Speaking up for Better Health
What is advocacy?
Advocacy means speaking up about problems and solutions, to make things better.
Advocacy on intellectual disability health care
- Amplifies voices and lived experiences of people with intellectual disability
- Raises awareness about the issues and the solutions
- Influences decision makers to make changes to laws, policies, systems, and services.
Advocacy can look like
- Talking to government and decision makers
- Asking health services to make care fair and accessible
- Sharing stories so people understand the problems
- Working together with organisations to make a bigger impact.
Advocacy Capacity Building
The Centre's Driving Change Team is helping people and organisations all over Australia speak up for better health for people with intellectual disability.
We call this Advocacy Capacity Building.
We are working with people with intellectual disability and peak organisations to build advocacy skills focused on health. This support is targeted around State and Territory elections.
We are also creating Advocacy Training modules for:
- Centre staff
- Centre partners and collaborators
- Organisations in each state and territory
Who We Have Worked With
This map shows where we have been and where we are headed.
- Speak Out Tasmania (opens in a new tab) - election on 4 May 2024
- Queenslanders with a Disability Network (opens in a new tab) - election on 26 October 2024
- Developmental Disability Western Australia (opens in a new tab) - election on 8 March 2025
- South Australian Council on Intellectual Disability (opens in a new tab) - election on 21 March 2026
Hear from our partners
Watch this video with Mary Butterworth from Developmental Disability WA to hear more about the partnership.
