Voices of Change: Bridging Past and Present in Disability Self- Advocacy

Project Member(s): Steele, L., Carnemolla, P.

Funding or Partner Organisation: Department of Communities and Justice (Department of Communities and Justice (Justice Strategy and Policy))
Department of Communities and Justice (Department of Communities and Justice (Justice Strategy and Policy))

Start year: 2023

Summary: This project will develop videos and Easy Read resources connecting lived experiences of disability advocacy during deinstitutionalisation in NSW to contemporary disability advocacy priorities: independent living/community inclusion. Resources will be co-designed by CID with project research partners Linda Steele and Phillippa Carnemolla at UTS. Resources will provide people with intellectual disability (PWID) connection with the history of the disability rights movement and opportunity to learn from experiences of self-advocates at the time of deinstitutionalisation. The focus groups, facilitated by PWID, will record discussions between younger and older self-advocates. The work will: •Illuminate the importance of deinstitutionalisation advocacy •Celebrate self-advocacy forerunners •Take lessons from a history that is at risk of being forgotten to inform today’s advocacy for community inclusion. The proposal builds on research from ‘Remembering Disability Institutions’, a study by Linda Steele and Phillippa Carnemolla. It found younger self-advocates/PWID have limited awareness of the history of self-advocacy, disability rights movement and deinstitutionalisation. Awareness will enable recognition of the forerunners of today’s self-advocacy and disability rights movement and ensure lessons shape current advocacy. The project will produce videos enhancing public knowledge of self-advocacy, impact NSW disability policy, preserve history that might be forgotten, and develop and empower today’s self-advocates.

FOR Codes: Law in context, Urban and regional planning, Justice and the law, Community services