Launching 2024
Over the past year, the National Centre for Disability Advocacy (NCDA) has been collaborating with a developer to create a comprehensive disability advocacy portal. During consultations for the NCDA’s development, it became clear that the disability advocacy sector needed a “one-stop shop” offering high-quality resources in a resource library, an event calendar, communities of practice, and tools to capture data on systemic advocacy and unmet demand. After careful design and consultation, the Portal is now ready to begin testing phase with the intent to launch later this year.
Already registered as a Portal user? Click below to login.
What is the Disability Advocacy Sector Portal?
The disability advocacy sector portal (the Portal) is an online space for staff who work for NDAP organisations. Other advocacy organisations may be given access to the portal sometime in the future. The Portal is a secure, closed, cloud environment (hosted on Salesforce) where resources are stored, data is captured, and sector collaboration can occur. The Portal is a first for the disability advocacy sector and will connect advocates and advocacy staff around the country in real time.
What is the Portal going to achieve?
The Portal will be a tool to improve access to and quality of advocacy services around Australia. The Portal will be essential for disability advocates and managers looking to improve their practice and will include:
- Opportunities for advocates to be aware of upcoming, “advocacy-specific” events, including NCDA event registration – This will include monthly webinars, Peer Networks, as well as a range of training and education opportunities, designed to increase the knowledge and skills advocates require to be more effective in their work.
- Access to best practice resources – This will include templates, policies, procedures, guidelines, “how to’s”, as well as a range of other quality material sourced from the advocacy and parallel sectors.
- Opportunities to build collaboration by identifying current work throughout the sector, and give users a chance to endorse, collaborate or contribute to this work.
What functions does the Portal have?
The disability advocacy sector portal has a range of functions to support advocates and advocacy staff in their day-to-day work. They include:- A resource library that contains resources created by the sector, as well as recordings of NCDA webinars. The NCDA will continue to develop guides and templates to assist the sector and upload them to the resource library. Portal users are also able to upload resources to the resource library.
- An event calendar that contains information about NCDA events and training external to the sector that may be of interest to the advocacy sector. Portal users are also able to upload events and dates they are aware of for other portal users to see.
- Communities of practice that provide a space for advocates and advocacy staff to seek advice from their sector colleagues. Communities of practice also provide a space to engage in reflective practice.
- A case study library that contains case studies for both use in submissions and to engage in reflective practice.
- A systemic advocacy tracker that enables portal users to report systemic issues they are experiencing ‘on the ground’, and record what systemic activities they are undertaking. By recording systemic activities, portal users will be able to identify if another organisation is completing work for the same or a similar issue and may look to collaborate.
- A capacity tracker that provides up-to-date information on an organisation’s capacity and useful information such as service area, eligibility and waitlist times. The capacity tracker also seeks to collect waitlist data to build an evidence base of unmet demand.
How can I get access to the Portal?
The NCDA will be completing a staged roll out of the disability advocacy sector portal. We will onboard approximately 10 organisations per month between July and December 2024. During the first 6 months of 2024, the NCDA provided a link on the website for individuals to register their interest in accessing the portal. This information will be used to triage organisations to be onboarded during the roll out period.More about NCDA’s training sessions for the sector:
The NCDA team are aware that the disability advocacy sector hasn’t had access to anything like the Portal before. We want to ensure that we are providing support to all portal users. In collaboration with our developer we are creating a series of short instructional videos. The NCDA team will also be hosting drop-in sessions on Zoom. The times and link to join the sessions are coming soon so keep an eye on this space.Behaviour expectations
All people who engage with the NCDA are expected to behave in a respectable, kind and courteous manner and this extends within the Portal environment. Portal users are required to agree to a code of conduct upon signing up to the Portal. Should portal users behaviour fail to meet expectations, portal users will be removed from the portal and their organisation will be notified of the incident.Progress to date
Consultation: Sector consultation for the development of the NCDA Development: Development of the disability advocacy portal Testing: Front-end user testing of the disability advocacy portal – the project is here Onboarding: Onboarding of organisations Ongoing development: All organisations onboarded and continuous development of the disability advocacy portal
Register for the Portal
Access to the Partner Portal of the National Centre for Disability Advocacy is available to individual advocates working for an NDAP (National Disability Advocacy Program) organisation.
If you are working for an NDAP organisation, and do not currently have access to the Portal, please complete our registration form, and someone from the NCDA team will contact you with further instructions.
FAQ’s about the Portal
Overview:
The disability advocacy sector portal (the Portal) is a ‘one-stop shop’ for disability advocacy staff. The Portal provides an opportunity for disability advocates and disability advocacy staff to connect, access and share resources and identify information about other organisations.
