This is a summary of the Participant Reference Group’s (PRG) recent meeting. The PRG consists of 23 participant and carer representatives across Australia. The PRG is a key platform to ensure the participant voice is heard and understood by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA). Feedback from meetings is used to inform strategy, policy development, system and service delivery development and review, to support continuous improvement.
Chairperson’s welcome
Donna Purcell, NDIA Branch Manager, Office of the Participant Advocate, welcomed members to the second meeting for 2024. Donna thanked all members for attending and introduced the 7 new PRG members to those who were not able to attend the February meeting.
Debbie Irvine, Director, Participant First introduced the topic for the meeting and explained how the sessions would be run. Debbie then introduced Nina Bendon from the Participant First team to run the first group feedback session.
PRG Accountability statement
In November 2023, PRG members told us they would like to create an accountability statement. At our February 2024 meeting, members split into groups to discuss the expectations or standards they had for PRG members as well as the expectations and standards they have for business teams who present at PRG meetings.
Members wrote down their ideas on sticky notes and NDIA staff took notes from the table discussions. The Participant First team then combined all the sticky notes and feedback and created a draft Accountability Statement to share with members at this meeting.
The draft Accountability Statement was based on the words PRG members provided, with some small changes:
- Ideas that were the same were joined or removed to avoid duplication.
- When there was similar suggestion, words that were easier to understand were kept over the more difficult word.
- Words and ideas were grouped into themes.
Draft What we promise statement.
For the first session, the draft What we promise section was read to members. PRG members went through each line as a group and gave feedback on what they liked, what they wanted added or removed, and if it was easy to understand. The draft What we promise section was updated live so members could agree on the changes being made.
At the end of the session PRG members had agreed on most of the changes made and that the Participant First team would work on making the language consistent with the use of actions or verbs.
Draft What we need from you statement.
For this session, PRG members broke into three groups to discuss the draft What we need from you statement. Members once again gave feedback on what they liked, what they wanted added or removed, and if it was easy to understand.
We heard that some of the headings were confusing, and the statement was too long. We also heard that some actions were not worded strongly enough, such as being very clear if they were meeting with PRG members for co-design or consultation.
Feedback from the three groups would then be used to create a new version of the draft Accountability Statement. PRG members will review the new version out of session.
Things that were not included.
Some of the suggestions we heard in February did not quite fit into an accountability statement, so they were not included in the first draft. These were ideas that could be included in other resources or processes like making changes to emails or setting up a private online group or chat room.
All the suggestions which were not included were read to PRG members who agreed they were not suitable to be included in the Accountability Statement.
Naming questions.
Some members thought the statement should be called something else, like a Commitment statement or a Responsibility Statement. A vote was held, and Accountability Statement was the preferred term by the majority of PRG members.
Next steps.
PRG members agreed to review the next draft of Accountability Statement out of session and provide feedback if they strongly disagreed with any of the changes made. Once the final version is created, the Accountability Statement will then be shared with all business teams before they present at a PRG meeting. The statement will also be an excellent resource to share when setting up future long-term working groups as an example of what an accountability statement could look like for their group.
Final comments and close
Debbie Irvine thanked PRG members for taking part in the meeting and confirmed a new draft statement would be sent to members to review out of session to provide further feedback.
Next meeting
Wednesday, 10 April 2024