Enabling Good Lives in New Zealand: What System Transformation Means for Disability Support

A disability-support system can give a person services without giving them much control over their life. Support may be professionally organised, publicly funded and reliably delivered, yet still determine when someone gets up, who enters their home, which activities are considered fundable and how far their ambitions must fit the categories available within the system.

Enabling Good Lives emerged in Aotearoa New Zealand as a challenge to that relationship. Developed with disabled people, families and whānau, its starting point is not simply that existing disability services should become more personalised. It asks whether authority itself can move closer to disabled people: whether support can begin with the life someone wants, build on ordinary community opportunities and use specialist or funded assistance to enable those outcomes. Within the wider New Zealand social care and community-services landscape, this makes Enabling Good Lives significant well beyond the three places in which dedicated EGL arrangements operate.

Christchurch, Waikato and the MidCentral site known as Mana Whaikaha have tested different versions of the approach rather than implementing one identical programme. Their experience has influenced national thinking about disability support, but Enabling Good Lives should not be described as a uniform nationwide service model. Current Disability Support Services arrangements also sit within a changed institutional and fiscal environment in which consistency, transparency and sustainability have become prominent priorities.

The deeper question is therefore not whether Enabling Good Lives can simply be “rolled out”. It is what has to change when a system genuinely tries to organise itself around self-determination, ordinary life and relationships rather than asking disabled people to organise their lives around services.

Enabling Good Lives is an approach to power, not simply a funding mechanism

Enabling Good Lives is sometimes associated most visibly with flexible funding and personal budgets. Those mechanisms matter, but treating EGL as a funding product understates its ambition.

The approach grew from concerns that disabled people and families frequently had insufficient choice over the support they received and that funding arrangements could be inflexible. Its vision places disabled people and their whānau in greater control of their supports and their lives.

Eight principles provide the foundation:

• self-determination, so disabled people are in control of their lives;
• beginning early, supporting disabled children and families before avoidable crisis develops;
• person-centred support, shaped around individual needs and goals across the whole life;
• ordinary life outcomes, including home, relationships, learning, employment and community participation;
• mainstream first, using opportunities available to other citizens wherever they are accessible and appropriate;
• mana enhancing practice, recognising the abilities and contribution of disabled people and whānau;
• ease of use, reducing unnecessary complexity and increasing flexibility; and
• relationship building, strengthening connections with whānau and community rather than making formal services the centre of life.

Taken individually, several of these ideas resemble familiar person-centred principles and values. Taken together, however, they imply something more structural. If ordinary life is the outcome, a disability agency cannot regard delivery of funded hours as sufficient evidence of success. If mainstream first is meaningful, specialist services cannot become the automatic destination for every need. If self-determination is genuine, professional expertise cannot routinely override the person's own aspirations.

That is why EGL is best understood as a different organising logic for disability support.

The three EGL sites deliberately developed differently

New Zealand did not establish three identical demonstrations. Christchurch, Waikato and MidCentral began at different times, serve different populations and have tested different ways of applying the principles.

Enabling Good Lives Christchurch began in 2013, initially focusing on young people moving from school into adult life, particularly those connected with the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme. This made transition a natural testing ground for a different approach. Instead of asking which conventional adult disability programme a school leaver should enter, planning could begin with education, work, relationships, interests and community life.

The Waikato demonstration followed in 2015. Eligible people can opt into the EGL approach, within the site's capacity and access arrangements. Its experience has provided another test of how personalised planning, connection and flexible support can operate alongside the wider disability-support system.

Mana Whaikaha began in the MidCentral region in 2018 as a broader prototype of a transformed disability-support system. Its scope has been wider: eligible disabled people in the region can access the approach rather than it being confined to a particular transition cohort.

These differences matter analytically. Variation between the sites is not necessarily evidence that one has implemented EGL correctly and another incorrectly. Demonstration and prototype arrangements were intended to generate learning. The stronger governance question is whether differences are purposeful, whether their effects are understood and whether learning influences future system design.

Organisations undertaking comparable transformation can use the Governance Maturity Assessment to test whether strategic principles are connected to operational responsibility, evidence and decision-making. It is not a New Zealand disability framework, but the underlying issue is directly relevant: transformation requires governance capable of distinguishing useful experimentation from unexplained inconsistency.

