Plan for intersectionality impacts

Intersectionality refers to an understanding of social categorisations as they apply to individuals but also, to the responsiveness of services to the range of needs of these groups.

Our human services system and the services and programs within it, are meeting the needs of a diverse community. To gain a realistic picture of community need, commissioning cycles involve a wide range of advocacy and lived experience perspectives. This is the challenge of intersectionality.

We recognise that intersectionality can prompt non-government organisations to repeat their advocacy and insights while participating in multiple commissioning cycles. This can create participation and advocacy fatigue.

Non-government organisations can explore ways to provide input once for the benefit of multiple commissioning cycles. If an organisation represents a priority population as defined through the ACT Wellbeing Framework, then Commissioners should provide an option to consolidate insights, lived experience stories and identified service gaps into a format that can be recorded and shared by the ACT Government and used to inform multiple activities or multiple commissioning cycles.

The ACT Wellbeing Framework defines the eight priority populations which intersect across multiple commissioning cycles. There are non-government organisations or representative bodies aligned to each priority population that raise awareness of the intersectionality impacts and can inform each commissioning cycle. With population sizes from the 2022 Census provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, here are some examples:

(*) Australian Bureau of Statistics 2022 (**) Rainbow Health Victoria Estimates – Research Matters Fact Sheet

Page updated: 28 Feb 2024