Reporting on progress

 

There are 41 government agencies participating in the annual New Zealand Disability Strategy reporting process. This progress report presents a summary of what these agencies said they had been doing to implement the New Zealand Disability Strategy in the period July 2005 to June 2006.

This includes activity in support of the National Health Committee’s report To Have an ‘Ordinary’ Life: Community membership for adults with an intellectual disability, the New Zealand Action Plan for Human Rights, and the New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006.

The agencies’ information is presented in five areas that group the New Zealand Disability Strategy’s 15 objectives. These are not mutually exclusive, and departmental action may contribute to the advancement of any one of a number of related objectives.

• Promoting citizenship: this section focuses on how agencies are working to foster society’s ability to include disabled people.
• Building government capacity: this section focuses on how agencies are developing the necessary knowledge, skills and systems to address disability issues and to be responsive to disabled people.
• Improving disability support services: this section focuses on how agencies are ensuring that services improve outcomes for disabled people, allowing them to make ordinary choices and have ordinary responsibilities in their lives.
• Promoting participation in all areas of life: this section focuses on how agencies are identifying and maximising opportunities for disabled people across different areas of community life.
• Addressing diversity of need: this section focuses on how agencies are working to reflect the diversity that exists amongst disabled people.

This report is reduced in size from the 2005 progress report. This is mainly due to there being little new disability-related data to present at the time of publishing. By the end of 2007, information from the 2006 Post Census Disability Survey will be available, which will enable an analysis of changes in the lives of disabled people since the previous survey in 2001.

Recommendations from the five-year review of progress in implementing the New Zealand Disability Strategy will also be available in 2007. Improvements to the existing annual planning and reporting process are expected to result.

Planning implementation

The Office for Disability Issues has made improvements to the implementation planning process by having an increased focus in the plan templates to government departments. For the 2006/2007 period, government agencies were asked to develop action plans in a way that better reflects their actual degree of responsibility for implementing the New Zealand Disability Strategy and for outcomes relating to disabled people.

Consistent with the aim of promoting accessible government, all agencies have been asked to develop a universal responsiveness to disability issues. Activities include the accessibility of public information, buildings and sites, and government services, having responsive employment practices, and collecting information about disability.

Some agencies, particularly those who have general social policy responsibilities, have been asked to plan towards ensuring a disability perspective is routinely considered within their ordinary work.

Government agencies that have key social policy responsibilities, in areas that have a significant impact on the lives of disabled people, have been asked to reflect this in their planning for the year.

In this report, you will see the change in information provided by government agencies in their plans. The full texts of the implementation plans are available on the Office for Disability Issues website at: