This session was part of the Advocacy Sector Conversations forum series held at the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre, Melbourne, on 24 March 2015. Other sessions at this forum included:
Overview
Mary Mallett, CEO of DANA, Disability Advocacy Network Australia
This session involved a discussion about the vital role disability advocates can play in influencing government by lodging submissions to the NDIS quality and safeguarding framework consultations and the Senate inquiry into violence, abuse and neglect against people with disability in institutional and residential settings.
There is no systemic advocacy issue more serious than the abuse and neglect of people with a disability. With the recent Victorian Ombudsman investigation into reporting of disability abuse and the pending Victorian parliamentary inquiry into abuse and neglect in institutions, disability advocates are having to balance the requirements of managing their individual advocacy caseloads against the importance of contributing to policy development.
It’s easy to see how disability advocates might under value the wisdom of the frontline experience of disability advocacy. Mary led a vibrant discussion about the critical function that disability advocacy plays in relating stories of abuse and neglect. She reinforced to disability advocates that they are an enormous source of information about the “on the ground” experiences of people with a disability when it comes to lodging submissions and complaints.
Contact information:
Mary Mallett, CEO, DANA,
Disability Advocacy Network Australia
T: (02) 6175 1300
E: [email protected]
W: www.dana.org.au
Robyn Gaile, Coordinator DARU, Disability Advocacy Resource Unit
Robyn then gave a presentation on the key messages toolkit. DARU has established a working group to develop a set of key messages that promote the role and value of disability advocacy.
DARU has engaged a media company to assist in developing the key messages called PUSH statements. PUSH is an acronym for Point, Underpinning statements facts or statistics, So what does that mean, and Hammer the message home. The toolkit is still in draft form. Advocates at the forum gave their feedback on the toolkit.
- Key Messages (draft)
- PUSH #1: Why should the Government fund disability advocacy?
- PUSH #2: Why are people with a disability under represented in the work force?
- PUSH #3: How are women with disability disadvantaged in Victoria?
Transcript & audio
ROBYN GALE:
I mentioned at the top of the day we have a slight departure from the promoted agenda, only slight. We have with us today and for the entire of today’s forum Mary mallet who is the CEO of DANA, the disability advocacy network Australia. Perhaps Mary you can do a bit of a spruik about DANA.
Given that we have so many enquiries and investigations going on either at a federal level or a Victoria state level regarding especially the matter of abuse and neglect to people with disability, I thought it would be very opportune given Mary is here in Melbourne, to give her some air time to speak to the NDIS Quality and Safeguard Framework. Mary is very keen to hear from disability advocates. I will hand over to Mary and in about half an hour I will take over the microphone again and talk about the advertised agenda item.
MARY MALLETT:
Thanks very much and I’m a late addition to the agenda because I had to come down to Melbourne for something that’s on tomorrow around the outcomes framework for the NDIS meeting on at the airport. I thought if I came a day early I could come to this as well. I just want to pick your brains briefly. Before I ask you some questions I’ll just quickly first of all …
DANA is the peak body for advocacy. We’re a tiny National peak based in Canberra. We were defunded 2 days before Christmas by the Federal Government; the money was to run out at the end of February. The funding there was enough pressure put on to have it extended until the end of June. Currently our certainty of funding is only until the end of June this year and we don’t know what’s going to happen after that. The Minister said maybe some capacity building funding.
There were about eight peak disability bodies that were defunded. It’s includes Inclusion Australia for Intellectual Disability, Deaf Australia, Blind Citizens, all the disability peaks plus DANA the advocacy peak. We were all defunded. There is a new model that the department DSS has viewed as the appropriate model now which is a smaller number of peaks. We don’t think it’s right but the organisations have got funded are all good organisations that included WIDA, Children With Disabilities Australia, PWDA based in Sydney, NEDA National Ethnic Disability Association and Alliance and First People Disability Network for Aboriginal people with disability. They’re all good organisations but it doesn’t replace the voices that will be missing. Anyway, we’re separately trying to deal with that issue.
Before I go on to the Quality and Safeguarding, there were some copies of papers some of you would’ve picked up. I have just picked up the last one on the desk outside and on the front page, it mentions the Quality and Safeguarding Framework consultation and inside it talks about the Senate enquiry into violence, abuse and neglect. I’ll just touch on that first because that’s got a very short submission timeline. You’ve got a Victorian Ombudsman investigation happening and I think another Parliamentary enquiry. I’m sure many of you are preparing material to go into those. You could use the same material and put it into the Senate, put it in as a submission to the Senate enquiry. The closing date is the 10th of April, which isn’t very far after Easter. There will be hearings in every State and Territory but they haven’t set the dates for that yet.
In particular I’d like to highlight, I know people working in the advocacy sector will have things to say about every one of the terms of reference but one of the terms of reference is the role and challenges of formal and informal disability advocacy in preventing and responding to violence abuse and neglect against people with disability. Now we managed to get that, that wasn’t in the original terms of reference, we managed to get that in so we hope people will respond by telling people about the advocacy issues. All the other terms of reference are around all the violence and abuse issues.