Connectors and Kaitūhono change the nature of the first conversation

One of the most distinctive features of the EGL approach is the Connector or Kaitūhono role. The purpose is broader than processing eligibility or matching someone to a service vacancy. Connectors work alongside disabled people and whānau to explore aspirations, possibilities, community connections, mainstream opportunities and funded support.

The difference can appear subtle until it is applied operationally.

A conventional service-led conversation may begin with available provision: day programmes, support hours, respite, residential options or other defined services. A Connector-led conversation can begin with the person's life: what matters, what is changing, where they want to belong, what relationships already exist and what is getting in the way.

That does not mean funded support becomes irrelevant. It changes its position. Funding becomes one of the resources used to build a good life rather than the architecture around which the person's life is designed.

This closely reflects strengths-based practice. The person's capabilities, relationships and community are visible alongside needs. Crucially, however, strengths-based work should not become a mechanism for withdrawing legitimate public support on the assumption that families or communities will fill every gap.

The quality of connecting therefore depends on judgement. A skilled Connector needs to understand the disability-support system while resisting the tendency to make that system the starting point for every solution.

Operational scenario: leaving school without entering a service-defined adulthood

A 19-year-old disabled student in Christchurch is preparing to leave school. His family has spent years navigating education and support systems and initially assumes that the next task is to identify an adult day service. He enjoys working with animals, wants to travel independently and would like paid employment, although he needs assistance with communication and some daily activities.

An EGL conversation reframes the transition. Instead of treating the day-service vacancy as the central decision, the young person, his whānau and Connector explore what an ordinary week could look like. A local animal-care setting may offer a route into volunteering and potentially employment. Travel training can be considered alongside disability support. Existing friendships and community activities remain part of the plan rather than disappearing when school ends.

Funded assistance is then organised around the barriers that remain. Support-worker time may help with travel, communication or participation, but the worker is not expected to become the young person's entire social world.

The scenario demonstrates why outcomes-focused support requires more than rewriting service objectives. The outcome is not attendance at a programme. It is progress towards work, independence, relationships and an adult identity chosen by the young person.

Governance still matters. Plans need clarity, funding needs an agreed purpose and progress needs review. But evidence should show whether the person's life is expanding, not merely whether purchased support was delivered.

Personal budgets create flexibility only when the planning is strong

Personal budgets are another important element of the EGL approach. They can allow eligible disabled people and whānau to have greater influence over how disability support resources are used to achieve agreed outcomes.

The principle is powerful because conventional service categories can produce artificial boundaries. A person may require a combination of assistance, technology, community access and practical support that does not fit neatly into a standard programme.

Yet flexibility does not eliminate the need for disciplined planning. Indeed, it makes the purpose of funding more important. If spending decisions become more individualised, everyone involved needs a clear understanding of the outcomes the budget exists to support.

The strongest personal-budget arrangements therefore combine three elements: enough flexibility to respond to the person's life, enough support for the person to exercise that flexibility confidently, and enough accountability to demonstrate that public resources are being used for their intended disability-support purpose.

This balance has become particularly relevant following the removal in April 2026 of previous purchasing rules for several forms of flexible disability funding. The change increased discretion within allocated budgets while retaining the importance of the person's funding plan, disability-related support purpose and financial limits.

EGL's contribution is to show why the conversation before expenditure matters. A flexible budget without a compelling vision for the person's life can simply fund a more varied collection of services. A good plan gives flexibility direction.

Ordinary life outcomes require mainstream systems to become genuinely usable

“Mainstream first” is one of the most consequential EGL principles because it moves some responsibility beyond the disability-support system.

Disabled people are citizens before they are service users. Education, employment, housing, recreation, transport, healthcare, libraries, local facilities and community organisations should therefore be part of ordinary life rather than automatically replaced by specialist disability provision.

In practice, however, mainstream first can be empowering or exclusionary depending on how it is applied. Referring a disabled person to an inaccessible mainstream service does not increase inclusion. It merely transfers the barrier.

The operational requirement is to distinguish between an opportunity that can become accessible with reasonable support and one that remains structurally unavailable. Connectors can help build relationships with mainstream organisations, but responsibility cannot rest solely with the disabled person or Connector. Wider public and community systems need the capability to include disabled citizens.

This is particularly important for employment. A person may need disability-specific support to prepare for work or maintain employment, but the objective is participation in the labour market rather than indefinite placement within a disability-specific activity because it is administratively easier.

