Welcome to the Voice at the Table Consumer Participation Kit.
The aim of this kit is to provide practical consumer participation information, ideas and resources which can be used by service providers, governments and community organisations to ensure people with cognitive disabilities have a ‘voice at the table’ and participate equally at all organisational levels.
Historically, people with cognitive disabilities have not been provided with the opportunity to act as representatives, inform policy development or to have real input into decision making, despite the fact that in many instances they comprise the majority of service users.
On the rare occasion they have the opportunity to provide representation many express strong concerns about the process. They often find that meetings are not run in ways that support real inclusion, information is not accessible and their opinions, while listened to are frequently not acted on.
“We go to the meetings they ask what we think and then don’t tell us anything. We never know if they really listened to what we said or changed anything.”
Colin Hiscoe Reinforce Self Advocate.
Chapter 1: Understand Consumer Participation