So quality and safeguarding, the NDIS, actually the work is being done by DSS. It’s a confused picture really. The NDIA are the organisation that runs the NDIS but the policy is set by the Federal Department DSS, they’re the people doing this work. NDIA wants the policy framework set NDIA will then implement it. This is the consultation document. There is a website, which is called engaged.dss.gov.au so this is a phenomenally new thing for a Federal department to be wanting to engage with anybody. This is their very first go at it. There is lots of surprising things about it, they haven’t done too bad a job.
If you look up engaged.dss.gov.au, you can get the paper off it. They’ve set up so you can make a submission, you can download the paper. They did an easy read version as well. They have a discussion forum on there, which they’re very distressed because almost nobody has responded. What they thought in their naivety is they thought all they had to do was create a discussion forum, put it up on this new website and they would be flooded with all of us wanting to put posts on their discussion forum. They’ve only had maybe sixteen posts all together on all the topics. They had people sitting there waiting to moderate all the posts. To go on and make a post you have to register so they’ve put a barrier immediately in the way of people thinking yes I will go and do that. It’s not what people do. I am explaining to them that….what their response is likely to be is just shut it down and try and do it again. I’m trying to explain to them that yes, you have to build up over time in people’s minds yes you can engage with the Federal Government this way and yes, they will listen. Anyway, if you’re doing submissions and you’ve had a look at their engaged.dss.gov.au make a little bit of effort to praise them for the attempt. They will respond to that I think.
The Quality and Safeguarding Framework – the other thing they have on there the consultation paper, the easy read version and there are facts sheets about every aspect. Of course, there is quality and safeguarding all over the country, every State has their own systems. What they’re trying to do is develop a Nationally consistent framework, which is not an easy thing to do. What they’ve got in the paper is options for each aspect.
The options vary from the lightest of everything, the light touch way of doing things, which would be less than exists currently in any State or Territory. So they’ve put in for most things they’ve got three or four options varying from the light touch through to what they see as the top of the range. The top of the range to be honest is mostly what already exists especially in Victoria. There is a big difference in some of these areas between what’s available and the surrounding systems around the complaints mechanisms and the States that have disability Commissioners, senior practitioners. They’re very different environments. In Victoria, you probably have a pre-existing set of systems; you have more than there is really anywhere else.
I know that doesn’t mean in Victoria the system is perfect. I know that that’s why it’s a worry if they try and dilute it. I suppose what I would be suggesting to everybody who is operating in Victoria is it’s important to tell them that all of those systems in place are necessary and important that’s if you think they are. If you think some of them are completely useless and perform no useful function, Mark is laughing in case everybody says the community visitors are no good or something, you tell them how you see it. What we expect from the advocacy sector, of course people are going to say yes, there may be problems with the current systems but they’re necessary. That’s the likely response.
They divide things in this Quality and Safeguarding Framework into three domains – developmental, the middle one is something that’s gone out of my head and corrective. Developmental, preventative and corrective. The other astounding thing and I hope as many of you can do print this paper off and read it. At the very least, do a search function and see how many times you find the word advocacy – twice. This is the most astounding thing about the Quality and Safeguarding framework.
From people who do this every day, is that advocacy is in here as they call it an enabler. We’re listed as an enabler underneath the actual jigsaw puzzle that is Quality and Safeguarding and we’re listed there along with the UNCRPD. When we’ve talked to them about this they say that’s because advocacy won’t be funded out of the NDIS, advocacy as it exists now will continue to be funded by DSS, Commonwealth Government isn’t intending to not fund it. It will still sit there as a program so they don’t have to think about it, therefore if they don’t have to think about it they don’t have to write about it. Obviously, we have to and hopefully the rest of you will also highlight to them that it’s important. Because the worry is if it doesn’t get written up and talked about enough in these things then it seems to not have a place. Having talked to the people who are writing this it’s not in there for a bad reason if you know what I mean, it’s just the outcome still could be the same. The same if any of you have responded to that ILC paper that DSS did as well that was the same. Stuff that advocacy organisations do all the time wasn’t even mentioned.
In those developmental, preventative and corrective domains, advocacy of course is important in all of them.
I suppose the most useful thing that any individual advocacy organisation can do is to provide examples. You just have to realise that the bureaucrats that write these papers don’t often meet a person with a disability. They certainly never get out and see the client issues that advocates deal with or the community visitors see on the ground all the time. The only way to make it clear to them is to give them short snappy clear examples of the kind of problems people have and in particular there are parts of this paper that they will get good responses anyway from a range of people in particular all the statutory bodies will have people to write their responses.
