People with disabilities from a CaLD background often have decisions made for them and are not given the chance to speak-up about the things that are important to them or any problems they may be having. There are a number of reasons for this.

• They do not know they have the right to speak-up
• They do not know the correct way to speak-up
• They do not know the correct person to speak to about the problem
• They are not confident enough to speak-up
• They do not know there is help available

The ‘Let Me Speak’ manual has been designed to help people with disabilities from CaLD backgrounds to self-advocate. When you self-advocate you can make decisions about your life, speak-up about the things that are important to you, make changes if there are problems and find help when you need it.

Throughout the manual you will follow the story of Maryam, a woman who is learning about self-advocacy for the first time. You can follow Maryam as she decides what she would like to self-advocate about, how she is going to do it and how she successfully speaks-up about something that is important to her. The manual also gives you:

• information about all the things you need to do to speak-up for yourself and
• activities that will help you to be good at self-advocacy.

You can start by reading about Maryam’s self-advocacy story on the next page. Maryam is learning about self-advocacy for the first time, just like you are. Don’t worry too much about trying to remember everything you are learning because you follow Maryam through every step and all the main points are repeated at the start of every section to refresh your memory.

There is no time limit to complete the ‘Let Me Speak’ manual. You can move through it as slowly or as quickly as you need to. You might only need to go through the manual once, but you can also go back and reread or repeat any parts you find hard to understand.

There are 6 steps to follow in the ‘Let Me Speak’ manual which will help you to learn about self-advocacy and the self-advocacy process. You can also find some useful support skills that might help your self-advocacy along the way.