Advocacy WA to create localised disability plan through community workshops

The South West disability community has the opportunity to advocate for their unique local needs, thanks to a new initiative from Advocacy Western Australia.

As part of Advocacy WA’s new Community Disability Advocacy Plan, the non-profit organisation is conducting individual community storytelling workshops to allow people living across the region to “highlight and prioritise” issues and challenges specific to them and their locality.

The concerns raised will make up part of the CDAP, in the hope of identifying and seeking solutions to local challenges, while also serving as a “foundation” to help with improving accessibility across the region in the future.

AWA chair Jethro Hepton said the program hoped to give the community a “tool box” of skills to use in everyday life.

“We wanted to tap into the community and get some exposure out there for disability and say that we’re here, and that we are individuals that really matter,” he said.

“There’s lots of stuff people can find out about disability but it’s putting that into context and using that throughout your own community, and being able to work together that matters.”

He said a main focus of the project was to improve integration between the “normal” and disabled communities.

“What we wanted to do was make sure that disability wasn’t a person’s main focus in life, that it could just be blended into everyday life without having to be this big elephant in the room,” he said.

“Projects tend to have a (disability) officer allocated ... but once the project is done, that position is no longer there, and it sort of falls by the wayside ... that research and effort that’s been put in is not passed on to other people.

“That’s the heartbeat of it, we want a knowledge base, that’s never just for one person to know, that’s evolving over time and over the generations.”

While workshops have already been under way across the region, workshops in Bridgetown and Margaret River will take place on November 30 and December 1 respectively.

For more information or to register for a workshop, visit the Advocacy WA website.