Systemic Advocacy
Our Systemic Advocacy Priorities - 2026–27
Each year, AMPARO Advocacy identifies a small number of key priority areas for our systemic advocacy work. These priorities are informed by the experiences of people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds with disability and their families – the people we work alongside every day.
For 2026–27, our eight priorities are listed below, and in no particular order. Our eight priority areas are intersectional and interdependent and reflect the major disability reforms currently underway and the barriers our communities continue to face. We use these priorities to focus our submissions, prioritise our participation in advisory groups and other committees, and in our direct engagement with government and decision-makers.
Thriving Kids is Australia’s new early supports system for children with developmental delay or autism aged 8 and under, rolling out from October 2026. For children and families from CALD backgrounds, the risk is that without explicit design for cultural and language access, this new system reproduces the same barriers families already face.
AMPARO Advocacy is advocating for culturally safe entry points, routine interpreter engagement, and clear safeguards so no child and family falls through the gaps during this transition.
NDIS reform is moving from policy into everyday practice – through new planning processes, needs assessments, and changing eligibility. For people from CALD backgrounds, the risk is that these changes are not culturally safe and trauma informed: that people cannot understand decisions about their supports, cannot access an interpreter when they need one, and cannot safely challenge outcomes that are wrong.
AMPARO Advocacy is working to ensure reform is fair and accessible in practice – not just on paper.
The Disability Royal Commission made 222 recommendations to make Australia safer and more inclusive for people with disability. Implementation is happening across multiple systems – health, housing, education, justice, and disability services.
AMPARO Advocacy’s focus is ensuring these changes reach people from CALD backgrounds in practical ways, and that CALD lived experience shapes what good implementation looks like. AMPARO Advocacy is again working to ensure that the 222 recommendations are not just words on paper for people from CALD backgrounds with disability, and their families.
The NDIA has committed to improving how the NDIS responds to participants from CALD backgrounds through its CALD Strategy 2024–2028. These commitments include better interpreter access, culturally safe planning, accessible communications, and meaningful outreach to communities not yet accessing the NDIS.
AMPARO Advocacy holds the NDIA accountable to these commitments – continuing the independent monitoring role we have played since the Strategy’s development.
QCSS provides supports for people with disability who are not eligible for the NDIS. Waitlists are long, funding has not kept pace with need, and people from CALD backgrounds face compounding access barriers – including language, information, and cultural safety. For people from CALD backgrounds living with psychosocial disability, particularly those whose support needs are rooted in trauma and settlement stress, QCSS is often he only available pathway – and it is frequently not equipped to respond in ways that are trauma-informed or culturally safe.
AMPARO Advocacy advocates for equitable access to QCSS for the people who need it most.
A new system of early intervention and community-based supports is being designed as part of NDIS reform. People with psychosocial disability and people from CALD backgrounds are among those most at risk of being overlooked in this design process.
AMPARO Advocacy advocates for foundational supports to be built with CALD communities – not just for them – and for this new system to be genuinely accessible from the start.
People from CALD backgrounds with disability face compounding barriers to accessing safe and suitable housing – income thresholds that do not reflect real costs, private rental market barriers, limited accessible housing options, racism and intersectional discrimination, and limited knowledge of rights and entitlements.
AMPARO Advocacy advocates for housing systems that recognise and respond to the intersecting disadvantage faced by people from CALD backgrounds with disability.
Across every reform area, people from CALD backgrounds with disability are too often absent from the decisions that shape their lives. AMPARO Advocacy works to change this – through our Inclusive Leadership Network (ILN), through our participation in advisory groups and consultations, and through our advocacy for genuine co-design rather than tick-box consultation.
This priority sits at the heart of all our systemic advocacy work.
Our Submissions
Submissions are one of the key ways AMPARO Advocacy puts our advocacy on record. We respond to government consultations, inquiries, and reform processes – adding the perspectives of people from CALD backgrounds with disability to decisions that affect their lives.
Current and Recent Submissions
AMPARO Advocacy’s submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee raised concerns about the Bill’s potential unintended impacts on people from CALD backgrounds with disability. Key issues included: the need for culturally safe functional capacity assessment with qualified interpreter access; the risk that contact and plan suspension processes may fail people who don’t respond to English-only or digital communications; blanket assumptions about parental capacity that ignore the realities of refugee families; and the absence of adequate independent advocacy safeguards. AMPARO made 14 specific recommendations and requested the opportunity to give oral evidence to the Committee.
