Our quest started with a 2015 New Zealand research project to interview Enabling Good Lives (EGL) participants in order to demonstrate the basic tenets of EGL. The project was funded by EGL. Subsequently, more interviews were carried out with funding from Te Pou and Manawanui in Charge. Their interviews highlighted the following EGL principles:

• Self-determination: Participants are in full control of the planning elements that make up a good life. Self determination was also embedded in the 4 year co-design process with over 400 participants fully involved in formulating and testing the different iterations of the strength based planning tool. This concept is well explained by Lorraine the EGL Christchurch mum.

• Beginning early: The earlier families, children, youth and adults with disabilities can be taught how to dare follow their aspirations and build relationships to foster community and develop natural supports, the more they will become independent from more formal supports.

• Ordinary life outcomes: Prue’s mother Sandra explains how she wanted to create outcomes built around what her daughter Prue enjoyed - this led to creating a microbusiness for Prue to work in, using her life skills. The following Supported Planning co-design processes were carried out by families and disabled people who contributed visuals, some with their own Marae and whānau to make sure that this tool is appropriate and relevant to everyday life in everyday places. 

• Mana enhancing: Participants such as Andrea talked about how her planning with Tyler was supporting him to build a life that would reflect their interests, passions, abilities and contributions. The Supported Planning tool was inspired from these very concepts as co-design participants selected visuals and images that are embedded into their long term and short term goals.

• Relationship building: Grace’s family interview gives a good example of the importance of relationship building. All people need other people to foster a good life and to help us achieve our goals. Naomi’s interview deepens this concept. A Manawatu Now and Next participant, she explained how she enjoyed the process of goal achievement and how it helped her learn how relationships enriched her family’s planning process.

Stories were thematically analysed to extract the active ingredients of successful planning. 

Some of these stories can be accessed at: http://tinyurl.com/disability-peer-learning

These elements were then embedded in the Supported Planning prototype through a wider positive psychology framework. 

This framework indeed strengthened participants’ self-directed planning capacity, which was determined core to aspirational goal setting by the EGL demonstrations evaluations.

More details and Information about the following milestones in our timeline are on other pages of this website:

2019: Collaboration with Dr. Simon Duffy, Citizen Network to embed the Citizenship Framework into the Supported Planning processes. 

2020: Collaboration with Maori colleagues to co-design our program elements.

2022: Testing the Citizenship Framework with youth groups.