Breaking Through Barrier Advocacy Workbooks

The Advocacy Workbook Series is a collection of twelve workbooks designed to guide families of Deaf and hard of hearing children through the everyday realities of advocacy. Each workbook connects to a workshop in our Breaking Through Barriers program and provides clear, step-by-step tools to help families take action with confidence.

Inside, you’ll find practical resources such as templates, checklists, and planning guides that make advocacy easier to manage. The series covers three main areas: building sustainable advocacy foundations, navigating the NDIS, and achieving genuine inclusion in education.

Together, these workbooks create a practical toolkit families can return to whenever needed — supporting immediate problem-solving while also building long-term advocacy skills and confidence

1.Push, Pause, Pivot

The Push, Pause, Pivot workbook is a practical guide for parents of Deaf and hard of hearing children to prevent advocacy burnout. It helps families recognise when to push for urgent action, when to pause and rest, and when to pivot toward new strategies. Through reflection tools, check-ins, and mapping activities, the workbook supports parents to protect their energy, focus on what matters most, and advocate with clarity and confidence

Push,Pause,Pivot-Preventing Advocacy Burnout

2.NDIS 101- What Every Parent of a Deaf child Needs to Know

The NDIS 101 workbook is a practical companion for parents of Deaf and hard of hearing children navigating the NDIS. It brings together clear explanations, real examples, and ready-to-use templates to help you:

• Understand how the NDIS works and what your rights are.

• Translate your child’s everyday needs into NDIS language.

• Build strong goals and requests for supports like Auslan, therapies, and assistive technology.

• Prepare for planning meetings, reviews, and appeals with confidence.

It is designed to be step-by-step, empowering, and grounded in lived experience. You don’t need to read it all at once — use it as a reference guide you can return to whenever you need clarity, ideas, or advocacy tools.

NDIS_101_What_Every_Parent_of_a_Deaf_Child_Needs 

3.The NDIS Game Plan

 NDIS Game Plan is a practical guide for families of Deaf/deaf children.
It’s part of our parent toolkit, alongside NDIS 101 (the basics) and Push, Pause, Pivot (advocacy wellbeing).

This workbook helps you:

• Understand what the NDIS can fund for your child

• Prepare for planning meetings and reviews

• Explore Deaf-specific supports like Auslan in the Home, Deaf mentors, and interpreters

• Link your child’s needs to the right goals and evidence

It’s built from lived experience, not theory — giving families tools, reflection exercises, and real examples to make the NDIS work for you.

NDIS GAME PLAN 2025 

4.Fixing Broken Plans: NDIS Reviews, Variations and Knowing Your Rights

A practical workbook that gives families the tools, templates, and step-by-step guidance to fix NDIS plans that no longer meet their child’s needs. It helps parents understand how to request plan variations, lodge reviews, appeal decisions, and keep supports in place — providing the clarity and confidence needed to navigate the NDIS and protect their child’s rights.

Fixing Broken Plans Workbook 

5. Families in Partnership – Navigating the DIAP

This workbook has been developed to support families of Deaf/deaf children, and children with disability, to engage with their local communities and contribute to more inclusive environments.

Local councils shape many of the places where everyday life happens — libraries, playgrounds, community centres, sport, events, information, and emergency communication. These spaces can either support participation or quietly create barriers.

This workbook helps families understand how Disability Inclusion Action Plans work, where councils have responsibility, and how to engage in practical ways that can lead to real change. It translates complex systems into clear tools families can use when raising issues, sharing lived experience, and proposing solutions.

At its core, this workbook is built on a simple principle:

Families are partners in community planning — not passive recipients of services.

Through this resource, families are supported to identify barriers, understand local inclusion planning, engage with councils more confidently, and contribute to safer, more accessible and more inclusive communities.

This is not about asking for special treatment. It is about ensuring community spaces, programs and information are accessible, safe and inclusive — as they should be.

Because inclusion does not happen by chance.

It happens when families are informed, supported and recognised as essential partners in building communities that work for everyone.

Families_in_Partnership_Navigating_DIAP 

6.Does Access Exist Beyond the NDIS?

The Breaking Through Barriers: Does Access Exist Beyond the NDIS? Audit Tool is a practical, step-by-step resource designed to help families understand and document their child’s real access needs. It supports you to look beyond labels and services, and focus on what actually enables your child to understand, participate, and engage in everyday life.

As systems increasingly ask whether supports can be provided outside the NDIS, this tool helps you test that in a clear and structured way. You’ll map what your child needs, identify what currently works, and gather evidence about what is—and isn’t—available in mainstream systems.

Grounded in real-life experience, this tool helps you clearly show where access exists, where it breaks down, and what is essential for your child to participate fully.

Does_Access_Exist_Beyond_the_NDIS. AUDIT TOOL

7.Language Access Lens – High School

The Language Access Lens – High School workbook supports Deaf/deaf students to explore what language access means in their daily school life.

It helps students reflect on how they experience communication across learning, friendships, wellbeing, and participation — and builds confidence to speak up about what they need to feel included and understood.

The workbook encourages students to look at school through an access lens — to notice what’s working well, identify barriers, and learn practical ways to ask for support.

This resource is part of the Language Access Lens series, developed to help families and young people identify where access is strong, where it’s missing, and how to create more inclusive environments for Deaf/deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

Who it’s for:
This workbook is designed for Deaf/deaf students in Years 7–12, their families, teachers, and school support teams. It can be used as part of personal reflection, learning support sessions, or IEP planning to strengthen communication, confidence, and inclusion.

Language_Access_Lens-High School

8.The Language Access Lens – Primary School

The Language Access Lens – Primary School workbook has been developed to help families of Deaf and hard of hearing children understand what meaningful access looks like across the whole school day.

Primary school is about much more than classroom learning. Children learn through conversations, routines, friendships, playground interactions, assemblies, excursions, sport and everyday connection with others.

This workbook helps families look beyond whether a child is physically present or appearing to “cope”. It provides practical prompts and reflection tools to help parents and carers identify what is working, where barriers may exist, and what can be discussed with teachers and school teams.

At its heart, the Language Access Lens is about access, participation, connection and belonging — because true inclusion happens when children can fully take part in school life.

Language_Access_Lens-_Primary_School 

9.The Equitable Access in Education

The Equitable Access in Education workbook has been developed to help families of Deaf and hard of hearing children understand how access needs are identified, documented and carried through school planning processes.

This workbook supports families to move from concern to clear evidence. It explains the difference between access and support, how reports can show functional impact, how access needs can be described, and how families can prepare for access requests and Individual Education Plan meetings.

It is a practical working document designed to help families understand where their voice fits in the process, what information may be needed, and how to strengthen planning so access is not only written down, but delivered consistently in everyday school life.

At its heart, this workbook is about making access visible — so children can understand, participate, connect and belong across their school day.

Equitable_Access_in_Education