bar circa 1974. Moreover, they often ignore the wider communities of people they are set up to serve. They have little concept of management and no focus on providing a quality service. Their managers are themselves not disabled and often possess the kind of loony-left world-view that had mostly disappeared by the late 1980s. Asked for an opinion, such people come back with unrealistic demands, petty complaints about format and obscure points about "hidden agendas".

The future of advocacy depends on which type of organisation wins the day. The learning difficulties white paper Valuing People offers an invitation for a maturing advocacy movement to play a new role in the future of services. This invitation follows a political formula that goes back to the earliest days of human society - in exchange for a share of power, the advocacy movement must agree to buy into the system, play by most of its rules and accept compromises. Thankfully, many organisations are doing this and making real gains for the people they represent. They are doing this in some areas with huge skill and success. Others, however, are living out their political fantasies by refusing to play ball.

Sadly, some of these people can be found even at the national level of the advocacy movement, where they play out their little dramas within dangerously close earshot of the Department of Health. If this lot continue to act in this way, patience will run out, the rug will be pulled and we'll be back to where we were 10 years ago - outside the tent, wondering why everyone ignores us. The challenge for the advocacy movement is to move towards a maturity that befits its achievements to date.

Craig Dearden is chief executive of Speaking Up!, an advocacy organisation of people with learning difficulties. (www.speakingup.org)