Inclusive Communities Fund

Design Consultation

Hardwick House Unit 1, 6 Phipps Close
Deakin, ACaT 2600

policy@neda.org.au

www.neda.org.au

Inclusive Communities Fund Design Consultation

The National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA) welcomes the opportunity to provide written feedback on the design of the Inclusive Communities Fund, in addition to the feedback provided to the design team in an online Teams meeting on the 20th August 2026. NEDA’s submission draws primarily on the learnings, reflections and evaluation findings from the successful delivery of our Inclusive Arts Project rather than external policy sources, as we believe that it encapsulates exactly what the fund hopes to achieve, and how that can be successfully implemented in the community. The evidence generated through the project offers valuable insights into what enables meaningful and sustainable community inclusion. Further, this submission broadly follows the questions put to us by the design team ahead of our recent online meeting to ensure relevance.

NEDA’s Inclusive Arts Project

Over two years, NEDA’s Inclusive Arts Project supported community organisations across WA, QLD, NSW, VIC and the ACT to build capability, strengthen inclusive practice, and co-design accessible programs with people with disability from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. The resulting learnings extend well beyond arts participation and have broader relevance to community development, participation and inclusion more generally.

Through the Inclusive Arts Project, NEDA co-developed the Inclusive Arts Practice Framework with artists and community members with lived experience of disability and cultural diversity. Although developed within an arts context, the Framework is fundamentally concerned with the conditions required for genuine inclusion.

The 4 domains of the Inclusive Arts Practice Framework are:

Inclusive Entry Points

Lived experience recognised as legitimate expertise, critical bias reflection built into design, a commitment to equity and inclusion, and Healing Centred, Trauma informed practice are the key components of this Framework Domain.

Enabling Environments

This domain considers the inclusion of accessible infrastructure as an enabler rather than a compliance obligation, inclusive and accountable leadership structures, health and wellbeing support, equitable but flexible resourcing models and strength based organisational cultures as key components of inclusive program design.

Inclusive Processes

The concepts that strengths-based co-creation, flexible application/ participation pathways, diversity in communication modes as strengths, reflective feedback loops and equity building tools inbuilt into organisations, processes, policies and systems are the focus of this domain.

Inclusive Outcomes

This framework domain brings together the prior domains and their components, noting that the pathway to ongoing inclusion relies on structural outcomes such as inclusion inbuilt into systems and resourcing, participation pathways, internal organisational practices and organisational culture.

These domains and their corresponding components describe principles and practices that are equally applicable not only to community organisations, local governments, sporting groups, cultural organisations, neighbourhood centres and other community settings but also to the very design of the Fund itself.

NEDA believes the Fund’s objectives align strongly with the underlying intent of the Framework.

The evidence from the Inclusive Arts Project demonstrates that meaningful and sustainable inclusion must be incorporated from the very outset, and the design of the Fund should reflect this. Therefore, the Fund should not only require successful grant recipients to do so, but the Fund’s design itself should incorporate lived experience leadership, intersectional approaches, accessible and enabling environments, flexible participation pathways, adequate resourcing, ongoing reflection, and a commitment to embedding inclusion into organisational systems, culture and practice.

If the grant eligibility, application processes, assessment criteria and evaluation frameworks have these components embedded from the outset, the projects and partnerships supported through the Fund will, by extension, be more likely to reflect and sustain them. With good design, the Inclusive Communities Fund can support organisations to progress from awareness, to capability, to implementation, and ultimately to sustained and embedded inclusive practice.

1. How can we make sure the Fund works well for all people with disability?

NEDA recommends that the Fund embed an intersectional approach to disability inclusion from its design through to implementation.