The last time I was down in Melbourne I talked to somebody at the Office of Public Advocate and the Disability Services Commission about the way they’re responding and all those equivalent in the other States and Territories would be doing the same thing. They will hear from that side of the discussion. They will hear from individuals and families about their issues and they will hear of course very strongly from service providers and what it is they want. Interestingly our sense is that the existing service providers it’s not in their interest for the system to be relaxed.
There is an argument that to allow the choice and control properly for people, that will work if people can use any service, anybody they want and they’re protected by consumer protection law that will be the thing that will make change.
They do want to encourage that for people who are self-managing. As you read through this and read the separate set of questions around self-managing all the time, because they do want people who self-manage to have more choice and control balanced with the protection that particularly vulnerable people need. But for the current service providers of course they will protect their patch better if the existing quality systems and everything else have to apply to new players who come into the market as well. So they won’t necessarily be arguing against us.
The two areas in particular though that advocates and advocacy organisations have experience in and they may not get the same responses from other people is restrictive practices and complaints. Restrictive practices they’re only just starting the public consultation. The first one they did was in Canberra last week. When you go on the engage.dss.gov.au there is a schedule of whatever they call them – consultations. Robyn said the one in Melbourne is 15th of April. There will be at least one maybe two others somewhere else in Victoria, I forgot to look I’m not sure where. Does anybody know?
(inaudible –too far from mic)
Geelong on the 16th, okay so you can go on and register. The one in Canberra was a big thing there were maybe 150 people it was a big consultation. A big consultation but the majority of people didn’t speak. That’s an interesting thing and that’s just the way these things work. It was 3 hours long, they present a lot of information. We made some suggestions for how they could improve that the next time because they provided a huge amount of information and then asked questions. People were dumb founded as to how to even respond but they’re trying. The things that they know they’re not in their consultations they’ve done already with organisations.
Restrictive practices when they talk to people many people don’t know anything about them and advocates do, community visitors do. Obviously senior practitioners and other people who approve them do but it is a fairly small number of people who have any insight at all into restrictive practices. The kind of things you can tell them are when you go to visit a client or you’re in a group home for some reason and the restrictive practices that are in place are not named as restrictive places. They’re there, happening but nobody has put in an application to get it approved because staff don’t even recognise that’s what it is.
There is the official restrictive practices that happen and then there is all the other stuff that happens that you will recognise when you walk in the door. But it isn’t named up….I was talking to an advocate the other day who sent me an email with a quick list, a list of fifteen things she could quickly pick out from her last few weeks work where she had seen restrictive practices that she knows are not officially in place. That’s one thing which is important because at the same time they’re doing a piece of work where they’ve got a big consulting firm doing a whole lot of work on the data around this. But the data is only what’s officially gathered and counted. Some of the stuff that you all know is some of the stuff that isn’t counted. That includes the stuff, which ends up becoming hidden. It’s there and happening, it’s the way people live whose lives are constrained inside the sector…the only way to get it to the attention of these people is for you to talk about it really.
The same is true for complaints. The Disability Services Commission will have data about complaints and I know the information and the statistics in Victoria are different from other places because of the education role that the Commission here has played in the last few years. The numbers of complaints, this is my understanding of it, the numbers of complaints has gone up. What it’s demonstrating is all those drink bottles create a complaint and every time….anything in Victoria would see those posters, fridge magnets and the whole thing and over time it is making enough of a difference. People are feeling they can complain. The same isn’t happening necessarily in other places, which is why the Victorian data is different. But what I think probably is that there are still plenty of people who don’t complain.
Having said I was going to ask you some questions and now I haven’t shut up. I would like to quickly ask you, whoever wants to can tell me from your experience what are the reasons you see that people don’t make complaints?
QUESTION:
In fear of intimidation is the number one by ODSE.
MARY MALLETT
They don’t want to complain about the staff?
QUESTION:
Basically yes.
MARY MALLETT:
Anybody else?
QUESTION:
Where do you begin? So much in your life is wrong you could spend all day complaining. How do you decide what you’re going to complain about?
QUESTION:
I think probably the belief that it will make a difference.
QUESTION:
I guess social isolation and lack of informal support to assist a person to make a complaint.
QUESTION:
I fear that the quality of care could drop further and they could actually die.
QUESTION:
From my experience people who have complained it hasn’t done anything.
QUESTION:
Apathy.
MARY MALLETT:
Apathy on the part of the person or the people surrounding them?
QUESTION:
Family.
(inaudible)
QUESTION:
Picking up on what Christian said earlier when we were talking about violence people doesn’t necessarily identify that their rights are being abused.
QUESTION:
I know they don’t want to go to through the process of complaining because they think it takes too long and difficult to deal with.
MARY MALLETT:
The process is too long and difficult meaning of course that they don’t think they’ll get enough support to work through this process.
QUESTION:
Complaining is exhausting, it’s tiring, you have to pick your battles.
QUESTION:
We find that people don’t know that their services could be better, they just think that yeah it’s bad but that’s kind of how all services are.
