Listening to community voices

How would people with disability, their partners, parents and allies like to influence services?

This project explores the views of people with disability about effective and respectful ways of including them in improving services. This includes their views about receiving information about services, providing feedback on services or being involved in designing services and programs.

The research team comprises researchers from the Inclusive Communities team and two Community Project Officers with lived experience of disability. Together we will be running group discussions with people with disability and their partners, parents and allies. We will explore:

• how important it is to have a say about, and give feedback on, the programs and services they use
• how interested people are in different kinds of engagement activities, ranging from passive (information sharing) to more active involvement (co-production)
• which ways to communicate they find appropriate and effective for various purposes.

The findings will inform an engagement strategy currently being developed by the NDIS Services team at BSL, and will be relevant to policy development to enhance people’s choice and control across the sector.

Conference presentation

Mills, A, Warr, D & Kasidis, V 2022  ‘I don’t know how to answer that!’: exploring community perspectives on engagement activities , presented at Anglicare Australia conference, Hobart