Key recommendations

Require funded organisations to demonstrate how they will include people who experience multiple forms of marginalisation, including people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, First Nations people, LGBTQIA+ people, older people, younger people, people on low incomes, and people living in regional, rural and remote communities.
- Practical plans are required, not aspirational strategies that lack implementation activities.
Establish dedicated assessment criteria that recognise intersectional disadvantage rather than treating disability as a stand-alone identity.
Require true co-design with people with disability from diverse communities, including those from CALD, First Nations and LGBTQIA+ communities.
- Noting the Design Team’s questions around the timing of co-design activities, and the anticipated short application time frame for the grant opportunity: Best practice in this space will dictate that co-design should be implemented from the concept development stage ahead of grant applications, however this would be both cost prohibitive and impractical for potential applicants. NEDA recommends that this may best be implemented in the project planning stages once grants have been allocated to organisations.
Fund culturally responsive accessibility measures, such as translated information, bilingual facilitators, Easy Read resources, Auslan interpretation, and culturally safe engagement practices.
- Accessibility supports, including translated materials for communication support are often cost prohibitive to community organisations, and dedicated funding or loading allocated to this may support sustained commitment.
- A toolkit of generic marketing and promotional resources that can be adapted by organisations could be a useful tool for many organisations.

Create funding streams or loading arrangements that recognise the additional costs of delivering inclusive activities in regional, rural and remote areas.
Ensure funding reaches grassroots and community-led organisations that already have trusted relationships with diverse disability communities.
Recognise that financial barriers, including the cost of entry fees and event ticketing, disproportionately restrict community participation for people with disability. This demographic is highly reliant on income support, with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) reporting that 56% of people with disability rely on a government pension or allowance as their main source of income. Furthermore, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) indicates that nearly half (44.8%) of this population live within the lowest two income quintiles, rendering standard community activity costs structurally prohibitive.
- While direct service delivery cannot be funded, various measures to support participation costs may be funded, such as disability and participation vouchers similar in concept to the NSW government “Active Kids” vouchers which can subsidise the cost of joining fees, equipment and other participation costs.
Collect and report participation data across multiple diversity indicators to identify which groups are benefiting and where gaps remain. (Review biases systemically embedded – data flags should account for intersectional identities).
Support and provide information to community organisations engaged with the Fund to access grants and funding for accessibility needs not supported by the Fund (such as support to apply for funding under Accessible Australia Grants, or grants that would allow for service delivery).
- Community organisations often experience barriers to the provision of accessible and inclusive services and programs, through inaccessible spaces and venues as well as the cost of program and service delivery. Supporting organisations to understand and apply for other available funding sources will complement the work of the Fund, remove structural and systemic barriers, and support sustainable outcomes.

Community inclusion cannot be achieved through a “one size fits all” approach, or as an “add-on” to mainstream community events. Intersectional barriers related to language, culture, geography, faith, poverty and social exclusion are compounding issues, not additions to their identity.

The Fund should prioritise equitable participation rather than equal treatment. This means that rather than providing everyone with the same supports, people should be provided with the supports they need to be able to participate at an equal level.

2. What support, resources or changes would help organisations become more inclusive and accessible? How could community organisations partner with disability-led organisations?

Learnings from the Inclusive Arts Project showed that many grassroots level community organisations, and even council-run community organisations often lacked the confidence, training and funding to support inclusive initiatives in their spaces, although a true willingness to do so existed.

The establishment of the Fund does have the capacity to resolve these issues, and partnerships with disability organisations at both a local and broader state or national level could provide community organisations with some of the support and resources they may need to build their capacity to be truly inclusive to their communities.

Partnerships do need to be meaningful and across both the local and broader landscape, as referenced in the above paragraph, to appropriately support organisations with their inclusion needs.

Current inclusion needs of community organisations:

Disability confidence and inclusion training for boards, staff and volunteers, tailored to different skill and knowledge levels, as well as roles within the organisation (both client facing and non-client facing).
Cultural competency, intersectionality training and trauma-informed practice training.
Accessibility and inclusion audits of policies, communications, events, and facilities.
Development of inclusive governance practices, including involving people with disability in decision-making roles.
Accessible communication resources, including Easy Read, plain language, translated materials and alternative formats.
Communities of practice where organisations can learn from one another.
Inclusion Support officers in councils and community organisations.

Dedicated inclusion support workers employed by organisations to provide inclusion support (similar to learning support assistants or teachers’ aides in schools).
Practical Toolkits, templates and inclusion frameworks that can be adapted locally (organisations have broadly expressed that they want checklists, to ensure no gaps or forgotten steps).
Networks and connection to local disability organisations.
Participation vouchers to subsidise the cost of joining fees, program registration or equipment for low-income people with disability.