QUESTION:
People’s complaints don’t fit neatly under the legislative powers of the agency they’re complaining to. When they complain to say the Office of the Disability Services Commissioner they get part way in and go that’s not in our mandate or you have a complaint somewhere else so therefore we can’t….that sort of stuff I don’t think doesn’t make sense to people who understand the bureaucratic system. For consumers and families it feels like buck passing and it feels like doors being closed and all sorts of things.
MARY MALLETT:
That’s interesting because there is opportunity in here, they ask questions about what kind of complaints systems should exist in the new National system. That would make you think that whatever it is it needs to channel all the complaints need to be able to come in and then within that system they then refer them off to the right place. Anybody else?
QUESTION:
I think another reason is that the disability sector per say and I’m generalising has a very poorly trained workforce. There is ignorance about what constitutes violence and abuse. People say oh really is that abusive?
QUESTION:
This year I’ve been assisting my daughter by directly employing support workers and that’s been life changing. I have gone from being someone that has consistently, constantly complained about stuff to having now able to resolve those complaints one to one, face-to-face. It’s life changing. My suggestion is direct employment and support people to do that.
QUESTION:
Protection, these departments protect themselves from the complaints. What you put in they issue a void, dodge and weave and manoeuvre every which way to get out of it whereas their policy says complaints are tools to service improvement.
QUESTION:
And I would second that.
MARY MALLETT:
One of the other particular things that questions was about why don’t people complain so people that are the recipients to services. I’m interested in another thing, which is as an advocate if you’re working with someone on an issue, they’ve come to you to help resolve the issue but they’re not necessarily pushing to make a complaint. As advocates do you ever try and get them to make a complaint, do you try and get them to make it formal or do you do whatever it is they want to do which might be make this problem go away, just sort it out? I’m interested in trying to tease out some of that about what advocates can do, can they do anything about pushing up complaints raised?
QUESTION:
Actually as an advocate that is our role, it’s up to them to choose if they want to take that path. If they choose to then we assist them to do that.
QUESTION:
I’m probably a bit more proactive. I work with people with moderate to severe brain injury so believing that a person wants outcome X and if there is a barrier, the way of removing that barrier is to lodge a complaint or a challenge to a bureaucracy or a service provider I believe it’s my job to do that.
QUESTION:
We work with people from non-English speaking background and a lot of the times they’re not actually aware of their rights. As advocates, all we can do is make them aware. But at the same time when they do know about these complaint procedures they are often afraid that the service will be taken away or they will be punished in some way or the other. That’s a difficulty we face as well.
QUESTION:
With the work we’re doing to provide self-advocation therefore we want to empower people to recognise and to acknowledge that there is a problem and there is an issue. Then after they acknowledge they’ve got their right to complain.
MARY MALLETT:
This is immensely useful for me and what it’s reaffirming for me is as anyone of you says something everybody else around the room nods. This is the bread and butter of advocacy and everybody here knows this is actually the reality. It’s hard to get that through to people who don’t live and breathe it. The only way we can get that through is really putting in submissions. You don’t have to pay any attention at all to any of the questions I’ve asked if you don’t want to, if it’s too distracting. Just put in from the experience of your clients and the advocacy work you do, what the problems are and if you can think of the solutions good. Suggest any good solutions you can think, any glimmer of hope, anything you see that works better for some reason or any strategy any organisation has taken that you think works do put it in. They are looking for this stuff. This exact stuff you’re talking about here it’s the unspoke, the hidden stuff. They kind of know it in theory but they don’t really. Therefore, all they will get and understand is the data that their consultancy firm that they’re spending a lot of money on will get the data that’s counted and they won’t get any of this stuff unless you tell them.
QUESTION:
My experience is that people are afraid of the process. They’re also tired of telling their story over and over. Often I might be encouraging somebody to complain and they’re nervous about it, if they say no definitely not, sure. But I try to offer maximum level of support to the person to say I will come to the meeting with you, I’ll take notes, I’ll tell as much of the story as you want me to and try and fill in the gap if that would mean they’re prepared to complain.
QUESTION:
The other thing too I think is that people are afraid of the formal process but if they know they’re not happy about something and they want something done about it, then it kind of doesn’t really matter what you call that. If you approach the service with that person and together, you say what it is they’re unhappy about and ask for change then you are complaining. I think you can get a little bit hung up on whether or not you’ve complained. I think it’s about whether or not you’ve made your point and told them you’re unhappy and demanded they fix it.
MARY MALLETT:
Yep and the other thing is then do you have any sense of those complaints that people do take to and probably just specifically to service providers about their issues, how many of them get resolved satisfactorily?
(laughter)
MARY MALLETT:
That’s any percentages, what do people think? Do half of them get resolved satisfactorily – 70%, 80%, what’s your estimate? It’s quite depressing, so quite small percentages.
QUESTION:
Very, very small and you know about it when it goes well because boy do you celebrate.
