It takes planning and a practical blueprint to work towards becoming a truly inclusive community, and Gunnedah Shire Council is leading the charge.
Gunnedah Shire Council, in north-west New South Wales, is a vibrant shire with a growing population. To realise its vision as both an advocate and champion for the rights of people with all abilities in their community, Council undertook extensive community engagement to create its Gunnedah Shire disABILITY Inclusion Action Plan 2024-2028.
Gunnedah Shire Council Community and Social Planner Debra Hilton said as the shire grew, it was important to ensure accessibility was always part of the journey.
“Our community’s strength is in its diversity,” Ms Hilton said. “Everyone deserves to enjoy the benefits of full participation in everything we have to offer.
“Our full vision as an advocate and a champion for the rights of people with all abilities is to ensure all citizens are treated equally and respectfully and have opportunities to enjoy the benefits of full participation in a caring, proud, prosperous and inclusive community.
“We needed our disABILITY Inclusion Action Plan to make this commitment part of our everyday business, and the way to ensure this happens is to consult with our community stakeholders.”
Gunnedah Shire Council consulted with more than 325 people to discover what each person thought worked in disability inclusion, and what could be improved.
Representatives from community care agencies and service providers, Carers NSW, the disability support sector, people with lived experience of disability, residents within the broader Gunnedah Shire and the Gunnedah Shire Access Working Group provided input for the document. The Gunnedah Shire Access Working Group is an advisory group of Council that includes a range of internal and external stakeholders. It meets quarterly to discuss ideas, projects and initiatives of Council relevant to enhancing access and cultivating inclusion.
People were engaged through pop-up events, community workshops, a survey and one-on-one conversations. Information about the process was sent to village hall committees and progress associations and distributed through community interagency networks.
Ms Hilton said part of the consultation was to measure Gunnedah Shire’s success against the four key focus areas of the 2022 NSW Disability Inclusion Action Planning Guidelines:
- Foster positive community attitudes and behaviours
- Increase the liveability of our communities
- Support access to meaningful employment for people with disability
- Improve access to mainstream services through better systems and processes
“The feedback we received showed strong successes across all four focus areas,” Ms Hilton said. “Our consultation revealed support for the way in which Council interacted and engaged with people with disability, and acknowledged the significant inroads made by Council over the past five years into promoting access and inclusion.”
Some of the things Council has got right included:
- The “Missed Business Guide”, a resource manual for business on how to attract more customers by providing better access to their business operations
- Multiple community events and activities at Livvi’s Place Inclusive Playground
- The Section 356 Access Incentive Grant to encourage businesses to enhance accessibility
- The Access Working Group
- A strengthened focus on the shire’s monitoring of compliance in Accessible (Disabled) Parking and NSW Mobility Parking Scheme Permits
“The consultation also showed where there was room for improvement by highlighting barriers that remain for people with disability and their carers when accessing information and services, and when getting around the community.”
Areas that could be improved included access to shops and businesses, accessible parking, cinema seating, physical access to venues and facilities, maintenance and design of pathways, pedestrian crossings, inclusive tourism, better signage and emergency and disaster-focused strategies.
The thoughts, experiences and ideas of respondents went into the Draft Gunnedah Shire disABILITY Inclusion Action Plan 2024-2028, a document that provides a blueprint for an even more inclusive community. The document also aligns with the National Disability Strategy 2021-2031 and Council’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The action plan noted that one in five members of the Gunnedah Shire community reported having a disability in 2021, slightly above the national figure of one in six Australians. In addition, 793 people (6.1 per cent of the Gunnedah Shire population) said they needed help in their day-to-day lives due to disability, compared with 5.8 per cent for NSW.
“This shows just how critical it is to get disability inclusion right in our community,” Ms Hilton said. “This is a great place to live and raise a family, and everyone needs to be able to participate fully.”
The Gunnedah Shire DisABILITY Inclusion Action Plan 2024-2028 works to address the ongoing needs of the community by:
- Advocating equal rights for all
- Progressing positive community attitudes and behaviours
- Creating liveable communities by providing a range of facilities, services and events that make our shire a great place for people to live, work and play
- Supporting access to meaningful employment, education and professional development opportunities
- Improving access to mainstream services through better systems and processes
- Collaborating with business partners, service providers and community groups
- Strategic planning to meet the changing needs and expectations of its growing community
- Monitoring compliance to legislation
To make this happen, the plan commits to 48 actions. These include a wide range of measures, including seeking out professional development opportunities for frontline customer service staff to access Auslan training, developing an Inclusive Events Guide, carrying out access audits of Council facilities, reviewing allocations and locations of designated access parking bays, undertaking audits of footpaths, crossings and many other public areas, and many other initiatives.
The draft plan was placed on public exhibition following the June 2024 meeting of Gunnedah Shire Council and consultation has now closed. Submissions from the public exhibition period will be considered before the plan goes back to Councillors for final approval.
“This is, of course, only part of the process,” Ms Hilton said. “It’s just as important to ensure we measure our success against this plan.
“Over the next four years, the plan will be monitored and evaluated against a list of performance measures. There will be a progress report each year to both Council and to the NSW Minister for Disability Services.
“Local government knows it is a long and comprehensive process to get this important document right, but it is critical to plan our way forward.
“There has been a lot of thought from a lot of people that has gone into the Gunnedah Shire disABILITY Inclusion Action Plan 2024-2028, and we have been proud to work hand-in-hand with our community to make this a reality.”
The draft Gunnedah Shire disABILITY Inclusion Action Plan 2024-2028 can be viewed on the Gunnedah Shire Council website gunnedah.nsw.gov.au
Image: Denis Kuvaev/shutterstock.com
