The challenge

The NDIS offers new opportunities for people with disability in aged care to live independently. However, the scheme has required people with disability to rapidly adapt to exercising choice and control, and for some people, particularly when their life has been institutionalised, this may not seem achievable. Moving out of aged care is a daunting process and it is difficult to prepare for this big life change. Our challenge was to develop resources that would help build the capacity of people currently living in residential aged care and support them to consider alternatives.

Our approach

The co-design project, partially funded by TAC and State Trustees Community Inclusion grants, centred around people with experience of living in aged care creating capacity building resources that demonstrated successful housing outcomes and moving to more independent living. The project was also an opportunity to evaluate the co-design process and recruit people with disability into different types of roles in the project, which were tailored to their skills and needs. We utilised a mix of storytelling and design activities to co-design and co-produce accessible resources that were authentic to people’s lived experiences and addressed the key challenges in imagining a life outside of aged care.

Our output

We developed a resource package that included:

• Three-part podcast addressing themes of grief, loss and mental health, fears about moving and challenging other’s perspectives, and the hardest and the best things about the day-to-day reality of living in their new home
• Video series about what it was like for contributor, Helen, leaving aged care and moving into Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA)
• An audio and text-based resource about where to find the right support for your move

The co-design process was evaluated by the Summer Foundation research team, which you can read about in the research report. The learnings from this evaluation have helped inform our co-design approach and how we work with and employ people with lived experience.