MARY MALLETT:
It’s an interesting thing of course in advocacy there are very few wins. What does that mean, do people go back to the situation and just put up with it or do they manage to find some other solution?
QUESTION:
It’s my experience that some of the best parent advocates are really isolated and black listed by the services. There is a real divide in rules so they can no longer rally support amongst other individuals and parents who are experiencing the same sort of thing. They’re really isolated. So for those people who are good at complaining and probably at the forefront of some system and service reform pay an incredibly high price personally and potentially, so do their sons and daughters in terms of reprisals in all sorts of ways. I could bore you to death.
MARY MALLETT:
That’s interesting and in particular I had a parent ring me at DANA, we’re a peak body we don’t get many phone calls directly from individuals. But a parent from Sydney rang the other day and it was half an hour before I could get a word in. It was about the desperate education issue he is trying to deal with for his son. It reminded me because he is in that situation of being a very active parent advocate for his son and what that means is the school, principal, teachers, education system is lined up against him because he has now become a challenge to them. I felt terrible really. What I ended up doing, I found myself, what I discovered myself doing in the conversation I was trying to get him to think through what outcome he wanted. He was going to the UN and doing all this other stuff and I’m thinking your son is only in Grade 8 still needs to be at school, pull back a bit. I’m the one that should be advocating for him to do all that but it’s hard for people to separate what they need to achieve.
QUESTION:
We actually find we have a lot of positive outcomes. We actually do support young people to get often what they want out of the situation. One thing I’ll mention the 10 years I’ve been doing this is the power of advocacy to achieve an outcome because people go to a service provider and that provider knows they have an advocate you will be amazed how different they respond when they know someone is there that knows legislation, that knows that person has a right and will stand by them until they sort it out. We need to tell NDIS that advocacy is hugely needed and it’s not to be watered down.
MARY MALLETT:
Yep and that’s interesting where we’ve pointed that out to them, that preventative domain where they talk about just having an advocate involved with someone is having a preventative. Every advocate has examples of where they’re going to go to a meeting with someone and when they get there it’s all fixed, it’s resolved. The advocate doesn’t have to open their mouth because the threat of having an advocate there has made them find a solution.
QUESTION:
Maybe it’s just about having something on a letterhead that shows that you know the person has rights. That it can turn around. One of the things that concerns me is that the NDIS is not going to recognise that people need that particularly people who have little or no speech, young people who are unable to necessarily speak out for themselves.
QUESTION:
My concern is for when we talk about safeguards those people whose issues never even get to an advocate. What safeguards will we have for them?
QUESTION:
That’s a huge concern. I’m in the Geelong area Barwon and there were so many people were ineligible for the NDIS, very few have actually appealed that. Educating people about their rights is huge. The ones that have managed to appeal have pretty much won their cases. It’s really important that people know their rights and the process.
MARY MALLETT:
We will wind up I think, that has been enormously useful for me. We will try and put together some sort of survey structure that you can have a bit of an input to the thing we will be putting together. I will encourage you all if you have time the submissions for this Quality and Safeguarding Framework closes on the 30th of April. You will get a chance to go to those meetings, make sure you say what you think and maybe consciously focus on the stuff that advocates know that won’t get in here. It’s a bit different from some of the questions they’re asking. Thanks very much that’s great.
ROBYN GALE:
Thank you Mary, that was really valuable and for those who are here today, but those listening on the audio recording we will endeavour to make sure that the audio recording of this particular session and the written transcript of it are made available as soon as possible so if you’re putting together a submission into both the senate enquiry but also the NDIA quality and safeguarding frameworks document, that you can take advantage of some of the conversation that’s happened today. Do look out on the DARU website in the resource page under the advocacy sector, conversations forum page for that information. However, because you’ve registered today you will also get an email from Natasha when we’ve updated that page so you don’t have to look too hard for that.
What i’m about to speak about very much relates to the discussion we’ve just had and as I get older I find I can’t multi task and i can’t talk and find my space. I think the Mary’s session and what i’m about to embark upon I think are closely linked.
Key messages about disability advocacy, it’s so important as Mary pointed out that when bureaucrats and government departments are reviewing submissions and consultation processes and data they might not necessarily have a good grounding or an appreciation in the day-to-day work of disability advocacy, in the day-to-day experience of people with a disability. It is our role to be able to point that out. And it’s easier said than done. Whenever i have conversations with people, everyone in this room, when i speak to other disability advocates we all say it’s really clear what the role and the value is of disability advocacy. But how do you summarise that in 30 seconds, how do you state that in a lift conversation when you happen to get the ministers advisor or when Jon Faine or one of his production staff are in the lift with you or you’re waiting for your coffee at Starbucks etc.? It’s very challenging to be able to do that.