Similarly, a community recreation programme may require communication support or physical accessibility. The answer need not always be a separate disability programme; sometimes the stronger response is to make the ordinary programme work.

This creates a wider system test for New Zealand. The more effectively mainstream systems include disabled people, the further disability-specific resources can concentrate on barriers that genuinely require specialist support.

Self-determination includes the right to make ordinary decisions

Choice and control can be weakened by an understandable desire to protect people from risk. Disability services often operate in environments where workers, families and organisations are conscious of safety, safeguarding and accountability.

EGL challenges the assumption that safety automatically requires professional control. Disabled adults make decisions about relationships, money, travel, employment, housing and daily routines just as other adults do. Some choices involve uncertainty.

The appropriate response is not absence of safeguards. It is proportionate support for decision-making and risk. The wider principle of positive risk-taking is particularly relevant: risk should be understood in the context of what matters to the person and the consequences of preventing the activity as well as allowing it.

A person who wants to travel independently may face transport or personal-safety risks. Preventing travel altogether may reduce those risks while also eliminating employment, friendships and independence. A stronger plan can identify the specific barriers, develop skills, introduce technology or graded support where useful and review experience.

The Positive Risk-Taking Planner offers organisations a practical structure for examining similar tensions between autonomy, benefit, foreseeable harm and proportionate safeguards. It does not replace New Zealand law, policy or individual decision-making requirements; its relevance lies in helping teams avoid reducing complex life decisions to a binary choice between unrestricted activity and prohibition.

Operational scenario: independence means accepting that support can change

A woman using Mana Whaikaha wants to move from her parents' home into a flat with a friend. Her current support has developed around the family home, where her parents provide substantial informal assistance. Everyone recognises that moving will alter the risk profile and may initially require more formal support.

A service-led response could treat the increased support requirement as evidence that remaining with her parents is the more efficient option. An EGL approach gives greater weight to the ordinary-life outcome: an adult choosing where and with whom she lives.

Planning examines the practical requirements. The home needs to be suitable. Paid support has to cover activities currently undertaken by her parents. She needs a way to respond if a worker is unavailable. Her friend should not inadvertently become an unpaid carer. Technology may assist with some routines, but only where she wants it and where it genuinely increases independence.

The transition is staged rather than presented as an all-or-nothing decision. Support is reviewed after the move, with the expectation that some needs may change as confidence and routines develop.

The case also reveals a funding challenge. Independence may initially cost more than maintaining an arrangement dependent on unpaid family support. A system focused only on short-term expenditure can therefore work against ordinary-life outcomes. Governance needs to consider both the cost and what the funding is enabling.

Whānau partnership is central but cannot become compulsory unpaid provision

Relationship building is embedded within EGL, and for many disabled people whānau are fundamental to identity, support and decision-making. Families can provide knowledge that no assessment tool captures: communication preferences, history, aspirations, early signs of distress and the practical conditions in which support succeeds.

Yet family involvement requires boundaries as well as recognition.

A person-directed system should not assume that parents will provide lifelong care or that siblings will inherit responsibility. Nor should family preferences automatically displace the disabled person's own wishes. Where communication or decision-making support is needed, the task is to strengthen the person's participation rather than treating the most confident family voice as a substitute.

The distinction is particularly important during transitions. Parents who have spent years coordinating fragmented services may understandably find it difficult to step back as a young disabled person gains more control. Conversely, some disabled people want substantial continuing whānau involvement. There is no single correct level.

Good practice therefore resembles purposeful involvement of families and advocates: clarify whose decision is being made, what the person wants, what support family members can sustainably offer and where formal support is required.

EGL's relationship principle is strongest when it enriches people's natural networks rather than quietly transferring state responsibility to those networks.

Mana enhancing practice requires a specifically Aotearoa understanding of transformation

Enabling Good Lives cannot be separated from the cultural and constitutional context in which it operates. “Mana enhancing” is not simply another phrase for respectful customer service. It directs attention towards dignity, authority, identity, strengths and the relationships through which people understand their place in the world.

For tāngata whaikaha Māori and whānau, disability support intersects with whakapapa, whānau relationships, culture and Te Tiriti o Waitangi. A model that transfers control from a service bureaucracy to an individual while retaining assumptions derived entirely from individualistic service design may still fall short of culturally responsive transformation.

