Yarn Up Employment

Aboriginal people can sometimes experience challenges when connecting with and engaging services. These challenges often occur when services are developed without connection to local culture and community.

Throughout 2020 we will be working with Aboriginal communities and Disability Employment Service providers across Western Australia to develop new, culturally informed resources to support the delivery of employment services. Delivered through a purpose-built digital platform, the customisable resources will build the capacity of service providers to assist people from local Aboriginal communities to better understand and make choices regarding the employment services available to them.

Project Background

This project builds upon what we learned in 2017 through the development of our Yarn Up Cards Resource which are designed to provide Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with culturally relevant information about disability support and the NDIS.

The cards feature practical and culturally meaningful imagery and questions developed in collaboration with community to prompt ‘yarning’ discussions aligned to key NDIS funding items. The intended outcome of prompted yarning is to assist people to make choices about their NDIS support needs during the pre-planning process.

The Yarn Up Employment project will take this approach further by building digital functionality that allows providers to customise and update personalised resources to meet the needs of their customers and local community.

The platform will present resources digitally but also provide the option for items to be printed professionally for offline use where digital access is limited. Once completed, we expect the platform’s functionality will facilitate the development of new resource sets for other sectors and communities.

Aligning Community Needs to Employment Services

Through codesign and collaborative development with both service providers and communities, the Yarn Up Employment resources aim to facilitate more meaningful, culturally appropriate conversations around employment support services. This will ensure the preferences and interests of Indigenous people with a disability are understood with consideration of culture and the local context.

By undertaking engagement sessions with employment service providers, the resources will align closely with specific program delivery needs ensuring that what is developed offers a useful resource to organisations and individuals. Insight gained through consultation with local Indigenous communities will then inform the development of contextually relevant language, imagery and visual elements.

As a result of these resources, providers will have improved capacity to uncover what is important to Indigenous customers in the services they are seeking. In turn, providers will also gain knowledge about service gaps and demands, providing opportunities to deliver more localised responses that increase choice, and improve employment options and skill usage.

Project Outcomes

Engagement & Codesign Phase (Short Term)

  • Increased understanding of existing services and gaps in local areas
  • Shared understanding of culturally important activities and interests between communities and organisations
  • Successful community led customisation of resource content and platform functionality

Development and Delivery (Long Term)

  • Improved provider capacity to engage in meaningful conversations with customers
  • Greater provider insight and intelligence into community needs and market gaps

 

Get Involved

If you are interested in being involved or keeping up to date with the progress of this project throughout 2020, sign up below. If you’re an employment services provider, we particularly want to hear about your experiences and will send you out a short online survey to complete.