Growing Together

Copy and Paste all the Following text into ChatGPT:

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STEP 1: MY VALUES (answer these questions)

1. Enabling Good Lives is about ensuring that supports are flexible and responsive to your evolving needs and aspirations. Thinking about your values and what matters most to you, what life changes or milestones would signal that it’s time to review and reassess your services and supports to ensure they continue to align with your vision for a good life?
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2. How can reassessments be structured so that they are responsive to real needs while avoiding unnecessary stress or disruptions?
   (Think about making the process fair, accessible, and not feeling like a test.)
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STEP 2: MY EXPERIENCE (answer this question)

3. Think back to a time when your life shifted—maybe in a big way, maybe in subtle but important ways—but the support system didn’t keep up. What changed for you? How did it feel to be stuck with services that no longer fit? What was the impact on your daily life, your goals, or even your sense of control? If the system had responded differently, what could have been possible?
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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 changes to your circumstances do you think should mean a review or reassessment of your services/supports would be needed?’ 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.
✅ Advocate for reassessments to be triggered by meaningful life changes rather than arbitrary timeframes.
✅ Ensure reassessments are structured in a way that strengthens disabled people’s independence rather than creating stress, instability, or unnecessary barriers.
✅ Recognize that reassessments should be a tool for empowerment and ongoing support—not a bureaucratic obstacle or an eligibility test that undermines security.
✅ Ensure the reassessment process fully reflects the EGL vision by embedding these core principles:

• Self-determination: Disabled people and whānau must have full control over when and how reassessments occur.
• Beginning early: Support reviews should be proactive, ensuring continuity rather than waiting until crisis points arise.
• Person-centered: The reassessment must focus on the whole person—their evolving goals, changing needs, and strengths.
• Ordinary life outcomes: The goal must be to ensure a stable, fulfilling life in the community, rather than threatening loss of support.
• Mainstream first: Reviews should ensure disabled people can continue accessing mainstream services, opportunities, and community life.
• Mana enhancing: The process must respect the dignity and lived experience of disabled people and their whānau.
• Easy to use: The system must be accessible, transparent, and navigable—not a source of stress or uncertainty.
• Relationship building: Reassessments should build trust between disabled people and the system, rather than creating fear of cuts.
  ✅ Demand full transparency from the government about:
• When and why reassessments are triggered and whether they are genuinely in the best interests of disabled people.
• How reassessments can be self-initiated by disabled people and their whānau rather than being imposed externally.
• How reassessment outcomes are communicated and whether they genuinely reflect the disabled person’s changing needs.
  ✅ Push for a strengths-based approach to reassessments, ensuring that:
• They reflect personal growth and evolving needs, rather than being used to question a person’s eligibility.
• Disabled people and whānau have the ability to self-report changes rather than being subject to unnecessary bureaucratic scrutiny.
• They do not cause unnecessary stress, delays, or instability that disrupts people’s lives.
  ✅ Provide clear recommendations on when reassessments should occur and how they can be made fair, just, and genuinely supportive.

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 Makes a persuasive argument for a fair, transparent, and strengths-based reassessment process.
4️⃣ Provides concrete recommendations for how reassessments can be structured to empower disabled people rather than create stress or insecurity.
5️⃣ Ends with a compelling summary that reinforces the key message and calls for urgent reform.

Use clear, direct, and persuasive language to make this response as strong as possible, ensuring that it highlights the need for a fair, supportive, and transparent reassessment process that genuinely serves the evolving needs of disabled people and their families.*