Actively engaging people with a disability

Many policy, program and service-delivery challenges faced by government and the disability sector are complex and require multilayered and multi-agency participation to achieve effective, sustainable outcomes. Active participation recognises and acknowledges a role for citizens and clients in proposing and/or shaping policy dialogue, program and service options. Effective active participation processes can help to build trusting relationships between agencies and community members.

Active participation can also be a powerful process of enhancing quality of life for people with a disability, may aid in the recovery process of people with a mental illness, reduce social isolation, empower people to be involved in processes which affect them, increase knowledge and enhance people’s exposure to networks.

Active participation strategies generally involve both information and consultation processes and so all of the information provided above should be considered when planning an active participation strategy. The following information is provided to enhance these strategies’ effectiveness.

Building Capacity

A deliberate and explicit focus on building the capacity of participants from government and from disability communities can significantly increase the effectiveness of an active participation strategy. By building skills and knowledge, increasing confidence and equitable participation and enhancing process skills such as collaboration, consensus building and problem solving, capacity building can lead to more robust, informed and sustainable engagement.

Capacity-building strategies can be included in even the briefest active participation processes by providing opportunities for participants to obtain new information, learn new skills and/or to establish new networks. A deliberate focus on capacity building will often be fundamental to the success of more enduring active participation strategies such as advisory committees, citizen’s juries, community reference groups and partnerships. To enhance the effectiveness of active participation strategies, it is important to:

• understand what information, skills and resources people will need to participate effectively in the engagement process
• understand the existing and relevant capacities or strengths of each participant or group of participants.
• understand areas in which each stakeholder or group of stakeholders would like to build their capacity
• plan mutually agreeable capacity-building strategies with each individual stakeholder or stakeholder group
• ensure broader engagement timelines are mindful of capacity-building process timelines.

Some useful capacity-building strategies may include:

• conducting structured visits to offices, service organisations, government agencies and institutions to provide people with an opportunity to meet others, ask questions and raise awareness
• providing background reading materials, videos, CDs, etc. to raise understanding of key issues prior to an engagement activity. This is likely to be equally important for government and sector participants.
• pairing participants with different experiences and encouraging them to share their knowledge and experience
• ensuring all participants have access to the infrastructure needed to participate. For example, access to email, transport to meetings and access to TTY’s to enable participation in telelinks
• ensuring all participants have the necessary supports to participate, e.g. access to respite and organisational permission to participate in work time
• hosting customised workshops on nominated topics
• conducting formal learning programs
• employing people with a disability or members of the disability sector to support the engagement program in a paid capacity.

Choosing the right technique(s)

Information, including definitions on a wide range of community engagement methods, is available from www.getinvolved.qld.gov.au.

Most active-participation processes can be modified to make them accessible to a range of people with a disability. Possible adaptations may involve:

• allowing extra time in an agenda for events using engagement processes which require participants to change seats frequently or to move around a venue, e.g. open-space technology, fishbowls and collective-learning techniques (also known as world cafés) to enable people with a disability to move from one place to another safely and comfortably
• allowing time and space during longer consultation processes such as summits, workings, deliberative retreats, drama workshops, future search conferences, action research and community visioning processes for people with a disability, carers, sign language interpreters, etc. to take breaks.
• Some additional considerations when planning active-participation strategies include:
• people who are deaf, who have a hearing impairment, who have a psychiatric disability or a cognitive disability may find it extremely difficult to participate in large, noisy events such as collective-learning techniques, openspace technology and events which have many small groups of people working in one large room
• processes which involve participants sitting in rows, concentric circles and other configurations where participants are unable to see all other participants are likely to be inaccessible to people who lip read
• community cultural development and other arts-based processes can be extremely effective in engaging some people with a disability. Access Arts Queensland is a statewide organisation which can provide a range of services to support organisations engaging people with a disability using artsbased processes (see www.accessarts.org.au)
• community engagement techniques which enable people with a disability to participate at a time and in a location which suits them are likely to be accessible to many people. Some options include action research, participatory editing, photovoice and online processes
• processes which require participants to receive, understand, process and respond to significant amounts of complex information over an extended period of time such as citizen’s juries, design workshops and future search conferences may be difficult for people with a cognitive disability
• processes such as planning for real which use concrete information such as maps, diagrams, models and photos may be more accessible to people with a cognitive disability
• some people with impaired speech may prefer to participate in processes which enable them to provide information in non-verbal ways, e.g. photovoice, drama workshops, participatory editing, and processes which enable people to provide hard copy or online information in written, pictorial or diagrammatic form
• people who are blind or vision impaired are more likely to be able to participate in engagement processes which rely on verbal rather than written or graphic information, e.g. reference groups or committees, discussion groups, citizen’s panels, or meetings which allow time to access written or graphic information in alternative formats.

The Community Resource Unit Inc. has produced Guiding principles for consumer participation: A resource document for psychiatric disability support services and consumers which provides additional information on actively engaging people who have a psychiatric disability.

When choosing an active participation strategy it is often better to try to work with people with a disability, their families and carers and the broader disability sector in genuine partnerships — even if the final outcomes are not perfect — than not try at all. Government and the disability sector can learn from these experiences to build more inclusive processes in future.