Evaluation of My Rights Matter: A program to change understanding, skills and policy about supported decision making

My Rights Matter (MRM) aimed to promote the rights of people with intellectual disabilities to make their own decisions and support their leadership in awareness raising and changing policies about supported decision making (SDM). MRM was an initiative of the NSW Council on Intellectual Disability (CID) which ran from January 2022 to July 2024. It was funded by philanthropy and had several strands: training, advocacy and organisational, community and policy change. Through its multifaceted activities MRM increased the capacity of people with intellectual disabilities, supporters, community and service providers to understand and participate in SDM and was instrumental in changing attitudes and expectations, practice and laws about SDM. The project also demonstrated good practice for including people with intellectual disabilities in all parts of a project, including taking lead roles in workshop facilitation, advocacy and public speaking.

An interim report, published in March 2023, evaluated the processes and outcomes of MRM over the first 12 months, from its inception to December 2022 (Bigby et al., 2023). That report included recommendations which had been workshopped with CID in December 2022. The recommendations helped to inform the second part of the project. Also, at the end of 2022, a six-month extension was negotiated with the funder to take account of the underspend of funds and longer than anticipated development time of the SDM Framework and training workshops.

This final evaluation report reflects on the last 18 months of the project from January 2023 to July 2024. It 1) identifies the major changes following the interim evaluation report; 2) considers each component of MRM; the workshop series, peer mentoring, advocacy, Grants, Champions and information dissemination; 3) reviews CID’s inclusive ways of working in MRM; and 4) reflects on the overall success and learnings from the program for SDM generally and future initiatives by CID.