Planning therefore needs room for collective as well as individual aspirations where that reflects what the disabled person wants. Community leadership and Māori participation in system design are also important because cultural responsiveness cannot be achieved solely at the final service-delivery stage.

This connects with the wider importance of cultural and identity needs. Identity is not an optional addition to a technically complete support package. It can influence what a good life means, who should be involved, where support occurs and how relationships are built.

Pacific disabled people and families bring their own diverse cultural contexts, while disabled people from migrant communities, Deaf communities and other groups may experience different barriers. EGL's emphasis on person-centred and relationship-based support creates space for that diversity, but principles alone do not guarantee equitable implementation.

Community leadership changes who is allowed to define system success

A central feature of the EGL story has been involvement by disabled people, families and whānau in shaping the approach itself. This matters because co-design is qualitatively different from consultation after the main decisions have already been made.

“Nothing about us without us” captures an important accountability principle: people affected by disability policy should have meaningful influence over how the system is designed, implemented and evaluated.

That influence needs to survive the transition from demonstration to administrative system. As programmes become larger, there is a natural tendency towards standardisation, central control, professionalisation and financial assurance. Each may be necessary to some degree, but together they can gradually move decision-making away from communities.

The governance challenge is therefore to institutionalise participation without bureaucratising it. Advisory groups that receive presentations but have little influence over decisions do not reproduce the partnership that shaped EGL.

Effective participation requires accessible information, time to consider proposals, representation of diverse disability experiences, transparent responses to feedback and evidence that community input can alter decisions. It also requires recognition that disabled people contributing specialist lived expertise should not routinely be expected to do so without appropriate support or remuneration.

The wider co-production and lived-experience principle is therefore not simply relational. It is a governance mechanism.

Operational scenario: local innovation reveals a national policy problem

An EGL community identifies that several disabled people are struggling to participate in employment because available support arrangements work poorly around variable shifts. Connectors repeatedly solve the problem individually through creative scheduling and local relationships.

Initially this appears to be evidence of successful personalisation. Over time, however, the same issue appears often enough to suggest something more structural.

The local team brings together experience from disabled people, whānau and support providers. It identifies that the problem is not primarily unwillingness among individuals or employers. Funding and workforce arrangements have been designed around relatively predictable support periods, while contemporary employment may require early starts, evenings and changing schedules.

The local response should continue because people need solutions now. But EGL's “try, learn and adjust” philosophy also requires the pattern to travel upwards. Evidence is aggregated and made visible to those responsible for funding and operational policy.

The governance success is not that every Connector continues finding ingenious workarounds. It is that repeated local experience becomes system intelligence and eventually changes the condition generating the problem.

This is where transformation differs from excellent casework. A transformed system learns from individual lives and alters its architecture accordingly.

Workforce capability is different in a relationship-led model

EGL changes what the disability workforce needs to be good at. Technical competence and safe practice remain essential, but a relationship-led system also requires listening, facilitation, community knowledge, creative problem-solving and comfort with transferring control.

For Connectors and Kaitūhono, success may involve helping someone need less formal intervention rather than building a larger service package. That can conflict with organisational cultures in which professional value is demonstrated through service activity.

Support workers also operate differently when the person has stronger control over routines and outcomes. Workers need to understand their role as enabling rather than directing. This does not diminish professional responsibility; it changes how expertise is used.

Workforce development therefore needs to cover values and power as well as procedures. Recruitment should consider relational capability, while supervision should explore whether practice genuinely supports autonomy. Leaders need to recognise the emotional complexity of enabling choices that professionals or family members might not make themselves.

At the same time, no philosophy can operate without enough people to deliver support. Workforce resilience and continuity remain critical, particularly in rural areas and where specialist skills are scarce. Flexible funding may enable different workforce arrangements, but it cannot create labour supply by itself.

Evidence of transformation has to extend beyond service activity

Evaluating Enabling Good Lives raises a fundamental measurement question: what counts as success when the purpose is an ordinary life rather than delivery of a predefined service?

Traditional administrative measures remain useful. Government needs to know how many people receive support, what is spent, whether funding remains within agreed parameters and whether operational processes are functioning. But those measures reveal relatively little about whether people have greater authority over their lives.

