Family Leadership Alliance
Case Study:
Think Differently
Evaluation
Dr Sarah Appleton-Dyer
Angela Boswell
8th October 2015
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CASE STUDY: Family Leadership Alliance
Defining the problem
The Family Leadership Alliance is a group of three autonomous organisations that work in the
disability sector. The aim of the Family Leadership Alliance is to ensure disabled people, families and
communities have access to information, concepts, networks and resources to enable them to be
contributing citizens in an inclusive community. Using the Think Differently funding, they aimed to
create social change around three interlinked issues that affect disabled people and their families:
poverty, social isolation, and negative messaging.
Poverty
Financial and related social issues that can impact disabled people and their families include housing,
income, wealth creation, financial planning and safeguarding, community participation and active
citizenship. Disabled people face some barriers to gaining financial security. This can lead to an impact
on the way disabled people are valued, by themselves and the community.
Social Isolation
Many disabled people and their families live in social isolation even though they live within
communities. A community is a better place to live when you are known, participating, and included.
Negative Messaging
Communities and individuals hold a range of beliefs about the ability of disabled people to participate
and be involved. Many disabled people and their families face systems and people with a deficit focus;
they have low expectations of the capability of disabled people. Experiencing this deficit focus early in
the journey of a disabled family member can have a damaging impact with families retreating from
supports and networks and reducing their expectations of what is possible for the future.
Intention
The Family Leadership Alliance intended to deliver a collaborative initiative with three main strategies
designed to address these problems:
Board Tables
Lead by SAMS, board tables would bring together a range of leaders including business and
entrepreneurial leader to focus on generating ideas and strategies that disabled people and their
families could use to create socially valued roles and reduce poverty. Then at least one strategy would
be pursued by the board table network to create social change within their own communities.
Kitchen Tables
Lead by Imagine Better, kitchen tables would consist of
a core group of six to ten participants drawn from a
variety of sources. It was intended there would be 10
original kitchen table groups. They would be supported
through an external facilitator to develop connections,
identify and build leadership and other skills, and
develop an achievable project. A DIY kitchen table tool
kit would be developed to support leaders in each
region. The approach was designed to have decreasing
reliance on external facilitation. It is anticipated that as clarity and confidence grows, kitchen tables
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will be self-sustaining and members may choose to become facilitators of additional kitchen table
networks.
Cultivating Optimistic Expectations
Lead by Parent to Parent, cultivating optimistic expectations was intended to provide an optimistic
culture for families that enables disabled people to live a life of choice and aspiration. This would
involve: sharing positive stories of disabled people living good lives and making DVDs that tell inspiring
stories, identifying and working with influencers in the health and early education to change the
beliefs that limit expectations, and facilitating workshops for families and Second Generation
weekend workshops that give families the opportunity to plan together for the future.
The intention was for these strategies to complement each other. Second Generation workshops as
part of the cultivating positive expectations strategy will be a source of people who could form a
kitchen table group. There will be facilitated networking between people involved in the kitchen
tables and board tables. In addition, success stories from the kitchen and board tables can be shared
as part of the cultivating positive expectations strategy.
Project delivery
Local community action was a foundation for the delivery of this project. Many kitchen table groups
were set up by SAMS, Imagine Better and Parent to Parent. While all of these groups were supported
by a facilitator, these facilitators had a limited role in the projects initiated by the kitchen table
members. The facilitator would help arrange meetings, teach skills and provide information. It was
the members who decided what issue in their local community was most important to them. The idea
of allowing the kitchen tables to have control over their own project was important to the facilitators
right from the start.
“I went in blind really. I didn’t know what to expect, what the vision was because it
wasn’t about my vision; the community needs to own that.”
The kitchen tables had sustainability specifically built in to their design. At the start of kitchen table
groups, facilitators could acknowledge that they expected the future of the group to be one that
continued without them.
“My role was to basically withdraw so they’d become a group in their own right.
Then they wouldn’t need me. So that was my whole purpose right from the start
and I made that quite clear to the group.”
Sustainability of some kitchen table groups has already been achieved with the group managing
themselves. The plan to have a sustainable kitchen table network is also occurring.
“Currently the group organise the meetings, they tell me where they’re going to be.
I come in and offer support and advice, as and when required, but they are pretty
much self-managing… I have no doubt that beyond the funding for the Think
Differently campaign as it is currently happening that the group will continue to
grow and focus on new challenges. And I imagine they will help provide support to
other community groups that might want to take on a similar approach with
similar goals.”
A kitchen table member also indicated that they intend to take an advocacy role and support other
groups.
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Kitchen tables decided to approach a range of issues from local swimming pool access, after school
care, to building relationships with the Ministry of Education. The other strategies run by the Family
Leadership Alliance both tackled other issues and in some cases were able to complement kitchen
table projects. For example, one kitchen table group wanted to provide resources that came from a
family perspective and this was linked in with cultivating positive expectations and telling positive
stories about disabled peoples’ achievements.
In all aspects of the project, being able to provide knowledge and information was important to
success. This included giving kitchen table members information and skills to support their personal
development and advance their projects, using information to advocate for changes that would allow
disabled people to own their own home, and giving families information that shows they can have a
positive future.
“One of the things we identified fairly early on is that it’s all very well to say ‘this is
what you should think.’ But there needs to be tools for people to do it. So ‘there is
something called EIF, and this is how you can do it, this how it works and this is
how you go about it and this is who you can ask for, for support along the way’”
There were some barriers encountered in delivering the project:

The time required to support a kitchen table group was longer than was initially thought:
“They take a whole lot longer than we initially thought. We thought we could just,
facilitate the first three or four and then kind of move on and they would take it
over. That’s not the case, we need to be with the group for about a year before
they’re ready to take on that leadership themselves.”

