The ‘Let Me Speak’ manual has been designed for use by people with a disability who are from a culturally and linguistically diverse background. As such, there is an underlying assumption that the person using the manual will have pre-existing knowledge and personal experience of both disability and culture.

The design of the ‘Let Me Speak’ manual is primarily intended as a self-teaching resource that gives people the flexibility to move through the content at their own pace and adapt their learning to suit their own personal needs. At each step there are suggestions of resources available to further assist the development of self-advocacy and supportive skills.

The manual has also been trialed for use in group training sessions, provided that:

• the sessions are facilitated by a person with adequate personal experience and knowledge of disability and cultural issues;
• the sessions are designed to suit the unique needs of the participant group, and
• the activities are adapted for group involvement.
  In this way, the ‘Let Me Speak’ manual can also be used with targeted special needs groups such as CaLD youth with disabilities, women with disabilities, or specific disability or cultural groups.

The learning principles that have been built into the manual involve consistency and repetition to reinforce learning through each step and maximize understanding. This can be accentuated or reduced to suit the particular needs of the participants.

The learning process of self-advocacy is personal and experiential, targeting issues of immediate relevance to the user(s). Self assessment exercises have been included to give the user the opportunity to focus on the sections of the manual most relevant and useful for them. A hypothetical case study has been included through the manual to illustrate and give examples at each step of the progression of self-advocacy skill development.

Effective self-advocacy requires the person to be informed and aware from the beginning of the learning process of their rights and responsibilities as a person with a disability who is also from a CaLD background. Awareness of the mechanisms to exercise those rights in practical ways is an important aspect of self-advocacy.