What we did at DARU is late last year we held a forum of executive officers, of Victorian Government or Office for Disability Advocacy organisations and we invited the executive officers or their delegates to come along to that forum to all be under the same roof and have the opportunity to talk about what are the issues of concern they have. And two, given we were getting some information about various enquiries, investigation into abuse and neglect of people with disability, and given we were hearing about various service providers and their neglect of clients and given that we’re hearing about community sector organisations losing funding, might be losing funding, having to tender for business when they’ve never had to bid before we thought it might be a good opportunity again to hold a forum to enable executive officers and or their delegates to express what their concerns might be. With the view that DARU given that we are funded to be a resource for the disability advocacy sector might find out what could we do, is there anything by way of resourcing disability advocacy organisations that might enable some movement forward.
The result of that forum was that a working group was formed with two primary goals really. One was to be able to go out and sell the great value and role that disability advocacy plays in safeguarding the rights of people with disabilities here in Victoria. Given that the forum was held the week after the Victorian state election it was an opportunity that we could maybe package up together some messages and sell that to the new Victorian Government and therefore get a little bit of a more polished presentation together or polished package of message about the role of disability advocacy. The other aim was to develop up key messages.
We formed a working group and some of those group members are here today. I haven’t seen Melanie Muir, she was registered to come today but i’m not sure if she has attended. But a name who is very familiar to us George Talaporos is on that working group. We had a couple of members from VICRAM Victorian Rural Advocacy Network and Women with Disabilities Victoria and Pauline Williams from AMIDA who is in the room today is a part of that working group as well.
We had some representation from Brain Injury Matters and the self-advocacy resource unit as well. We all got together and formulated a terms of reference of what our goals would be and started to work on what our key messages might be. Easier said than done. We then engaged a media marketing company called media manoeuvres who are made up of journalists who train mainly corporates and we got a really nice non-corporate rate for the consultancy. We worked with media manoeuvres to develop some key messages. A very, very draft form and a small form of those key messages is in the package that you got when you entered the room today. We deliberately only inserted three key messages and I’ll take you through them in a moment, they’re called push statements if that helps you find the right document in your package. I deliberately selected a push statement around women and disability just because of the morning session today. I’ll take you through that in a moment.
What our plan is is to develop a tool kit so disability advocacy organisations can utilise that tool kit for when they are going and speaking to media, when they’re speaking to Government ministers, Department heads, opposition, advisors, secretaries of departments etc. To sell the value of disability advocacy.
Media Manoeuvres suggest to us that it’s really, really important that you have really short, sharp succinct messages and even though every sector has it’s jargon and boy does disability have its jargon it’s really important to try not have your key messages be statements that utilise the jargon of the sector. Because that then alienates you from the people that you’re trying to influence. When you do read through the push statements that we’ve provided in your package be mindful of that.
The model that Media Manoeuvres suggests we use is called the Push Model. P standing for point, U standing for underpinning as in underpinning message, S as in so what and H for hammer at home. When they talk about point it’s what’s your specific point you’re trying to sell what’s the essence of your message and usually your point is in relation to some kind of a question. We were trying to simulate in that tool kit, in those sheets you’re looking at that one of the key messages that we disability advocacy organisations and disability advocates need to be selling is what is the role of disability advocacy. Why should Government continue to fund it? We need to be able to have some statements that respond succinctly to that question. But then we also need to have underpinning statements that are an evidence base that site some statistics, site some research, and give some evidence that backs up why we’re making that point. That’s the U in push. Then the S is for so what – so what does that mean? If Government should fund disability advocacy, why should it do that so what does that mean for the community, what does that mean for people with a disability? Then the H in push is to hammer it home. Pick a key point and then hammer it home.
I remember when I was getting trained by the media trainer at Media Manoeuvres about this, I said you don’t really need a H do you but as we discovered in our working group if you didn’t have a H it would not be a very good acronym. The H is there purely in my opinion to make it a much better sounding acronym. But it’s a good point that when you listen to good media interviews, in fact today on radio national I didn’t get the name of the person who spoke but it was the CEO of a homelessness service which has just been announced, Scott Morrison has just announced that they will be getting two years renewal funding despite earlier being told they were not going to get that funding. I noticed that in her messaging, back to the journalist, she was hammering home a point very clearly which was without mental health housing and homelessness services we know people will die. That’s a pretty powerful message and it’s straight forward, simple and packs a punch.
Our aim in developing these push statements, these key messages about disability advocacy is that we can make a succinct statement like that so disability advocates and disability advocacy organisations when being interviewed by the media, when selling our message to influencers we’re really, really clear on that. George do you want a microphone?
GEORGE:
We spent a lot of time on these…..
ROBYN GALE:
I think we’ve had an accident over to my left.
(laughter)
ROBYN GALE:
Can you make the comment again?
