VALID8 Self Advocates

VALID employs people with intellectual disability in its VALID8 team.

VALID also employs people with intellectual disability in other teams. But VALID8 is unique because team members get training in how to co-design and conduct quality assurance processes.

These processes focus on whether staff and management of disability group homes are supporting people who live in them to advocate for themselves and be empowered.

The VALID8 tool started as a self-audit for Disability Services. This audit was designed to help these services learn whether they were doing what they could to empower people with intellectual disability to live their own lives. It was also a way services could define and develop best practice to help empower people they support.

The VALID8 tool is now the ‘VALID8 Service User Review of Empowerment Practice’. This Review is a tool the VALID8 team uses to help improve and support the quality of self-advocacy and empowerment practices in disability group homes.

The VALID8 framework is consistent with the National Disability Standards. This framework asks for evidence that people who live in the group home being reviewed are empowered in all areas of ‘service user empowerment’.

These areas include:

• Person-centred planning
• Support for decision-making
• Having a say in how the organisation is run
• Involvement in making decisions for and with the service
• Opportunities to develop their skills
• Having a say in how staff support them
• Wellbeing
• Doing everyday things outside their homes (‘Community participation outcomes’)

What makes the VALID8 Review tool truly exciting is that the reviews use a peer-to-peer framework. This means VALID8 self-advocates visit and listen to people living in group homes and make recommendations to service providers.

VALID values this ongoing partnership with the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) and the outcomes VALID8 provides for people living in disability group homes.