Evaluation therefore needs evidence closer to the EGL vision. Relevant questions include whether disabled people experience greater choice and control, whether they can pursue personally meaningful outcomes, whether support is easier to navigate, whether relationships and community connections strengthen, and whether experiences differ for tāngata whaikaha Māori, Pacific disabled people or people living in different places.

Previous evaluation and research across the EGL sites has reported positive experiences alongside areas requiring improvement. That mixed evidence is valuable. Transformation should not depend on proving that every element succeeds. A learning system needs enough confidence to identify where implementation is weaker and adjust it.

For organisations translating broad outcomes into usable oversight, the Quality Dashboard Builder can help structure a balanced view across experience, quality, workforce and outcomes. It is not an EGL evaluation framework, but it supports the wider principle that what matters strategically needs to become visible operationally.

The danger is measurement drift. Once transformation enters routine administration, easily counted indicators can gradually replace difficult but meaningful outcomes. Number of plans completed is easier to measure than self-determination. Both may be needed, but they are not equivalent.

Digital systems should make EGL easier, not standardise the life out of it

A personalised system still needs infrastructure. Funding plans, budgets, records, payments, provider information and reviews all create administrative processes that can be supported digitally.

Well-designed technology could make funding easier to understand, reduce repetitive administration and give people more immediate information about their support. Digital tools can also help Connectors and system leaders identify patterns that are difficult to see across individual cases.

There is nevertheless a tension between digital standardisation and individualised practice. Software naturally encourages defined fields, workflows and categories. Those can improve consistency, but they can also pull conversations back towards what the system has been designed to record.

A funding platform that offers only predetermined support categories may recreate the rigidity that flexible funding was intended to reduce. An assessment interface that prioritises deficits because they are easy to code may weaken strengths-based planning.

Accessibility is equally fundamental. Disabled people need digital information and systems that work with different communication, sensory, cognitive and physical requirements, alongside non-digital routes where required. Digital inclusion is therefore part of the design standard rather than a later accessibility adjustment.

The Digital Transformation Readiness Assessment can help organisations examine whether governance, workforce capability, data and operational design are ready for technology-enabled change. For an EGL-informed system, the central test remains simple: does technology increase people's control and reduce complexity, or merely make the administration more efficient for organisations?

Operational scenario: technology supports a relationship rather than replacing it

A man with a sensory impairment manages a flexible support arrangement and wants clearer information about his remaining budget. Historically, he has relied on periodic statements and contact with staff to understand expenditure.

A digital system could give him near-current information, allow accessible review of transactions and reduce uncertainty about what remains available. That creates greater control because he can make informed decisions without waiting for an intermediary.

However, the first version of the interface is difficult to use with his preferred assistive technology. The system is technically functional but operationally inaccessible.

An EGL-informed response does not tell him that digital self-service is optional and return him permanently to the old process. His experience becomes design evidence. Accessibility is corrected, user testing includes disabled people with different access requirements and an alternative human route remains available for anyone who needs it.

The result illustrates a wider principle. Technology should not replace the relational elements of Enabling Good Lives. It should remove administrative friction so that relationships can concentrate on planning, problem-solving and the person's aspirations.

At governance level, accessibility testing and user experience therefore belong alongside system uptime and transaction accuracy when digital performance is reviewed.

Consistency after 2024 creates both an opportunity and a tension

The disability-support environment in which EGL now operates differs from the period in which the demonstrations were established. Following the 2024 independent review, responsibility for Disability Support Services moved to the Ministry of Social Development, and strengthening financial sustainability, transparency and consistency became immediate priorities.

During 2026, nationally consistent approaches to assessment and allocation have been introduced across NASCs and the three EGL sites. That development addresses a legitimate problem: geographic flexibility should not mean that people in comparable circumstances experience unexplained differences in access or funding.

At the same time, EGL was deliberately developed through local experimentation and relational practice. Over-standardisation could therefore undermine some of the flexibility that generated learning in the first place.

The task is not to choose between consistency and personalisation. It is to be precise about what should be consistent.

People should reasonably expect consistent eligibility principles, transparent allocation methods, understandable decisions and equitable treatment. They do not need identical lives, plans, aspirations or support arrangements.

National controls can therefore establish fair boundaries while leaving room for individual and local solutions within them. The quality of future system design will depend substantially on maintaining that distinction.

Scaling principles is harder than expanding a programme

Enabling Good Lives has long generated interest in wider system transformation. Yet scaling an approach based on relationships and local adaptation is fundamentally different from replicating a standard service specification.

