Disability Action Plan 2014-2018

The Disability Action Plan presents priorities set by the Ministerial Committee on Disability Issues for action that advance implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the New Zealand Disability Strategy 2001.

These priorities emphasise actions requiring government agencies to work together, as well as with disability sector organisations and others.

On this page

Read the latest progress report

 

Disability Action Plan 2014 - 2018 Progress report: September 2018 [DOCX, 100 KB]

 

What the Plan does

The Ministerial Committee on Disability Issues approved the initial Disability Action Plan 2014-2018 at its meeting on 8 April 2014. For the first time, a collaborative approach was used to develop the new plan that involved government agencies working closely with representative organisations of disabled people (known as Disabled People’s Organisations or DPOs) over a six month period. As a result, the Plan looks and feels very different to previous plans.

In 2015, the first update of the Plan was carried out. It involved two rounds of public consultation to check in with the community that the prioritites and actions in the Plan remain current and relevant to disabled people. The updated Plan was approved by Cabinet in December 2015.

The Plan provides a cross-government mechanism to help progress action on issues that need more than one government agency to work together. These issues are usually more difficult and complex, in part because multiple organisations are involved. Other actions are important to disabled people, but these are the responsibility of a single agency and not included in the mandate of this Plan.

The Plan helps to progress actions through providing a consistent strategic direction, regular oversight of implementation, and insight from the lived experience of disability provided by Disabled People’s Organisations. It is centred on what disabled people say matters the most to them, with the vision of 'All New Zealanders experience equal rights of citizenship'.

Following the example of Better Public Services, the Plan focuses on action to achieve four shared results:

  • Increase employment and economic opportunities - This shared result focuses on building employers’ confidence to employ disabled people and provide accessible workplaces, opportunities for work experiences, entrepreneurship, and education achievement and skill development. It recognises obligations in the CRPD, particularly Articles 24 and 27.
  • Transform the disability support system - This shared result focuses on ensuring effective engagement with disabled people and coordination across sectors and across agencies to focus on outcomes and maximum progress from available resources. It recognises obligations in the CRPD, particularly Articles 19, 20 and 26.
  • Ensure personal safety - This shared result focuses on promoting systems and practices to protect disabled children and adults in all settings. It recognises obligations in the CRPD, particularly Articles 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 23.
  • Promote access in the community - This shared result focuses on: accessible buildings and spaces, transport, urban design; accessible information, communications; access to health services, justice services; and political and civic participation. It recognises obligations in the CRPD, particularly Articles 5, 8, 9, 21, 25, 29 and 30.

Governance oversight of the Plan is provided by joint meetings every three months of the Chief Executives' Group on Disability Issues and DPOs' leaders. Reporting on progress is included in the Minister for Disability Issues' annual report to Parliament.

Access the Plan

The updated Plan is available in NZSL, Easy Read and Braille.

Implementing the Plan

The Plan is jointly governed by Disabled People's Organisations and Government agencies. The governance happens at quartlery meetings together, where progress on implementation is reviewed and the working together relationship is discussed.

Each action in the Plan has a lead agency, which is responsible for ensuring implementation happens and providing regular reports on progress to the Office for Disability Issues.

In this section, you can find out more detail on each action, and what's been happening with implementation. Updates will be published regularly, at least every three months.

The action details (also known as action scopes) are codesigned, with a process involving the lead agency, Disabled People's Organisations' representatives and other revelant organisation or expert. Final action scopes are approved by the Plan's governance before implementation gets underway.

Action scopes will be available in this section, as they are approved. 

Read more on the actions

 

How the Plan was developed 

Updating the Plan 2015 - read about what happened

The first annual update of the Disability Action Plan 2014-2018 was run from September to November 2015. The process involved two rounds of public consultation, which asked whether the Disability Action Plan's priorities and actions remained current and relevant to disabled people. There were also several discussions with the Disabled People's Organisations and government agencies involved with the Disability Action Plan. In addition, the update progress was informed by previous consideration of 2014 recommendations from the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and from the Independent Monitoring Mechanism.

An outline of the information used to feed into the 2015 update process is available below.

Download - outline of information used in the 2015 update of the Disability Action Plan [Word, 151.37KB]  [DOC, 234 KB]  

Second public consultation

In September 2015, a consultation document was released seeking feedback on the current Disability Action Plan's priorities and actions.

Disability Action Plan 2012-2014 (focus on results)

Read the July 2011 Cabinet decisions on the Disability Action Plan

Read the May 2012 Cabinet progress update on the rebuild of Christchurch [Word, 157KB] [DOC, 133 KB]

Disability Action Plan - 2010

Go to a diagram of the Disability Action Plan

 

 

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