GEORGE:
I was going to say it’s all that intention and being remembered and saying that without disability advocacy people will die that might reflect well as well. Maybe we need to feed that on in to the hammer it home.
i think so, it’s a work in progress getting this tool kit up and going. our aim is by the end of April we will have the full toolkit ready. We thought given today and the nature of the audience it would be good to have a look at the beginning stages of the tool kit. Again, when Mary was speaking I was thinking I had started to draft a push statement around what role does disability advocacy play in safeguarding the rights of people with disability. I thought it just got too complex. It turned into an essay. How we sell things so they are short and sharp is really the key. I think I take here George in your comment that perhaps without disability advocacy people will die, it’s true. In certain circumstances it could be the outcome so let’s take ourselves very, very seriously.
I want to thank the working group who did come together to put the beginnings of this tool kit together. The working group are still meeting and we will be working for the next month or so to really fine-tune a few more statements. I in particular want to develop push statements around all the systemic advocacy areas that are itemised in the QDC data collection that we do. Those of you who are disability advocacy organisations that are funded through the Office for Disability and we won’t require to complete that quarterly data collection form and there are the systemic advocacy area – education, employment, abuse, neglect etc. We’re planning to develop push statements around all those areas as well. We’re gathering a lot more statistics and evidence there. Any comments about what you’ve seen, comments about any key messages that you think would be good for the working group to develop?
JAQ:
Jaq speaking, I think one of your first points about when developing message for the media having it in language that isn’t inspector language is really important. Me and Jenny were talking about that in the break as well. It’s also really important to make the disability sector more accessible for people with disabilities to find ways about talking about our issues and our lives in ways that still give us a voice and make what we’re saying powerful and important but don’t further create this kind of barrier in terms of the way that the sector speaks about people with disabilities and how do we translate what we’re saying to the Board of Community and our issues.
Robyn Gale:
Thank you that is a really key point, it’s one thing to alienate the people you’re trying not influence but it’s another thing to alienate the people you’re trying to support and help. Good point, thanks.
QUESTION:
My comment is really just supporting what Jaq’s has just said really. For me some of that was evident today in the presentations that some of the language was just too sector focused and too convoluted. I guess what comes across to me is one I have to struggle to understand, it’s like I’m doing my interpretation in my head. What is it really saying but also it causes you I think there is a disengagement in the real issues for me. There is a lack of passion and the lack of the real issue once you get into that kind of communication. I would say this is great, don’t just used it for push statements media marketing selling thing but it should be the way in which we communicate services or whatever is being done really.
ROBYN GALE:
Great thank you.
QUESTION:
I’m assuming you’re going to put this in the Government space as well in terms of why should advocacy be funded in the future. My question is how will you target who in the Government this goes to? I know the Government space is quite large and to get your point across you will need to target this to quite a select number of people within that space. I guess it’s important for you to target these PUSH numbers into the right spaces and where would those spaces be?
ROBYN GALE:
That’s a really good point and i suppose i have a two-pronged answer to that. The first is because this will be developed as a tool kit that disability advocacy organisations then utilise to supplement their campaigning or their advocacy, so it’s not the be all and end all of any campaigning or approach to Government. That’s answer number one. Answer number two, that is something that’s in the terms of reference of the working group to look at targeting these messages to certain people within Government and opposition. We just haven’t got to that step yet in our planning. It’s really good to have that reinforcement here from the floor, it’s pretty critical that we are very targeted in our approach. One of the things I need to be mindful about though is that DARU we’re not a policy maker, we’re not a lobbyist, we’re not a campaigner we provide and create, develop, maintain, build resources for the sector. That’s why we’re wanting to create a resource that the sector can utilise.
QUESTION:
It’s got to be a core question what is advocacy and why is it important? There has to be a message that addresses that. I think one of the difficulties we have is that the big issue holding back people historically is being denied a voice. The disability rights movement for a long time has been asserting listen, you know nothing about us without us, listen to us, treat us as adults, be guided by what we think and say and want, respect our human rights. Then we got alongside that an advocacy tradition because people with disability are being denied a voice. We’re at this kind of crossroads I think where we kind of want advocacy to be redundant but know that that time is a long way off yet. What we’ve got to do is accept the legitimacy of advocacy that it’s still needed, it’s still really important. It’s not about denying people with disability a voice themselves it’s about being alongside that and standing alongside and supporting. We’ve got this tricky twin message of respect the rights and dignity of people with disability and advocacy is a way of helping ensure that comes about which is too long for what you’re looking for.
ROBYN GALE:
Yes.
(laughter)
QUESTION:
So we’ve got to kind of leave half of it out and accept the good faith of advocacy, it’s not about supplanting the disability rights movement, it’s about supporting it, being alongside it. Disability is an independent voice for people with disability. it’s about promoting the rights, dignity, and interest of people with disability. It’s independent. They’re got to be the core messages so we can bundle that up and hammer it home at the end.
ROBYN GALE:
Thanks that’s really good. I think you’ve really summarised what’s been the challenge for the working group. Again, this is my take of things part of the role of advocacy is to be anonymous, it’s to support someone to stand up for their own rights and make complaints and empower themselves. A good advocacy doesn’t necessarily want to broadcast who they are and what they do yet. We’re at this critical point in our history when it comes to the funding of specific disability supports where if we don’t speak up we risk the function of independent disability advocacy in Australia going unrecognised. But it is that….
