A consultation with a difference: Project Ready students develop a whole-of-community submission to the Disability Act Review

A recent student placement opportunity has enabled a group of young people to create a whole-of-community video submission, which will be provided to the Victorian Government to help inform the review.

Kalianna Project Ready Students. Photo by Dylan, Project Ready Student at Kalianna.

What is the Disability Act Review?

The Disability Act is defined by the Victorian Government as a “legislative scheme for people with disability in Victoria that affirms and strengthens their rights and responsibilities.”

The review came about to ensure that the Act remains “contemporary and fit for purpose” as the Victorian Government’s role in disability shifts in line with the rollout of the NDIS.

The government particularly encouraged people with a disability to share their feedback throughout the consultations: “the voices, experiences and aspirations of people with disability are essential to our review process.”

"The voices, experiences and aspirations of people with disability are essential to our review process."

A Student-led Consultation and Submission

The Victorian LLENs commissioned the Project Ready Group at Kalianna to undertake a consultation in response to the Disability Act review.

“We’re interested in the experience of young people with disability and their engagement with education, training and employment,” said Trent McCarthy, Chair of Victorian LLENs “and it’s exciting to see young people leading our consultation.”

The consultation will leverage VideoAsk, a platform that allows survey participants to record a video response to a series of pre-recorded questions.

This project encouraged students to take ownership over the consultation process, formulating the questions, producing the video survey and editing the series of community responses.

Kalianna Project Ready students workshop a series of questions in relation to the review. Photo by Dylan, Project Ready Kalianna student.

With student placements more challenging to source than ever before, it was decided that the student-led consultations would be run as an SWL placement, enabling students to acquire job-ready skills and undertake a project in a simulated workplace environment that can be added to their resumes.

In this unique opportunity, the Project Ready Kalianna cohort of students were engaged as consultants – in this they had agency in both refining questions that were asked, recording those questions, responding to those questions and eventually, helping compile responses to these questions into a video submission to the state government.

Students practice their videography skills as they record each other asking the questions they workshopped together. Photo by Casey, Project Ready Kalianna student.

A Student-led Consultation and Submission

After learning a bit more about the reforms and their significance, students developed four questions to encourage survey respondents to provide feedback as part of the submission process. The questions were:

Students filiming themselves asking questions, to be used in their video survey. Photo by Casey, Project Ready Kalianna student.

Students then learned the basics around filming and production, which they practiced as they filmed each other asking the questions listed above.

A Student-led Consultation and Submission

Students then learned the basics around filming and production, which they practiced as they filmed each other asking the questions listed above.

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