First funding round - April 2011

Improving customer service - Upper Hutt City Council

This project will encourage social change by giving staff working in community centres such as libraries and recreation centres guidance on how to provide good customer service to people with a disability. The aim is to enable disabled people to participate more fully in community activities.

Run by the Upper Hutt City Council, the project will be rolled out in two parts: 

• Two resources will be produced that focus on providing excellent customer service to people in the community. One will be local (Upper Hutt) and the other will have national contacts and be available, through the Office for Disability Issues, to councils and other agencies throughout the country. The resources will include customer service workshop instructions. 
• Customer service workshops for staff will also be trialled in Upper Hutt using the resource alongside the training. Council staff attending the training will evaluate the resource and amendments will be made as necessary.

The workshops will be piloted with staff from Upper Hutt City Library and also the H2O Xtream swimming complex.

Frances McEwen, Upper Hutt City Council Community Development Advisor says, “We are really excited about the possibilities of this project. Discussion is underway around making the resource part of compulsory training for new staff working with customers in various parts of Council and when the resource is completed it will be evaluated to see if it can be used by other groups in the community, such as local retailers.

“Upper Hutt Council City regularly hosts a Disability Forum and seeks advice from the Hutt Valley Disability Advisory Group. They told us that when accessing services, it isn’t always the physical barriers that are a hindrance but the attitudes and lack of knowledge from some service providers. I think this resource will be really useful to help remove these kind of barriers.”

Changing attitudes in Tauranga - Huria Management Trust

The Huria Management Trust in Tauranga will run four projects to create social change in their area.

A school holiday programme for rangatahi aged 5-17 years will focus  attitudes to disability.

A research project involving kaumātua, koroua and kuia will ask two questions:

• Would you let a person in a wheelchair whaikōrero? If not, why not? 
• Would you let a guide dog into the wharenui (meeting house)?

Staff will seek the views of local kaumātua, koroua and kuia at a special hui-a-hapū, and discuss the findings of the research. The project team will record their responses and initiate further dialogue with them. A final report will outline what proved effective in shifting attitudes and behaviour that is creating barriers for disabled people.

The trust will coordinate and facilitate an open day on Huria Marae promoting a disability Awareness health day in Tauranga. This will provide an opportunity to talk to the wider community and provide information about disability issues. Local provider networks will be invited to participate.

Disabled performers become circus stars - Kumarani Circus

Developed by the Kumarani Circus, this project will create social change by recruiting volunteers in Auckland to stage a community circus where disabled people display their strengths as performing artists, dispelling public attitudes about what they can and can't do.

Frances Kelliher, project developer, says "the beauty of the project is the opportunity for non-disabled children and artists to perform alongside disabled people. We workshop the different groups on their own, but bring them together for rehearsals, performances and special workshops.

"We staged the first community circus in Dargaville. I'm sure some people came along initially just expecting to politely applaud our efforts, but they were soon caught up in the full circus experience -  juggling, clowning, acrobatic, diabolic, tightrope.... Some artists are natural performers, they have impeccable timing and can really play an audience. For others, it's showing off skills learnt through sheer perseverance.

"The circus experience brought all sorts of benefits. We won three national awards for our work, performed for the Cirque du Soleil in Auckland and at national conferences and festivals. As time went on the whole troupe grew in confidence.  Performers made new friends and some found employment through the people they met through the circus."

Frances says they decided to take the idea to Auckland because from the very first shows in Dargaville, other communities asked how they could access the service. "We initiated a teacher training programme and mentored groups from Kaitaia to Tauranga so Auckland seemed a natural place to grow the idea."

Signing isn’t just for the Deaf - Voice Thru Your Hands

Empowering children, who have communication difficulties other than hearing loss, by teaching them to use New Zealand Sign Language is a new approach that's proving to be life changing for them and a catalyst for social change.

