Identifying and addressing unmet demand and unmet need
Unmet Demand is defined as requests for advocacy that are unable to receive support due to insufficient capacity of the organisation.
Unmet Need describes people who need an advocate, but they do not know of their existence, how to find them, or do not have access to them.
The National Centre for Disability Advocacy (NCDA) is working to address the issue of unmet need and unmet demand through the analysis of data to help demonstrate the capacity of the sector.
Including:
Developing a methodology that will allow each organisation to capture and record appropriate data.
Sharing the data in a nationally consistent framework.
Building a mechanism that will allow NCDA to feed the quantifiable data back to DSS.
This will be an ongoing process and will aim to address issues more appropriately.