What is our research about?
This report is about the Information, Linkages and Capacity Building program.
Usually, you will see it called the ILC program.
The ILC program gives grants to organisations that support people with disability
A grant is money from the government to pay for important work that can help others in the community.
In 2021 we did some research about the ILC grants program.
Our research will help us write a strategy for what
the ILC program might look like in the future.
A strategy is a plan of what we will do to make improvements to the program.
What is the ILC program?
The Information, Linkages and Capacity Building (ILC) program focuses on three different areas:
First, information people with disability might need.
Second, connecting people with disability to other services and programs - we sometimes call this 'linkages'.
Third, building capacity.
Your capacity is your ability to do something, the skills you have, and knowing the right people who can support you.
The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) is a part of the government.
The NDIA ran the ILC program from 2017-2020
The NDIA also runs the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)
The NDIS is a way of providing support to people with disability around Australia.
The ILC program helps lots of people with disability, even if they don't take part in the NDIS.
The Department of Social Services (DSS) started running the ILC program in 2020.
The ILC program hasn't changed much since it started five years ago.
We need to come up with a new strategy to run the ILC program in the future.
The new strategy will start in 2024.
How did we do our research?
We asked researchers to help us find out how well the ILC grants program worked.
They looked at information about the ILC grants program.
They also asked the community questions about the ILC program.
The community included:
People with disability, disability services, people who speak up and advocate for people with disability, and other organisations that support people with disability.
477 people took part in our research.
We also looked at 509 ILC grant projects.
We looked at projects that ran from 2019 to 2021.
What did we learn about ILC projects from 2019 to 2021?
The ILC projects during this period covered lots of different things.
Most of them included building capacity in some way.
Individual capacity building is an important part of the ILC program. We call it ICB.
ICB helps people with disability develop skills they need to do things on their own.
ICB had the most funding from 2019 to 2021.
Through our research, we learned that there were lots of ILC projects in places
close to cities and towns from 2019 to 2021, but there weren't many ILC projects in regional places far from big cities and towns during this time.
Most ILC projects were for:
- People with disability,
- People with an intellectual disability (an intellectual disability affects how you learn new things, how you solve problems, how you communicate, and how you do things on your own),
- People with autism (autism can affect how you think, feel, communicate or connect and deal with others),
- People with psychosocial disability (some people have a disability because of their mental health; we call this a psychosocial disability).
What do people think about the ILC program?
How do they think it should work?
Lots of people said they knew the ILC grants program was meant to be part of the NDIS, but it should also support people with disability who can't take part in the NDIS.
People told us the ILC grants program is different to what they were expecting.
For example, people said how much funding you get affects how you take part in the community.
People told us it's hard for people who don't take part in the NDIS to find and use disability services.
Some people also said local area coordinators (LACs) don't really work the way they should.
LACs help people with disability find and use supports and services.
LACs are managed by the NDIA.
People also told us some disability services aren't providing supports anymore.
This is because people think the NDIS provides services to all people with disability.
People said they want to have a say about:
- What parts of the ILC grants program should change, and
- The new ILC strategy.
How can the ILC program change the community?
People said the ILC grants program is important for making our community more accessible.
When the community is accessible, it's easy to find and use things and travel around.
People said the ILC grants program is important for making our community more inclusive.
When the community is inclusive everyone can take part and feel like they belong.
People also told us the ILC program must support people with disability, to make their own decisions and take part in the community
They said people with disability must have a say about how to run the disability sector.
The disability sector includes service providers, support workers, and organisations that speak up and advocate for people with disability.
The disability sector provides services and supports to people with disability and talks to the government about their strategies for people with disability.
People also said if people with disability have a say about how to run the disability sector supports and services can be better.
People told us the ILC program needs to focus on how funding can support lots of people with disability at once.
This will help us change the disability sector.
This is different to the way the NDIS works.
NDIS funding supports one person at a time.
How well has the ILC program worked?
Lots of people said the ILC grants program is very good, and that it supports organisations when they can't get funding from somewhere else.
They also told us we need a clear strategy for the ILC program.
They told us the strategy should focus on supporting different groups of people with disability such as people who live far away from cities and towns, and that big things need to change like making sure our community is inclusive.
People said projects should work together if they focus on the same problems, and help the same groups of people
What things are missing from the ILC program?
Lots of people shared that changing the community is a very important part of the ILC grants program but this needs a lot of time and money.
They also said it's important to focus on changing areas instead of everything all at once.
For example, focusing on changing parts of education or transport.
People said we need to focus on things that stop people from taking part in different aspects of the community and why different areas don't connect with each other.
People told us sharing good information must be part of the ILC grants program in the future.
This includes information for people who:
- Just found out about their disability,
- Speak English as a second language,
- Have a disability that affects how they hear or see, or
- Need support to use technology.
People told us the ILC program needs to focus on different groups of people with disability.
This includes: - Women with disability,
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability, and
- People with disability in the justice system (the justice system includes police the courts the law and prisons).
This also includes people with disability in out-of-home care.
When a child or young person can't live with their parents or carer they live in out-of-home care.
This means they might live with a different family or in a home for children in out-of-home care.
And it includes people with disability who experience family violence.
Family violence is when someone close to you either hurts you scares you or controls you.
This might be a member of your family someone who supports you or someone who lives with you.
Lots of people said the ILC program must focus on supporting people with disability who:
- Do not take part in the NDIS, or
- Who are left out of the community because of who they are.
And people also shared that need to build the capacity
of organisations that are run people with disability,
are for people with disability or speak up for people with disability.
What should funding be like?
People told us the ILC funding doesn't always support our goals to change the community.
For example, a lot of ILC funding only lasts for a few years,
but many of the projects need to last much longer to work well.
People shared their ideas about what good funding should be like.
People said there needs to be a clear plan to make sure funding focuses on the best way to help people with disability.
They also said people should share their ideas before they apply for the funding.
This means they could make sure their idea would work well before they spend time applying for a grant.
How long should funding last?
People told us there needs to be more options for how long funding lasts. For example, funding for one year could work well for some projects, but funding that lasts three to five years can give organisations more time to work with people with disability and change the community with their projects.
People also said it's important for some organisations to get funding more than once.
This can help these organisations meet the needs of the community.
Having a say about funding.
People told us we should include people with disability when we make decisions about ILC funding.
They also told us we should connect with the disability sector.
This can help the disability sector share their ideas with us.
People told us that applying for a grant is not easy at the moment.
They said it's hard to apply for a grant and the process to apply takes a long time.
This makes it harder for small organisations to apply.
People shared their ideas about other ways to apply for grants,
like having a meeting to share your idea.
People told us they wanted to work more with us as they deliver projects
They also said we should share more information about:
- What projects we gave funding to, and
- How well these projects worked.
This information would help organisations shape their own projects.
Making sure the ILC program works for a long time.
People said if we want to keep the ILC projects going we need more funding.
They also told us when funding doesn't last a long time, organisations must keep applying for new grants. They said this doesn't work well, because good information can be lost when funding for a project stops and starts at different times.
People told us when an organisation's funding stops, they have to find other ways to keep paying for their project.
This meant there weren't many chances for organisations to work together or share information.