Almost one in five Victorian women and girls live with disability.
Ensuring the Women’s provides accessible and inclusive healthcare and employment is a priority.
We know that women with disability experience poorer health outcomes when compared to the general community due to inequities associated with gender and disability.
People with disability have both lower labour force participation and higher unemployment rates than people without disability. The Women’s recognises there is great opportunity to increase the employment of people with disability within our hospital, and for us to advocate to our peers to do the same.
Disability Action Plan 2022-2025
Our Plan provides a framework for how we will increase access and inclusion for people with disability.
View or download: Disability Action Plan 2022-2025 and Easy English version - Disability Action Plan 2022 - 2025.
Four areas of focus:
We will partner with people with disability in the design of our services and facilities to ensure user-friendly, women-centred healthcare and workspaces.
We will improve:
- how we ask patients about their disability status, and
- how we measure, monitor and respond to the experiences and feedback of patients and staff with disability.
We will tackle the direct and indirect discrimination and stereotyping that women and staff with disability experience.
We will ensure the voices of women and staff with disability are active and influential in governance and leadership.
We will ensure that:
- our recruitment and selection processes are inclusive and barrier free
- we work to attract and retain talented and skilled people with disability, and
- we build the capacity of our people managers to advance inclusive workplace practices.
We will ensure our marketing, consumer health information and digital information is:
- accessible
- inclusive and
- promotes positive and diverse representations of people with disability.
This will support informed decision making by our patients and increase employment of staff with disability.
Disability Action Plan Advisory Committee
This Committee includes:
- consumers with lived experience of disability
- members of the Women's staff who have a passion, expertise and knowledge about enhancing the healthcare outcomes of women and babies who have a disability.
The Committee helped create the Women's Disability Action Plan 2022-2025. It is now supporting the implementation of the Plan's actions.
Members
- Sherri Huckstep, Chief Experience Officer and Executive Sponsor, Disability Action Plan
- Charlene Smithson, Research Nurse
- Cherise Smith, Women with Individual Needs (WIN) Clinic Coordinator, Midwife
- Chrissy Thompson, Consumer Representative
- Deena Morgan, Consumer Representative
- Elizabeth Jeroboam, Consumer Representative
- Emelia Young, Consumer Representative
- Janet Curtain, Consumer Representative
- Julia Newmark, Consumer Representative
- Julie Canals, Consumer Healtth Information Coordinator
- Kate Romaniotis, Internal Communications Manager
- Laurie Gibens, Consumer Representative
- Mariana Voggenreiter, Consumer Representative
- Maryan Raffaello, Consumer Representative
- Mija Gwyn, Consumer Representative
- Natalie Grodzki, People Experience Manager
- Olivia Penna, Consumer Representative
- Sally Stephens, Staff Representative
- Stella Kyriakou, Nurse
- Tayla Barker, Executive Assistant
- Zoe Dorrity, CASA House Education and Training Worker