A programme can be expanded by recruiting more staff, issuing contracts and reproducing procedures. A principles-led transformation requires behaviour and authority to change across the system.

Scaling EGL therefore raises deeper questions. Can a national assessment process remain relational? Can Connectors retain freedom to explore community possibilities when caseloads increase? Can disabled-person leadership retain real influence as governance becomes more formal? Can personal budgets remain flexible while expenditure controls strengthen? Can mainstream public systems accept their share of responsibility rather than leaving inclusion to disability services?

These are implementation questions rather than objections to the vision.

The stronger opportunity is to identify which components require national consistency and which require local discretion. The eight principles provide a common direction. Financial accountability and eligibility need clarity. Workforce standards and safeguards need sufficient assurance. But community relationships, individual aspirations and locally available opportunities cannot be prescribed centrally in detail.

A mature transformation model therefore needs both fidelity and adaptation: fidelity to the principles and adaptation in how they are realised.

The international lesson lies in redesigning the relationship between person and system

Enabling Good Lives attracts international interest because many countries are grappling with similar questions about personalisation, individual budgets, community living and disability rights. The institutional mechanism, however, cannot simply be exported.

New Zealand's approach developed through its own disability community, government structures, cultural context and experience of demonstration sites. Mana-enhancing practice and the place of tāngata whaikaha Māori also give the model dimensions that should not be stripped away to create a generic international template.

The transferable principle lies deeper than the programme architecture.

Most disability systems need some mechanism for determining eligibility, allocating finite resources and assuring public expenditure. EGL demonstrates that those functions do not have to define the person's life. Administrative systems can sit behind a conversation that begins with aspirations, relationships, community and ordinary citizenship.

It also demonstrates that personalisation is a system property, not merely a planning technique. If funding is inflexible, mainstream services inaccessible, housing unavailable, workers scarce or governance dismissive of lived experience, a beautifully person-centred plan will have limited effect.

Other systems can therefore learn from the relationship between EGL's components without reproducing the New Zealand structure. The relevant question is not “How do we introduce Enabling Good Lives?” It is “Which parts of our own system prevent disabled people exercising authority over the lives that support is supposed to enable?”

Future transformation will be judged by what becomes ordinary

The long-term significance of Enabling Good Lives will not be determined solely by whether the name survives future administrative reforms. Its greater test is whether its underlying assumptions become normal across disability support.

If self-determination becomes routine, disabled people should not need access to a special demonstration to be taken seriously as the principal decision-makers in their lives. If ordinary-life outcomes become routine, services should increasingly be judged by participation and independence rather than activity alone. If mainstream first succeeds, disability inclusion should become more visible across housing, employment, education, transport and community infrastructure.

That future also requires realism. Flexible support can increase control but cannot overcome every shortage. Community connections can enrich life but should not substitute for funded support where it is genuinely needed. Digital systems can simplify administration but cannot replace relationships. National consistency can improve fairness but cannot prescribe what a good life looks like.

The continuing value of EGL lies partly in keeping those tensions visible. Transformation is not the removal of complexity. It is the redistribution of authority within that complexity.

Conclusion

Enabling Good Lives has made an important contribution to New Zealand disability policy because it asks a more fundamental question than how existing services can be improved. It asks what the support system should look like when disabled people are treated as citizens with authority, aspirations, relationships and ordinary lives rather than primarily as recipients of programmes.

The three sites in Christchurch, Waikato and MidCentral have shown different ways of putting that ambition into practice. Connectors and Kaitūhono can begin with possibilities rather than vacancies. Personal budgets can give resources greater flexibility. Community leadership can place lived experience closer to system decisions. The eight principles provide a coherent test of whether practice is actually moving power towards disabled people and whānau.

The next phase is more demanding. New Zealand must combine those relational and person-directed ambitions with nationally consistent assessment, sustainable funding, strong safeguards, workforce capacity and transparent public accountability. Success will depend on preserving what needs to remain flexible while making what should be fair and predictable more consistent.

The strongest legacy of Enabling Good Lives would therefore not be a larger programme carrying the EGL name. It would be a disability-support system in which self-determination, mana, ordinary-life outcomes and genuine partnership have become sufficiently embedded that they no longer feel like an alternative model. They simply describe how good disability support is expected to work.