Whaikaha Ministry of Disabled People View our
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Stewardship

Removing barriers and opening opportunities to live good lives benefits from joined up efforts across government agencies and wider communities. The Ministry plays an important stewardship role to help with this.

Our stewardship approach provides a disability lens and is proactive and targeted to support agencies to meet their responsibilities to disabled people and whānau. It includes things such as:

  • coordinating government agencies’ responses to the 63 Concluding Observations provided by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
  • driving work programmes, and monitoring progress towards the Disability Action Plan 2019–2023
  • contributing evidence to and participation in the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care, the Waitangi Tribunal Wai 2575 Health Services and Outcomes Inquiry and the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 lessons learned
  • working with the Ministry of Transport, CCS Disability Action, the New Zealand Parking Association and local government to drive actions to reduce mobility parking misuse
  • providing support to the NZSL Board to progress its strategy and work programmes to maintain and promote NZSL as an official language of New Zealand
  • contributing to the Ministry of Education’s Sector Advisory Group on Deaf Education
  • delivering initiatives to increase disabled people’s participation in public boards and committees, including a nominations service and promoting training opportunities
  • engaging with the Deaf community and government agencies to support the development of the next NZSL Strategy.

Priorities for the next financial year include a focus on accessibility in all system settings.