Ability Links NSW Community Development Resource Package
St Vincent de Paul Society NSW for Ability Links NSW
The Challenge
About one in five Australians have a disability. While most people with disability are no longer ‘shut in’ – hidden away in large institutions – many are still ‘shut out’ of buildings, homes, schools, employment, businesses, sports and community groups. People with disability can face barriers to being included in their communities, gaining employment, and accessing information and services, including financial, geographical, informational, social and cultural. People with disability from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, people from regional and remote areas, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, young people, and people identifying as LGBTQIA+ can face additional barriers. Ability Links NSW was designed to support the inclusion of people with disability.
The Objective
We worked with Ability Links NSW providers to produce a toolkit to celebrate their successes, guide future community development initiatives, and help sustain the impact on inclusion.
Our Approach
ARTD worked collaboratively with providers to ensure the toolkit collated practice-based evidence and was accessible. We ran three workshops across NSW to gather Linker’s learnings and top tips for working with different types of organisations – from schools and community centres to local businesses and councils – and different community groups, recognising the intersectional barriers to inclusion. We collated case studies of successful inclusion projects across NSW, and strategies, guidelines and tools that Linkers used to support their work. We also included guidance on monitoring and evaluating community development initiatives of all scales to support organisations to demonstrate the benefits of, and continuously improve their initiatives.
To support implementation of the toolkit, we hosted a webinar for Linkers and developed a video in partnership with Linkers and Crux Media.
The Impact
The toolkit and a video distilling it’s core messages were made available to community organisations.
SECTOR IMPLICATIONS
The toolkit provides guidance on effective design, management and evaluation of community development for inclusion initiatives that may be useful for a range of community organisations supporting inclusion, including organisations funded through the National Disability Insurance Scheme’s Information linkages and Capacity Building projects. We have presented the guidance on monitoring and evaluation through other forums such as the NSW NGO Research Forum.