Voice Thru Your Hands founder Ally Attwell says that thanks to her Making a Difference Fund grant, she can now extend her work out from schools to running Sign Language workshops for parents, school staff and hospital medical staff in the lower North Island. 

Ally says, "I learnt about using sign language as a communication tool from my ten-year-old daughter Tarryn, who has Down syndrome and severe speech difficulties. When she was very young we learnt Makaton - a simplified form of signing - but I soon realised she was quite capable of using New Zealand Sign Language. It wasn't a matter of her not taking information in, but getting it out." Now, she says, Tarryn is a fluent signer and going from strength to strength. "She is a happy confident little girl who is able to share her preferences, her feelings and tell me about her day" Ally says.

"I'm thrilled to have received this funding because the workshops are a really important way of joining up the communication loop. If children are able to express themselves using sign, parents and professionals need to be able to understand them... I feel in a position to make a real difference to the lives of this group of children." 

Creating more accessible marae - Ngāti Hine Health Trust

The Ngāti Hine Health Trust in Northland is working with whānau leaders and other providers, such as the Accessible Housing Trust, to improve access to hapū and marae activities for disabled people.

Staff from the trust are:

• visiting eight marae throughout Te Tai Tokerau and meeting with each committee to talk about disability awareness and barriers that hinder full participation and inclusion in marae activities
• working with each marae to develop an accessibility plan using Te Whakaaheitanga Marae Accessibility Toolkit.
• providing expert advice to support each plan, such as engaging a building expert to provide advice around physical modifications or financial advice to support marae funding applications for any necessary renovations
• looking at low cost or no cost options to enhance marae accessibility in the short-term.

Opportunities will also be provided for whānau with disabilities to participate in marae kawa and enhance their learning and understanding of Tikanga Māori.

All people have value - CCS Disability Action

Disability groups in Hawkes Bay and Palmerston North are working to encourage young people to adopt the mantra that "all people have value" by encouraging them to re-examine their core values, attitudes and behaviour at a personal and group level.

To introduce and support this concept, presentations, interactive media and resources for young people in secondary schools will be produced and distributed to secondary schools in the Manawatu/Horowhenua area.

Nigel Mead from CCS Disability Action says "we are especially interested in the adolescent group from year 7 to 10 because it's often at this age that bullying and poor acceptance of others starts. The approach we are taking is new because it looks at diversity rather than disability. We intend to incorporate young people of differing ethnic, and sexual orientation into the programme as well as young people with physical, sensory and intellectual impairments. We want to show that all people have value and to encourage across group cooperation. 

"This idea follows on from a project started in Gisborne by a diverse group of teenagers to show how local business, the community and council responded to their very disparate needs. The project documented that process in a DVD called Through our Eyes. The DVD was the tangible outcome of their work but I thought the level of cooperation within the group was the real success and that's what we will be working towards when we take the message that ‘all people have value' into schools.

Improving legal services for disabled people - Auckland Disability Law and Community Law Canterbury

Auckland Disability Law in partnership with Community Law Canterbury is running a pilot project in Christchurch to improve legal services for disabled people.

Neha Patel, Acting Development Manager at Auckland Disability Law, says "research done in the Auckland region has identified that issues such as difficulty with physical access, a lack of accommodation for different ways of communicating, a lack of knowledge about disability, and discrimination all create barriers for disabled people accessing legal services.  That's why Auckland Disability Law was formed. We would expect these issues to be a common experience around the country, but we will talk with disabled people in Christchurch to identify if there are any barriers particular to the area."

This project aims to increase knowledge and understanding of disability within the legal community in Christchurch through responsiveness training for legal professionals and the development of written guidelines about providing services and engaging with disabled people.

Disabled people will be involved in key aspects of the project.  They will form an advisory group to provide guidance and form ongoing relationships with their local community law centre, and the local disabled community.

It is hoped that the pilot project in Christchurch will form a blueprint that other community law centres around the country can use to create ongoing partnerships with disabled people and improve their access to justice.