Partnership with larger national / state level disability organisations (such as current DROs and other disability peak bodies) could support community organisations with building their inclusion capabilities through training and resource development, whereas partnerships with local and grassroots disability organisations would allow for the building of networks and relationships, and to inform organisations of the unique needs of CALD people with disability amongst the local disability community.

Noting the Design Team’s questions in relation to the timing and extent of partnerships ahead of grant application, and acknowledging that trust-based partnerships are developed over time rather than established through funding agreements alone, NEDA’s perspective is that applicants should demonstrate meaningful efforts to engage and partner with relevant disability-led and community organisations prior to application.

Formal partnership agreements, governance arrangements and project delivery details may then be further developed following successful funding outcomes.

Organisations should, however, be required to ensure that their funding and budgets allow for appropriate payment and resourcing of partner organisations, particularly disability-led organisations and grassroots community groups.

NEDA acknowledges that many applicants to the Fund may themselves be small organisations operating with limited financial capacity. In these environments, there can be a tendency to rely on informal arrangements, goodwill and in-kind support to bridge resource gaps. While these contributions are valuable, they should not be relied upon as a substitute for properly funding lived experience expertise, co-design, accessibility advice or community engagement activities.

The Fund should encourage applicants to budget realistically for these contributions and recognise them as essential components of successful project delivery.

The overall design of the Fund, as well as the applications that are ultimately successful, must acknowledge that meaningful partnership requires meaningful investment.

3. What activities should the Fund support, given that it will not pay for service delivery?

NEDA supports a focus on sustainable capability building that leaves organisations better equipped to include people with disability after funding ends.

As mentioned above, this could include funding for training, systems and processes updates, funding for inclusion support staff and the development of various resources and toolkits.

However, NEDA’s experience delivering the Inclusive Arts Project demonstrated that capacity building is most effective when it is immediately followed by opportunities to implement, test and refine new inclusive practices in real-world community settings.

Training and awareness raising in isolation are rarely sufficient to create lasting organisational change. Skills are more likely to become embedded when organisations are supported to apply them through practical activities, reflect on lessons learned, and refine their approaches over time.

NEDA therefore encourages the Department to consider how the Fund could support implementation and practice change without directly funding ongoing service delivery.

This might include:

Co-design and action-planning support following training, accessibility reviews or organisational self-assessments.
Implementation coaching and mentoring from disability-led organisations and people with lived experience.
Accessibility audits and reviews of policies, procedures, communications, digital systems and physical environments.
Funding to trial and evaluate new inclusive organisational practices, systems or participation approaches, with an expectation that learnings are documented and shared.
Communities of practice and peer learning networks that enable organisations to share challenges, successes and practical solutions.
Development of Disability Inclusion Action Plans, accessibility action plans or similar organisational change frameworks.

support for organisations to collect baseline data, measure change and evaluate inclusion outcomes
small-scale seed funding to operationalise inclusion plans developed through Fund-supported training, mentoring or advisory activities
development of practical resources, toolkits, templates and implementation guides that can be reused by the organisation and shared more broadly
alignment with complementary Commonwealth, state, territory and local government funding programs that can support public-facing activities once organisational capability has been established
small-scale demonstration activities designed to test and evaluate new inclusive practices, with a clear focus on organisational learning and continuous improvement rather than ongoing program delivery

The Fund’s design must support the progression from awareness, to capability, to implementation, and ultimately to embedded organisational practice. This would maximise the likelihood that inclusion becomes part of everyday operations rather than an activity that requires ongoing external prompting.

Consideration should also be given to pathways that connect Fund recipients with other funding opportunities, enabling organisations to implement and demonstrate inclusive approaches in practice while maintaining the Fund’s focus on long-term organisational capability and systems change.

Priority activities

Workforce and leadership capability

Workforce capability needs to be embedded across all hierarchical levels of an organisation, including HR processes in order to ensure true understanding and capability to create inclusive spaces in the community.

Disability inclusion training (tailored to skill levels and roles)
Leadership development & policy reform support
Inclusive volunteer management.

Recruitment and retention of people with disability within organisations (often this requires the below mentioned review of policy to ensure systemic accessibility allows for equitable access to employment opportunities).

