The ways that people with disability are treated can make life easier or harder for them and their families. For this reason, Australia's Disability Strategy 2021–2031 (ADS) includes "Community Attitudes" as one of its key outcome areas. The Australian Government wants to know if there have been any changes in attitudes towards people with disability from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds* and to understand what experiences they have within their cultural communities and in the general Australian community. To gather this information, Australian National University is working with JFA Purple Orange to have focus groups with people with disability and their families from CALD backgrounds. We are holding several focus groups across Australia, and talking to as many different people as we can in February and early March.

We would like to talk to people from across Australia. The focus groups will be held online using Zoom. Each focus group participant will be mailed a $60 gift card.

We will ask you about:

How you feel treated within your own community and the broader society (for example by people at the shops, by people within your cultural group, by your neighbours)
Your experiences with health, legal, education and community services (for example by students or teachers at school or university, by your GP, by staff at the services you use)
What you would like to change about any attitudes that you experience or assumptions that people have about you or your family member

Your feedback will be used to report on the progress of Australia’s Disability Strategy (2021-2031)

Registering for a focus group is an expression of interest only. We will contact attendees one week before the event to confirm if they have been selected to take part and confirm if they are available. This is due to the small size of the group and the need to have representation from a wide range of communities.

Access needs: Support for access needs (e.g. Auslan, live captioning, a support worker) provided upon request.

Language interpretation: As the group will be multilingual, there will not be interpreters available.

All information gathered for this registration and focus group will be kept private and identifying information will be destroyed after the research is complete.

*Culturally and linguistically diverse are defined as people who are part of the non-dominant culture and/or have a first language that is not the dominant language. In Australia the 'dominant culture' would be white Western culture and the dominant language is English. For this research, CALD does not include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. There is a separate research project that is working in communities to gather information about attitudes towards disability.