QUESTION:
You just prompted me, there is a real risk with the NDIS and it’s kind of seen as the end of advocacy, don’t need it because it’s just consumer choice. So this is a real critical junction moment.
ROBYN GALE:
Yes and that’s why as Mary said this is the time when we have to speak up about the specific stories, the specific issues because if we don’t it won’t get counted.
QUESTION:
The point I would bring up, I would be asking the community in general and even get Government a different level, it could be how much would everybody want? People with a disability could be part of the community and have the same opportunity in life like everyone. I would be asking this question because this question is very much connected with their own advocacy. So if we do have a powerful disability advocation system in place then we will be able to (inaudible) in the community otherwise without advocation when people with disability will become invisible.
ROBYN GALE:
Okay can you turn that into a question so we can then try and write a push statement. You can think about it now and let me know before the end of the day or email me. Because i think that’s the challenge. We’ve got to find ways to turn these into questions that we then give responses to. That’s great. I’ll give you more work Chris.
I want to keep things to finishing on time and we need to hear from Michael Cromie. How many more questions – 2. You people with your hands up are the last ones.
QUESTION:
Just the million dollar question as far as we’re concerned with particularly in Victoria where the care policy standards and values are huge, absolutely massive, up this high and advocacy would appear to be fighting the disconnection between service intent and service delivery. The disconnection between service intent and service delivery is what we’re really fighting and why should we be fighting that because mainly bloody minded bureaucracy.
ROBYN GALE:
That’s good tony because that gives me a question, is there a disparity between the intent of the disability services and the role of disability advocacy, something to that effect. I can turn that into a question, thank you.
MARY MALLETT:
Robyn this is great you’re doing this work and if you could manage to do a PUSH statement about why Mitch Fifielf should fund Peak for Disability Advocacy that would be great.
ROBYN:
I’ll try.
MARY MALLETT:
One of the things just for you to think about while trying to do these messages. It’s such an odd, peculiar time for advocacy at the minute. There is huge uncertainty about the funding of advocacy as State and Territory Governments are deciding whether to continue to fund advocacy or how or to what extent. The Federal Government will continue but we don’t know if they will put more money to it. There is another peculiar thing happening that we know bits about but not enough of it yet to deal with it properly. There is this kind of almost splintering of the functions of advocacy. When you were talking about Robyn, you’re trying to think about what advocacy does, advocacy in its practice in Australia has been around for about 30 years. Advocates work in an integrated holistic kind of way with a person with the disability, whatever the issue is and they work with them to get a resolution and use a whole lot of strategies to do that. What’s happening now the NDIS is going to pay for supported decision making in some way, we don’t know yet at what rate or exactly which organisations will be able to do it. We are assuming that advocacy organisations will be able to get funded to do that but that’s not clear, that’s being worked on. There may be some talk about safeguarding supports of safeguarding stuff that happens elsewhere. In the UK they have a sort of system now about that. There is something that feels like it’s happening and it’s not yet at the stage…I had a discussion on the phone the other day with one of the DSS people who said this stuff isn’t yet ready for them to talk to outsiders which I think is quite funny but understand what he means. All of us are the outsiders and all of you are the people that do the work but from the inside of the system you’re the outsiders. If we put that to one side and get past it, what it means is that some stage later this year there will be an opportunity for us to think about and work with what’s being developed but my worry, what I can feel that’s been developed is what the practice of advocacy as is it exists in Australia may end up somehow being divided off into little segments. That could be a terrible thing and a good thing. It’s a good thing if what it means is there is an opportunity for disability advocacy organisations to get funded to do special pieces of the work, get funded to….so they continue to do their general level advocacy and then separately they can apply for individual clients through the NDIS for those participants to do support decision making with them. Or if the safeguarding thing turns into something, I can’t envision what that could be and other than glancing at the UK stuff I haven’t had time to properly look at it. It may be there are additional sources of ways to do advocacy work. But it might not be, it might end up that advocacy becomes this little tiny bits and pieces and that small disability advocacy organisations are in a worse situation where they are that instead of just doing the resource for your funding you might have to apply and get the same pathetic amount of money and have to do it through several resources. I don’t know it’s a huge thing sitting around the advocacy sector at the minute. Yes go ahead and get these PUSH messages as clear as you can because we’re going to need them at every level I think.
ROBYN GALE:
Thanks for the endorsement Mary. Let me wrap up this session by thanking Robyn Gale from the disability advocacy resource unit and thanking Mary Mallett CEO of DANA. I really appreciate Mary taking the time to come today to the forum but to share with us your wisdom but also to gather from us the wisdom in this room. Thankyou Mary, thankyou Robyn.
- Author:
- DARU
- Date published:
- Tue 24th Mar, 2015