Understanding the meaning of support in the Australian disability context – an analysis of the term “support” in seven key documents

ABSTRACT

In the past four years, Australia has undergone a major change in the way it funds supports and services for people living with disability. Part of this change has, of course, occurred in the discourse of disability, and the emergence of the term “support” rather than “care” has been a feature of this discursive shift. In this paper we used aspects of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory to analyse how the term “support” is used in a seven key policy and program documents related to disability written over a ten-year period. We aim to understand what is meant by the term “support” and how its meaning is built up, deepened and made more complex over time through its use in Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme. The findings reveal that the meaning of support is relatively flexible, and as such develops meaning and complexity over time, reflecting a shift from a values and rights-based understanding of the concept to the operationalisation of the term in policy and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Support
• discourse analysis
• disability
• NDIS
• systemic functional linguistics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shoshana Dreyfus

Dr Shoshana Dreyfus is Senior Lecturer in linguistics at the University of Wollongong. She specialises in systemic functional linguistics, genre and register theory, discourse analysis and academic literacy, and has over 20 years research and teaching experience in functional and applied linguistics. She has an additional background in education, in particular literacy education. Her research has mostly focused on non-verbal communication and language disorder, and discipline-specific academic literacy, as well as developments in systemic functional linguistic theory and discourse semantics. She also regularly speaks on public radio about language and advocates for the rights of people with intellectual disabilities.

Louisa Smith

Dr Louisa Smith is a Research Fellow at the Australian Health Services Research Institute (AHSRI). Louisa’s research interests centre on the relationship between experiences of disability across the life course, complexity, social policy and social change. Her research works across the disciplines of sociology, disability studies and policy studies. Prior to arriving at AHSRI in 2018, Louisa worked at UNSW, Sydney as a Lecturer and Education and Training Lead at the Intellectual Disability Behaviour Support Program. In 2015 Louisa (and other chief investigators from UNSW, La Trobe, Monash and QUT) was awarded an ARC Linkage, Lost in Transition: Improving the lives of young people with complex support needs. Louisa’s innovative inclusive teaching has been recognised with a citation from the Australian Association of University Teaching (2017) and a UNSW Vice Chancellor’s Award for Teaching and Education (2016). Louisa approaches all research and teaching as means of fostering social inclusion and belonging, through co-production, arts-based methods and knowledge translation at all stages of the process.