Organisational change

Regular accessibility audits for events, projects and marketing materials as a part of all internal planning processes.
Development and implementation of Disability Inclusion Action Plans.
Review of policies and procedures.
- many organisations lack the policies, processes and procedures required to support customers, clients, staff and others with support needs
- others have these in place, however they are inconsistently followed and applied
- where policies do exist, organisations often require support to translate them into day-to-day practice through staff training, accountability mechanisms, and ongoing review processes
Governance reforms that embed lived experience voices.

Community engagement

Co-design activities with people with disability.
Outreach to underrepresented communities.
Development of inclusive participation pathways.
Peer learning networks across organisations.

Accessibility improvements

Accessible communication systems.
Inclusive registration and booking systems.
Small-scale accessibility equipment and resources.
Digital accessibility improvements (including website / booking / feedback requirements).

The Fund should prioritise activities that change systems, culture and organisational practice, rather than one-off events.

4. What role could local governments play in supporting community inclusion?

Local governments and councils play a critical role in creating inclusive communities through their leadership of local events, programs, facilities and community engagement activities. Given their influence over community participation opportunities and access to local infrastructure, councils are well placed to support funded activities through venue access, promotion, local partnerships and other practical assistance that can help maximise community impact. NEDA therefore considers local governments to be important partners in the successful delivery of the Inclusive Communities Fund.

NEDA further notes that local governments will be heavily involved in the development and delivery of an array of Foundational Supports, and that this Inclusive Communities Fund could operate in a complementary manner to support the inclusion of people with disability at a community level.

However, it is important that the existence of these initiatives is not taken to mean that all barriers to community participation have been addressed.

While Foundational Supports may provide direct assistance to some people with disability and the Fund may build the capability of community organisations, neither will fully replace lost opportunities for community participation or provide ongoing delivery of inclusive activities or support to engage in them.

NEDA therefore recommends that the Fund’s design consider mechanisms that support the implementation and embedding of inclusive practice, as well as alignment with other funding programs that can sustain participation opportunities over time.

NEDA recommends that the Fund include local governments and councils to:

Act as local inclusion convenors, bringing together disability organisations, community groups and residents.
Host and support local inclusion networks and communities of practice.
Provide discounted accessible community venues and facilities.
Embed disability and cultural inclusion within cultural, recreation and community development strategies, NOT as an add-on.
Support regional capacity building where specialist disability expertise may be limited.

Share resources, training opportunities and promising practice across community organisations.
Use libraries, community centres and arts facilities as demonstration sites for inclusive practice.
Support accessible transport options for local organisations by partnering with government public transport organisations.

Particular attention should be given to councils serving areas with high CALD populations, First Nations communities and regional areas.

5. What is the best way for community organisations to build meaningful and lasting inclusion? How can we make sure benefits continue after the 3-year funding period?

Meaningful inclusion is achieved when organisations move beyond accommodation and embed inclusion into their culture, governance and everyday operations.

Building lasting inclusion

Community organisations should:

Involve people with disability in decision-making and governance.
Embed inclusion objectives into strategic plans.
Develop ongoing partnerships with disability-led organisations.
Review policies, systems and practices through an accessibility lens.
Build internal capability across boards, staff and volunteers through regular training at onboarding, induction and regular refreshers.
Establish measurable inclusion outcomes and accountability mechanisms.

Sustaining benefits beyond the funding period

The Fund should prioritise projects that:

Create reusable resources, tools and frameworks.
Train staff and volunteers who can continue championing inclusion.
Build long-term partnerships rather than short-term projects.
Establish local networks that can continue sharing expertise.

Document and disseminate good practice across sectors.
Embed reforms into organisational policies and procedures.

NEDA would encourage the Government to evaluate projects based not only on participation numbers, but also on evidence of lasting organisational change and improved belonging, connection and leadership opportunities for people with disability.

NEDA supports the Inclusive Communities Fund as an opportunity to create sustainable, community-wide change.

The Fund should prioritise intersectional inclusion, lived experience leadership, cultural responsiveness, and long-term capability building.

By investing in partnerships between community organisations and disability-led organisations, the Fund can strengthen community participation, belonging and inclusion for all people with disability while creating benefits that continue well beyond the initial three-year funding period. Inclusion embedded for our most vulnerable is inclusion that is accessible to all.