Page 1428 - Week 05 - Thursday, 13 May 2021
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improving the inclusion and participation of people with disability in all aspects of community life. It also provides the opportunity to reconsider those approaches and elements that have or have not worked, and to ensure that, where possible, we are working together to identify local solutions to local problems that in turn contribute to the broader outcomes sought by the national strategy.
To that end, the ACT government will ensure that the experiences of people with disability and their supporters are kept at the centre of our response to the new National Disability Strategy and that, wherever possible, we seek to codesign and collaborate on initiatives and actions affecting their interests.
The views of the ACT’s Disability Reference Group have already been sought. As Minister for Disability, I will continue to take every opportunity that I can to listen to their views and the views of people with disability, of their families and of the broader community sector, as we work together towards using the new strategy as a means of making direct, meaningful and positive changes that result in a more inclusive community. I thank them for their ongoing contribution to ACT government policymaking and for their frank and fearless advice.
National and international research shows that people with disability face many barriers to accessing justice. The Disability Justice Strategy 2019-2029 aims to address this inequality and increase the responsiveness of the justice system to the needs of people with disability, improving the justice system for everyone.
I am pleased to report that in the first year of the justice strategy, significant achievements have been made, as documented in the first annual report released in September 2020. These achievements include the appointment of another disability liaison officer at the Alexander Maconochie Centre and the Director of Public Prosecutions. Recruitment is underway for disability liaison officers to join the ACT courts and tribunal, ACT Policing, and the Office for Children, Youth and Family Support. These disability liaison officers will support cultural change within justice agencies and build the capability and capacity of organisations to achieve equity and improve the inclusion of people with disability across the justice system.
In addition, justice agencies and organisations now have access to a needs identification tool that supports them to identify the reasonable adjustment needs of people with disability. A working group has been convened, including Bimberi Youth Justice Centre, the ACT courts and tribunal, ACT Corrective Services, ACT Policing, and Legal Aid ACT, to plan the implementation of trials of the tool across the justice system.
ACT Corrective Services are demonstrating leadership in the development and publishing of their Disability Action and Inclusion Plan, which outlines a series of commitments over the next three years to improve inclusion for people with disability who have contact with their service.
Ensuring that information is accessible for people with disability is a key priority of the justice strategy, with key information now having been translated into accessible formats. This includes the Easy English translation of a range of information sheets
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