Relevant priorities: NDIS Reform Implementation; Authentic Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design
AMPARO’s submission to the Department of Justice argued that accessible courts and tribunals must respond to the intersecting barriers faced by people from CALD backgrounds with disability — including language access, cultural safety, trauma, and low trust in institutions. Seven key themes and recommendations were made, covering: intersectional accessibility frameworks; reducing reliance on self-identification and self-advocacy; treating language access as a core — not supplementary — accessibility issue; trauma-informed and culturally safe practice; the limits of family-based support; end-to-end accessibility across the justice journey; and careful, consent-based data collection.
Relevant priorities: DRC Implementation; Authentic Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design; NDIS CALD Strategy
AMPARO produced an Executive Summary analysing the Federal Government’s response to the 222 recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission, with a specific focus on implications for people from CALD backgrounds with disability.
Relevant priorities: Disability Royal Commission Implementation
AMPARO contributed to the development of the Queensland Disability Rights Framework, raising the specific rights and inclusion concerns of people from CALD backgrounds with disability in Queensland.
Relevant priorities: DRC Implementation; Authentic Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design
Past Submissions
These submissions document AMPARO Advocacy’s advocacy over time. While they reflect an earlier period, many remain directly relevant to the reforms and policy debates currently underway.
Submitted to the Disability Royal Commission. This submission documents the key systemic barriers experienced by people from CALD backgrounds with disability in Queensland, including access to the NDIS, interpreter access, cultural safety in services, and housing.
Relevant priorities: NDIS Reform Implementation; DRC Implementation; NDIS CALD Strategy
AMPARO’s response to the Disability Royal Commission issues paper on the experiences of CALD people with disability.
Relevant priorities: DRC Implementation; NDIS CALD Strategy; Authentic Stakeholder Engagement
AMPARO’s response to the Disability Royal Commission issues paper on inclusion.
Relevant priorities: DRC Implementation; Authentic Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design
AMPARO’s initial submission to the Disability Royal Commission, outlining the compounding barriers faced by people from CALD backgrounds with disability.
Relevant priorities: DRC Implementation
Launched at the Griffith University Symposium in October 2016. This report documents longstanding barriers to NDIS access for CALD communities and makes 25 recommendations for equitable access and participation.
Relevant priorities: NDIS Reform Implementation; NDIS CALD Strategy; Foundational Supports
AMPARO’s position paper on the systemic barriers experienced by people from CALD backgrounds with disability — including interpreter shortages, cultural competency in services, and information access.
Relevant priorities: NDIS CALD Strategy; Authentic Stakeholder Engagement; Housing
Our Impact
Systemic advocacy takes time. Change rarely happens in a straight line – it builds through sustained evidence, consistent engagement, and the accumulated weight of many voices. This section documents some of the outcomes AMPARO Advocacy’s advocacy has contributed to, and the key forums and processes where we have raised the concerns of CALD communities with disability.
We acknowledge that systemic change is almost always the result of many organisations and many people working together. Where we note an outcome here, we are recording AMPARO Advocacy’s contribution – not claiming sole credit.
Advocacy Outcomes
In 2024: the NDIA released its CALD Strategy 2024–2028, committing to improvements in interpreter access, culturally safe planning, accessible communications, and community outreach. AMPARO participated in the External Advisory Group throughout the Strategy’s development.
Priority area: NDIS CALD Strategy and Action Plan
In 2023: the DRC Final Report included recognition of the compounding disadvantage experienced by people from CALD backgrounds with disability, reflecting concerns raised by AMPARO and others across multiple submissions.
Priority area: Disability Royal Commission Implementation
Sector Participation
AMPARO contributes to systemic change through formal participation in government advisory processes, parliamentary inquiries, and sector leadership forums. The following entries document some of our key participations.
