WHO WE ARE
The National Workforce Collaboration is a group of people living with disabilities, support workers, disability support providers, union representatives and advocates working together to co-design a campaign to grow a skilled disability workforce.
The What’s my Future campaign evolved when a group of passionate people got together wanting to address the current disability worker shortage. Instead of focusing on the issues we were committed to developing a solution.
We want our campaign to change the narrative and societal attitudes towards people with disability and therefore change the value with which society views disability support work.
Our goal is to attract and retain disability support workers through a public facing campaign designed to promote support work as a viable career option, increase community awareness of disability support work and improve community attitudes towards people with disability.
Members of the National Workforce Collaboration with Minister Rishworth, Minister Aly and Associate Commissioner Wade at the campaign launch.
OUR JOURNEY
Our journey began in March 2023 when we met at a Roundtable facilitated by Young People in Nursing Homes National Alliance (YPINHNA). We heard about the chronic shortage of disability support workers and the impacts this has from different people’s perspectives.
From there the National Workforce Collaboration continued to meet monthly. We were determined to create a viable solution and work towards change. We looked at what were the pain points for different members and how this could be solved. This led us to creating a campaign.
We mapped existing campaigns and how each member of the group experienced the messages from the campaigns. We used these reflections as the foundation to our campaign and developed our goal and objectives. Our beginnings were supported by a JFM Fund grant (https://jfmfund.org.au/).
In June 2024 we were funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services to develop activities which focus on:
A public campaign – organising a public facing campaign to make the community aware of the value and reward in undertaking support work.
Building a career path for workers – Attracting people to disability support work and providing a valued career path, appropriate salary and improved conditions.
Training Reform – addressing the need for differently trained workers and the involvement of people with disability in devising new training regimes to deliver specific worker training and skill development to support people with high or complex needs.
On February 19, 2025 we officially launched the ‘What’s my Future’ campaign. It was fantastic to have so much support including from Minister Rishworth, Minister Aly and Associate Commissioner Wade. The launch speech provided by Minister Rishworth can be accessed at: https://ministers.dss.gov.au/speeches/17696
Disclaimer:
Support work offers a huge number of opportunities and experiences. The campaign stories featured here represent just a fraction of the diverse range of people with varying needs and desires who access support workers.
We have shared resources and links in good faith but cannot be responsible for external parties and their conduct, integrity or people’s individual experiences with external parties. However, we will not knowingly support others if they do not align with our principles and the ethos in which the website was created.
