My Home, My Community

Phillippa Carnemolla, Jack Kelly, Catherine Donnelley, Aine Healy

My Home, My Community is an inclusive research project that is developing resources to support and build the capacity of local government to be more inclusive of people with intellectual disability. The project is funded by the National Disability Insurance Scheme, as part of their Information Linkages and Capacity Building Grant Program.

What are we doing?

We are looking at how local governments include people with intellectual disability in their local communities.
We want to know what barriers people with intellectual disability face when it comes to inclusion, and most importantly, how to guide local government to minimise this.
We are asking what mainstream services are important to them, and if they were the boss of their council, what would they do differently?
We have hosted focus groups with people with intellectual disability in NSW and Victoria about their views. NSW Council for Intellectual Disability (CID) is helping us with this.
Plus, we are speaking with a range of local governments about their role in making communities more inclusive.
The aim is to create some useful resources that will be shared. We also want to know what has already been done well – and share that with local governments.
We will be launching The Inclusion Library (www.theinclusionlibrary.com.au) with further information about the project soon.

Partnerships with other universities

Professor Julian Trollor and Dr Preeyaporn Srasuebkul from 3DN at the University of New South Wales are working with us to analyse and share some important data for local service planning. Where are inclusive services needed most for people with intellectual disability?

We are also partnering with Professor Sally Robinson at Flinders University to explore what local governments are doing internationally in this area and to collect related resources that may help build the capacity of local governments.