On 31 July 2026, AMPARO Advocacy attended and gave oral evidence at the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee’s public hearing into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 in Canberra. AMPARO was represented by Senior Systemic Advocate Ange Boyd, alongside Management Committee members Francy Molina and Grace Cruz, who spoke from their own experience as women from CALD backgrounds with disability. AMPARO’s evidence to the Committee was clear: as currently drafted, the Bill does not adequately consider the specific needs of people from CALD backgrounds with disability, and risks further disadvantaging them. In the year to March 2026, 66% of CALD applicants met NDIS access requirements, against 83% for all other applicants – a significant gap that exists before any of the Bill’s changes take effect. AMPARO raised concerns about: whole-person, culturally safe assessment rather than a single functional snapshot; contact and suspension processes that genuinely reach people — not just unanswered calls or English-only letters; no blanket assumptions about what family or mainstream supports can provide; and funding for social and community participation being determined by individual need, not blanket cuts.
Relevant priorities: NDIS Reform Implementation; NDIS CALD Strategy and Action Plan; Authentic Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design
AMPARO was a founding member of the NDIA’s Cultural and Linguistic Diversity External Advisory Group (EAG), established in August 2022. AMPARO provided strategic advice, governance input, and oversight throughout the co-design and development of the CALD Strategy 2024–2028 — including written feedback on multiple drafts, participation in community conversations with Arabic and Kurdish Kurmanji-speaking communities, and attendance at the NDIS CALD Strategy Summits in 2022 and 2023.
Relevant priorities: NDIS CALD Strategy and Action Plan; Authentic Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design
In May 2026, Ange Boyd (Senior Systemic Advocate) and Khonde Ngoma, a member of AMPARO’s Inclusive Leadership Network, co-facilitated a Community of Practice session for Queensland’s disability sector. The session was developed as part of Queensland’s Disability Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design Strategy and explored what genuine co-design looks like at the intersection of language, culture and disability — drawing on Khonde’s experience as a person from a CALD background with disability and a family member supporting a child with disability to navigate the NDIS. The session was shaped by the lived experience and expertise of AMPARO’s Inclusive Leadership Network and CALD Inclusion Consultants, and engaged peer facilitators in facilitated breakout conversations about what needs to change for people from CALD backgrounds with disability to lead engagement, not just attend it.
Relevant priorities: Authentic Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design; NDIS CALD Strategy and Action Plan
Grace Cruz, a member of AMPARO Advocacy’s Inclusive Leadership Network, spoke on a panel at the 2025 Queensland Disability Conference on the topic of Employment and Social Impact. Grace spoke from her own lived experience as a person from a CALD background with disability, contributing a perspective that is often absent from mainstream disability sector conversations.
Relevant priorities: Authentic Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design
Nazim Yacoub represented AMPARO Advocacy on a panel at the 2024 Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA) Conference, speaking on the topic of Equity for All: Disability, Culture, and Community. The panel addressed the intersecting challenges of disability and cultural and linguistic diversity, and the systemic barriers that prevent equitable access for CALD communities with disability.
Relevant priorities: Authentic Stakeholder Engagement and Co-design; NDIS CALD Strategy and Action Plan
Have you seen a change we should know about?
If you are aware of a policy change, commitment, or system improvement that you think AMPARO’s advocacy has contributed to, we would like to hear from you.
Contact us at info@amparo.org.au or call 07 3354 4900.
Independent Systemic Advocacy
Since 2004, AMPARO has played a key role in highlighting the voices and concerns of Queenslanders with disability from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds.
AMPARO’s direct work with individuals and their families continues to inform our understanding of the systemic failures that disadvantage and marginalise many people from CALD backgrounds with disability.
AMPARO has a strong history of undertaking independent systemic advocacy to effect positive, sustainable changes to legislation, policies, practices, and approaches that contribute to issues of inequality.
Through systemic advocacy, we responsibly challenge systems, approaches and values that can negatively impact the lives of people with disability and question the coherency between what human services and governments say and what they do in practice.
The Executive Summary includes the responses to the Disability Royal Commission into the Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability (Disability Royal Commission) by the Federal and Qld State Government.
In February 2022, the NDIA shared their co-design approach to developing a new CALD Strategy and Action Plan for 2023 -2027 with people from CALD backgrounds with disability, their families, communities, advocates, and the broader sector.