The disability advocacy sector portal is for staff who work for organisations that receive funding through the National Disability Advocacy Program (NDAP). The disability advocacy portal is helpful for all staff, including advocates, administrators, intake officers, team leaders, managers and executive leaders.
The NCDA has collated a list of everyone who has registered to access the Portal and will contact you directly when it is time to give you access. To support organisations to the greatest extent possible, the NCDA is doing a staged rollout and onboarding organisations over six months – July to December 2024.
Logging on:
The easiest way to access the disability advocacy portal is to go to ncda.org.au and click on ‘portal login,’ which is located at the top right corner of the screen. Alternatively, you can visit
www.disabilityadvocacyportal.org.au. You will need to ensure your organisation has been given access to the portal before trying to log in.
Your username is your individual work email address to that you received the initial welcome email to.
Every portal user will have their own account which is set up and connected to their individual work email address. You will need to use your own individual organisational email address to log in. General email addresses that are not assigned to an individual worker cannot be used to log in to the Portal. The Portal has multifactor authentication set up, which means you will also need to set up an authentication application on your phone.
The NCDA will help you set up an authenticator application when you are set up as a portal user. You will need to download an authenticator application on your phone and set it up with your individual work email address. However, you won’t be able to add the Portal to your authenticator application until the NCDA has set you up as a user.
You can choose from three applications:
- Salesforce authenticator
- Microsoft authenticator
- Google authenticator
Instructions on how to set up these authenticator applications are below:
It is important to think about what authenticator your organisation may already be using and whether you would like all your authentication needs in one application, or across multiple.
Portal users are asked not to share logins. If you have new staff who require access to the Portal, your internal organisational administrator can set up a new profile for them. If you do not have an internal organisational administrator or need help as an organisational administrator, email ncda@dana.org.au with the new staff member’s email address, name, and position title, and the NCDA team will set up their profile.
If you have forgotten your password, you can click on ‘forgot your password?’ on the portal login page. This will provide you with a link to reset your password. Alternatively, you can email ncda@dana.org.au and request your password be reset. Please note, for security reasons, the NCDA will not accept a request for a password to be reset by anyone other than the portal user.
Portal content:
All portal users are required to agree to a code of conduct when signing up. This ensures that all users understand the expectations regarding behaviour within the Portal. All portal users are expected to uphold confidentiality and privacy, be kind and courteous and share best practice in advocacy.
As a security measure, every portal user’s first post must be reviewed and approved by a member of the NCDA team. Once your first post has been approved, you will be able to post and comment on other user’s posts.
What type of moderation occurs in the portal community and with the uploading of resources to share?
The NCDA will moderate the Portal. Should a portal user’s post cause concern, the post will be moderated (temporarily hidden), and the portal user will be asked to review it. Portal users can also flag content for the NCDA team to review.
There is also a list of banned words that automatically moderates a post and alerts the NCDA team of its need for attention.
When resources are uploaded to the Portal, the NCDA team will review the content before making it visible to other portal users. This ensures that if the resource was uploaded in error, it is not distributed further. It also ensures that the resource being uploaded is current. If there are any issues with the resource that was uploaded, the NCDA will contact the portal user that uploaded it.
The NCDA team is always here to support portal users. We plan on hosting virtual ‘drop in sessions’ online to support people throughout the onboarding process. These sessions will occur via Zoom and will provide a space for you to ask questions about the portal and troubleshoot any issues you’re having. Keep an eye on our newsletter and website to see when these drop in sessions are, or reach out to the team to set up a troubleshooting session.
Additional considerations:
Portal users will only be able to see the contact information of staff within their organisation by default. Portal users will not be able to see contact details for portal users outside of their organisation unless the portal user has enabled an option to show their contact information to other users.
This means that you will be able to see your colleagues’ contact information but not the contact information for people outside your organisation, unless they have opted for that information to be visible.
All data captured will be used in line with DANA’s privacy policy. The NCDA is also developing a data collection and use policy and procedure to support the specific data captured in the portal.
If you would like more information about the portal, get in touch with anyone from the NCDA team. You can do this by calling 1300 186 453 or emailing ncda@dana.org.au.
What advocates are saying
“Thank you for bringing together the sector.
The Portal, from first viewing is going to be a game changer for those of us in silo’s, working away, trying to keep the day-to-day work at our forefront.
For me personally, as an intake officer for many years, finding availability and somewhere to send PWD that may not fall into my area or specialty, will be wonderful. A central point of genuine information, for advocates, by advocates.”
DONNASpinal Cord Injuries Australia 
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