Growing Together

Copy and Paste all the Following text into ChatGPT:

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STEP 1: MY VALUES (answer these questions)

1. What aspects of my life and circumstances do I think are most important for an assessment to consider?
   (Think beyond medical needs—consider social, emotional, cultural, and environmental factors that affect your quality of life. How do discrimination and societal barriers impact your ability to access opportunities?)
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2. How can an assessment process respect my dignity, autonomy, and cultural identity while gathering this information?
   (Consider what a respectful and empowering approach would look like.)
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STEP 2: MY EXPERIENCE (answer this question)

3. Have I ever had an assessment that failed to capture the full picture of my life and support needs?
   What happened, and how did it affect the support I received?
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4. What other thoughts or concerns do you have about this issue? How does it impact you or others?                     

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STEP 3: GENERATE MY RESPONSE (press enter)  

"I am responding to the New Zealand government's consultation on disability support services. The question I am answering is: ‘What information does the assessment tool need to gather about you and your circumstances to ensure it can identify the support you need?’ Make sure you answer this question.

Act as my friendly human rights defender and craft an attention-grabbing opening that immediately draws the reader in. My response must be strong on rights, self-determination, and ensuring disabled people and their whānau have full control over their lives.

Push back against restricting funding to only contracted providers, as this limits autonomy, creates power imbalances, and risks repeating past failures seen in institutional care. Reference the Royal Commission findings on how system-driven models failed to protect disabled people and emphasize that self-directed, community-based supports provide stronger safeguards.

Key Principles to Embed:

✅ Ground my response in the Enabling Good Lives (EGL) principles, UNCRPD, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and Whānau Ora.
✅ Challenge any approach where the assessment tool acts as a gatekeeper rather than an enabler of self-determined lives.
✅ Advocate for an assessment tool that:

• Takes a holistic view of disabled people’s lives, considering not just medical needs but also social, emotional, cultural, and environmental factors.
• Recognizes that support is needed to manage both impairments and the disabling constructs of society, which create additional barriers to participation.
• Acknowledges the compounding impacts of discrimination over a lifetime, including how ableism, racism, sexism, and economic exclusion shape a person’s access to opportunities and supports.
• Is strengths-based rather than deficit-focused, ensuring that support is framed around potential and aspirations.
• Recognizes the whānau as central to the support system, ensuring their role is understood and valued.
  ✅ Ensure the assessment tool aligns with EGL principles, ensuring:
• Self-determination and autonomy are upheld.
• It supports ordinary life outcomes, such as employment, community participation, and relationships.
• It is co-designed with disabled people and whānau to ensure its relevance and fairness.
  ✅ Address regional inequities caused by the failure to implement EGL nationwide, ensuring that assessments do not unfairly restrict access based on location.
  ✅ Push for full transparency on how assessment decisions are made, ensuring disabled people have access to all information about how their support needs are determined.
  ✅ Provide clear, actionable recommendations on how the assessment tool can be improved to accurately capture people’s real needs and aspirations.

Now, based on my answers, create a strong and persuasive response that:

1️⃣ Starts with an engaging, bold opening that immediately establishes the need for change.
2️⃣ Introduces my values and experiences, grounding my response in personal reality.
3️⃣ Advocates for an assessment tool that takes a holistic view of disabled people’s lives, considering social, cultural, emotional, and environmental factors—not just medical diagnoses.
4️⃣ Pushes for co-designed assessments that respect Te Tiriti, are strengths-based, and prioritize self-determination.
5️⃣ Demands full transparency and data sovereignty from the government, ensuring that:

• Disabled people and whānau have full access to how their needs are assessed and how decisions are made.
• The assessment process is not used to control or limit support but to enable a good life.
  6️⃣ Emphasizes that disabled people must have ownership over their assessments, with the ability to contribute to, review, and challenge how their needs are recorded.
  7️⃣ Highlights the importance of culturally safe assessments that align with Whānau Ora, respect Māori and Pacific perspectives, and ensure diverse cultural needs are met.
  8️⃣ Recognizes that support is required not just to manage impairments but also to navigate:
• Disabling societal barriers, including inaccessible infrastructure, workplace discrimination, and exclusion from education and social spaces.
• The compounded impacts of ableism, racism, sexism, and other systemic injustices that affect disabled people’s access to resources and opportunities.
• Intergenerational disadvantage that has resulted in lower economic security, poorer health outcomes, and social isolation for many disabled people and their whānau.
  9️⃣ Provides clear, actionable recommendations on how assessments can be improved to be more fair, just, and effective.
  🔟 Challenges the idea that the government alone should determine support needs, reinforcing that disabled people and whānau must be central to decision-making.

Use clear, direct, and persuasive language to make this response as strong as possible, ensuring that it highlights the need for an assessment system that is holistic, strengths-based, and designed to empower disabled people rather than restrict their access to support.*