About Enabling Good Lives Waikato

In March 2017 Nicky Wagner, Minister of Disability Issues announced that the two year Enabling Good Lives Waikato demonstration will be extended. The demonstration will now continue until 30 June, 2019.

Enabling Good Lives is about Government and the disability sector working together to change the way that people with disability and their families/whānau get support.  This demonstration is about people with disability and their families/whānau having the same choice and control over their lives as other New Zealanders.   105 people will be participants of Enabling Good Lives in the first year.  

Enabling Good Lives is a new approach which has been co-designed by people with disability, families, Maori disabled and their whānau, and disability support providers.   Enabling Good Lives is not a new service or somewhere that people can go to; it uses existing community services and disability supports.

Enabling Good Lives is about promoting and implementing eight principles:

People with disability and their whānau/family have choice and control,

Beginning early in the life of a child with disability,

Mainstream first,

The kind of support each person gets needs to be right for them,

People with disability and their families/whānau have mana,

People with disability should have the same lives as all New Zealanders,

Being easy to use, and

Relationship building.

Enabling Good Lives participants will have more choice about where they live, who they live with, and what they do during the day.   They will be more likely to use community services in the same way as all New Zealanders.   Enabling Good Lives participants will also be able to purchase their own services and supports.