Disabled adults do not always live in the same city as their family when kitchen tables were
based on Second Generation workshops:
“What we didn’t appreciate at the time was, when you do bring families together,
they often aren’t from the same area. So we might have the parents that live in
Auckland, but the children live in Wellington. So for them to do the weekend
somebody has to fly somewhere and so then they aren’t actually available to meet
afterwards in a Kitchen Table environment because that’s a very local thing.”

Engaging diverse stakeholders in Board Tables:
“Initially we found that quite challenging, to get people like that around the table
when the issue was quite broad.”
Having funding that allowed projects to be flexible was not only valued by project leaders; it helped to
address the challenge of engaging stakeholders in Board Tables.
“Ultimately what we did with that project, in discussion with the Think Differently
Team, was really define it and make it a lot more concrete so that people could
really get their teeth around it and we could really market it to people that had
interest in it. So it went from Board Tables to something called Owning a Home of
Your Own, which is around supporting disabled people who are on a low income or
on supported living payments into housing.”
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Outcomes and Reflections
Increased awareness of the exclusion of disabled people
The projects from the Family Leadership Alliance are raising awareness of the different ways that
disabled people face exclusion. The Owning a Home of your Own strategy increased the awareness of
the exclusion of disabled people from the housing market within a wider range of stakeholders and at
the ministerial level.
“One of the people [we met at Paula Bennett’s office] said ‘we’ve
never actually even thought about how it is for people with
disabilities to get in their own homes. We never even considered
that whole group of people before. There it is, we need to.’ They
hadn’t even been aware that people with disabilities might need or
want to have their own home one day.”
Different kitchen table projects have also raised the awareness of
the exclusion of disabled people within their local communities. For example, one group focused on
increasing the accessibility of the local swimming pool which included a submission to the council
which is planning an upgrade to the pool. This submission illustrated how disabled people are
excluded from using the current facility as it is unsuitable and unsafe for many people, as well as the
changes that would be required to create an inclusive pool.
Changes in attitudes and behaviours towards disabled people.
The Family Leadership Alliance have changed the attitudes and behaviours of families and people who
influence families’ attitudes early in the life of the disabled person through the cultivating positive
expectations strategy. They have received positive feedback from families that have been involved.
“We get great feedback when we go back to the families after the courses about
what they’re doing differently, or what they intend to do differently – this can be
quite mind blowing. There’s not going to be big changes on day one, it’s about
changing attitudes, so it is going to take time. But people have come away with
the intention to do things differently.”
Increased knowledge of how to reduce the exclusion of disabled people
The Family Leadership Alliance have grown and shared knowledge about how to reduce the exclusion
of disabled people from owning a home. They shared three strategies that would help remove some
of the existing barriers for disabled people to own a home:



Increasing the flexibility of the income-related rent subsidy. This could extend to allowing the
subsidy to be used to service a mortgage rather than strictly for rent.
Increased use of leasehold land. This would improve the affordability of a home for the wider
population including disabled people by making homes more affordable.
Legislative changes to policy that stops disabled people from saving for a deposit. Currently
disabled people who are dependent on a benefit are unable to have enough money for a
deposit as any savings they have effects their benefit.
Some kitchen table groups have chosen projects that either increase knowledge of how to reduce
exclusion for disabled people or provide access to this knowledge. For example, one group had a
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focus on education and have had two positions on the Ministry of Education regional advisory group
made available to them to represent the perspective of parents with disabled children.
Commitment to making a change to reduce the exclusion of disabled people
Kitchen table groups have made a commitment to a project that will benefit disabled people. As the
aim of the project is determined by the group members, typically people with disabled family
members or an interest in the wellbeing of disabled people, most of these projects aim to reduce the
exclusion of disabled people. For example, if the kitchen table group that put a submission to council
to improve the access to the local swimming pool for disabled people is accepted they will be able to
utilise the pool as any non-disabled person would.
Looking ahead
The kitchen tables are likely to continue into the future regardless of ongoing funding. Other
strategies of the project still need to be supported and the organisations are seeking to continue this
work. Ongoing support from Think Differently and the Ministry of Social Development would be
helpful to the success of their work. Even without financial support, the time and advice from people
within the team are valued by the project team.
“If there are people at MSD who stay on to work with organisations like us that
could be really valuable. If there isn’t a fund, then at least that sort of support
would be great.”
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