Grants for Community Inclusion
13 February 2017 at 4:26 pm
A new $13 million grant has been launched in a bid to make the community more inclusive and support people with disability.
As part of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), Information, Linkages and Capacity Building (ILC) will support all people with disability, including those who do not have an NDIS plan.
Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services Jane Prentice said ILC was an opportunity to drive change.
“This is a great opportunity for organisations across Australia to apply for funding to develop and share practical initiatives and information to drive change for all people with disability and communities to ensure everyone gets the support they need,” Prentice said.
“There are many innovative ways to make our communities more welcoming and supportive for people with disability.
“One example could be a community awareness campaign to increase employment opportunities for people with disability.”
The focus of ILC is to make the community more accessible and inclusive to increase the independence, social and community participation of all people with disability.
The ILC, funded by the Community Inclusion and Capacity Development (CICD) program, will be made available to organisations across the country at different times, commencing first in the ACT in July 2017.
In addition to the ILC National Readiness Grants, which are an open competitive process, open to all eligible organisations, the ILC Jurisdictional Based Grants in the ACT are also now open.
Up to $3 million is set to be made available to organisations in the ACT as part of the new grant round.
Prentice said she looked forward to seeing the submissions.
“As the first jurisdiction to move into ILC, the ACT has an opportunity to develop activities that meet local needs and help establish the foundation for activities with a broader geographic reach,” Prentice said.
“An example could be a website about disability which provides access to high quality, relevant and timely information to support people with disability to make informed decisions.
“We look forward to receiving submissions from a range of organisations which will achieve great outcomes for people with disability, regardless of whether they are NDIS participants or not.”
The ILC Jurisdictional Based Grants will fund activities that deliver outcomes for people with disability, their families and carers in the following four activity areas:
- information, linkages and referrals
- capacity building for mainstream services
- community awareness and capacity building
- individual capacity building.
But People With Disabilities ACT executive officer Robert Altamore told Pro Bono News they were concerned the funding amount was “very small” compared to the need.
“We’d like to see that there is room in that $3 million for the funding of what they call DPOs, disabled people’s organisations, to resource and empower the smaller disability organisations… and also individuals with information to enable them to access the NDIS, and also to access broader community services,” Altamore said.
“The NDIS will only reach a very small percentage of the broader disability population, which needs to access the community.
“Particularly in the ACT context, whereby because we are the first cab off the rank we’ve found when we attended the consultations in Canberra which the NDIA conducted, there are number of New South Wales organisations at these consultations who were seeking to apply in the first round to get a foothold in the NDIS space.
“What has happened with the NDIS in Canberra is there has been a huge growth in the number of disability organisations registered in Canberra. Before the NDIS started in Canberra there were about 60-something organisations, there is now over 450 and new ones popping up every week. So the space is becoming very crowded.”
Altamore said the ILC was very important and funding needed to be increased.
“Clearly the coming into operation of the NDIS has generated a huge influx of people into the space and I don’t think the NDIA has fully realised the fact that the ILC area is going to be so important,” Altamore said.
“The ILC is supposed to be the source of funding to support those people who are outside the scheme, but who still need access to information and support and they still need assisted access to broader communities services, like health, education, transport, employment those sort of things.
“There are two aspects to disability services in the Commonwealth spear one is the NDIS, the other is the National Disability Strategy. The National Disability Strategy is meant to be the strategy by which the broader community services such as health, education, transport, employment, civic participation… all of those are made accessible to people with disabilities.
“ILC funding committed to support that and that’s why it is so important.”
ILC will start from 1 July 2018 in South Australia and New South Wales, and from 1 July 2019 in Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.
Further information about the grant rounds is available here.
There is also an ILC Toolkit available to help organisations increase their understanding of ILC, improve their grant management skills and improve their understanding of, and skills in, measuring outcomes for people with disability.
