Making decisions about your money and growing your financial independence is an important part of life.
Part of this process is getting good support from your family, friends or supporters on how to develop safe money skills and build your independence over time.
We wrote a guide to help families support a person with an intellectual disability to understand money and make their own money decisions. The guide is based on the principles of supported decision making.
The guide offers information, tools and resources for families and supporters. It talks about opportunities and risks that come with money decisions.
Families can use the guide to help people with an intellectual disability gain more financial independence, safely.
The following topics are discussed in the guide:
- The principles of providing good support
- Enabling and supporting risk
- How to put supported decision making into action
- Supporting people with complex communication needs
- Tools and resources for supported decision making.
You can download the guide below:
Supporting people with an intellectual disability to make money decisions
You can also download the Plus, Minus, Interesting template, along with the Risk Matrix template to be used alongside the guide:
- Plus, Minus, Interesting template (PDF, 266KB)
- Risk Matrix template (PDF, 226KB)
You can find the families guide translated into 10 other languages here.
Other resources
We have made some Easy Read fact sheets and videos for people with an intellectual disability about making decisions about their money. You can find the Easy Read factsheets here.
We also made some conversation cards called Make Decisions Real – Focus on Money. These cards are to help people with an intellectual disability and their supporters think and talk about making decisions.
You can find more information about the cards here.
Making money decisions real webinar
In this webinar, Inclusion Australia’s Specialist Advisor, Dariane McLean and Dr Rhonda Faragher AO, Professor in Inclusive Education at the University of Queensland talk about money independence for people with an intellectual disability.
They discuss practical strategies to build money understanding and skills for people with an intellectual disability in a safe way. Along with tools and resources for families and supporters, and the opportunities and risks that come with money decisions.
You can watch the full webinar here: