Disability Consumer Leadership Development Grant

Tū tonu mai e te Kaihautū i te kei o tōu waka – A voyage leader stands up to many a tempest

Consumer leadership development grants are available to support disabled people and whānau to take part in leadership development activities. This includes:

• training or learning activities that develop consumers’ and whānau leadership skills
• training or learning activities that are for the benefit of disabled people or the disability sector.

The leadership activity must:

• develop leadership skills
• be for the benefit of disabled people or the disability sector in general
• be accessible for disabled people
• not already be fully funded by other agencies/funds
• start (and usually end) in the calendar year of the grant
• be delivered in New Zealand.

Consumer leadership development grants open for applications twice each year in March and September.

Our September funding round will open on Wednesday 1 September and close at midday on Thursday 30 September 2021.

We recommend submitting your application on our online grants portal at least 3–7 days before the closing time. You can register on our portal at any time and it will save your details.

If you have previously been successful in receiving Te Pou grant funding, please ensure all previous reporting and accountability is up to date.

You can expect to hear back from us with the outcome of your application by October 2021.

The consumer leadership development grant covers the costs of consumers or their whānau taking part in leadership development activities. For the purpose of this grant ‘consumer’ includes disabled people and their whānau.

The grant can be used for:

• course or workshop fees
• related resources (for example, workbooks, tutors/facilitators)
• accessibility costs for disabled people, including travel and accommodation and the cost of support people (accessibility costs do not count towards individual or organisational caps).

The grant does not fund course development and administration, standard service delivery, service development and business-as-usual costs.

The learning activity must align with Let’s get real: Disability as an overarching framework, meeting the needs of disabled people, whānau and communities. Learning topics that align with the following areas will be prioritised:

• Positive Behaviour Support
• Autism
• Whaia Te Ao Marama
• High and Complex.

Underpinned by:

• Increased awareness of the requirements of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) amongst both the disability workforce and disabled people and their families/whānau/carers
• Leadership development of provider organisations, Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs), disabled people and whānau
• Demonstrated use of the Let’s get real: Disability seven Real Skills to inform the application, is critical assessment criteria for the panel:

• Working with disabled people.
• Working with Māori.
• Working with families and whānau.
• Working with communities.
• Challenging stigma and discrimination, and promoting value.
• Upholding law, policy and practice.
• Maintaining professional and personal development.

The priorities are developed and agreed in partnership with MoH. Applications that fall outside of these priority areas will be considered but will receive a lower rating.

Every funding round there is significant demand and oversubscription on available grant funding, meaning the process is competitive for the decision-makers.

As well as complying with our terms and conditions, applications must also meet our eligibility criteria.

Organisations must be:

• funded by MoH to deliver DSS; or
• a DPO that is part of the DPO coalition.

Participants/Individuals must be New Zealand citizens or a permanent resident, and/or:

• a disabled person eligible to receive MoH funded disability services, or a whānau member of an eligible disabled person
• an MoH funded DSS IF recipient, IF host, or a person registered in the Mid Central disability system transformation roll out
• has the support of their organisation or employer and supported to participate in the learning activity
• a person registered and using the new funding model as part of the System Transformation in the Mid Central region.