In August 2022, AMPARO Advocacy and many other stakeholders joined the Cultural and Linguistic Diversity (CALD) External Advisory Group (EAG) to provide strategic advice, governance and oversight for the co-design and development of the CALD Strategy.
The EAG was an important opportunity for AMPARO to influence the development of a strategy that would, unlike the previous CALD Strategy of 2018, be able to address the systemic barriers and inequity in the current NDIS system.
AMPARO was clear that we could not support a Strategy and Action Plan that could not deliver the outcomes we wanted and would continue to monitor changes and provide honest and robust feedback to the NDIA.
Over the past two years, the NDIA has implemented a range of engagement strategies with people with disabilities, their families, advocates, and other stakeholders. These have included focus groups, community conversations, public information sessions, online surveys, and written submissions.
AMPARO Advocacy has provided detailed and extensive feedback, raised serious concerns, and made suggestions for improvements to the draft CALD Strategy and Action Plan through a range of processes, which have included:
- Attending NDIS CALD Strategy Summit in February 2022 and 2023 to provide feedback on the new CALD Strategy updates and proposed actions.
- Participating in two forums organised by the Independent Advisory Council’s Equity and Inclusion Reference Group.
- Participating in several online focus groups.
- Organising a Community Conversation with people with disability and family members from the Arabic-speaking communities in the Logan/Brisbane areas and supporting a Community Conversation in Toowoomba with the Kurdish Kurmanji-speaking community. Providing feedback from these events to the NDIA.
- Encouraging allies across the sector to attend and participate in the NDIS focus groups.
- Supporting members of AMPARO to participate in NDIS Focus Groups and community conversations.
- Providing written feedback on several drafts of the Strategy and Action Plan Participating in the endorsement meeting on 2 August 2023
- Providing feedback on communication materials
- Sharing relevant submissions about the NDIS, previously provided to the NDIA and the DRC, to highlight systemic issues that need to be addressed.
AMPARO Advocacy was very excited to be approached by the School of Public Health and Social Work at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 2013 to participate in a research project: An exploration of the barriers to services and inclusion of refugees living with disability.
“Disadvantage and disability: Experiences of people from refugee backgrounds with disability living in Australia”
This paper reports on a small study undertaken as a first step in building knowledge and regarding the lived experience of the nexus between refugee background and disability.
“Restrictive practices on refugees in Australia with intellectual disability and challenging behaviours: a family’s story.”
The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of a refugee family navigating complex disability and restrictive practice service system.
We do this by
- Bringing key issues to the attention of those in positions of power and influence in the government and community
- Responding to State and Federal government legislation, policies and practices
- Participating in advisory groups to government and community
- Undertaking joint systemic advocacy with our allies
- Attending and supporting members to participate in consultations and forums with the government and community to share their lived experiences and concerns.
This work assists the government and community to understand the specific challenges and issues experienced by people from CALD backgrounds with disability and to explore ways of addressing these challenges. A small number of state-wide systemic priorities are identified and responded to each year by AMPARO Advocacy.
Peak and Representative Body
In September 2023, the Department of Child Safety, Seniors and Disability Services funded AMPARO Advocacy as a Peak and Representative body for people from CALD backgrounds with disability.
The Department of Child Safety, Seniors and Disability Services established the Queensland Disability Peak and Representative Body Program, which funds organisations to deliver peak body services to Queenslanders with disability, their family members and carers.
The role of Peak body organisations is to help and support people with disability:
- with accessible and disability-specific information on systemic issues impacting people with disability
- with online and state-wide phone support and referral services
- through news, advice, referral information, and communication about support and services available in Queensland, including information to access the NDIS
- by providing expert advice and feedback to the government on matters impacting people with disability
- by promoting community awareness, education and training information for organisations, employers, and the broader community to influence community attitudes and remove barriers to inclusion
- by developing resources to support employers in attracting, recruiting and retaining people with disability.
More information on the program and the providers in the ten categories can be found here: Peak body supports | People with disability | Queensland Government
Queensland Executive Disability Peak Body
Queenslanders with Disability Network (QDN) provides an overarching leadership and coordination role across funded peak bodies. QDN also provides information, advice and support to people with disability about their rights, available services and opportunities for economic and social participation.
Phone: 1300 363 783