Ria Strong is a survivor of multiple brain injuries with more than twenty years of community work experience. During this time she has done paid and unpaid work in areas including mental health, complex/compounding needs, violence and sexual assault, housing and community arts (she also spent too much time in a disability day program and was told she should live in an institution).
In the mid 90s, Ria established OZMAD and OZADVOCACY, Australia's first mental health and disability rights email lists. More recently, she conceived the Database of Disability Consultants with a Disability. Ria sat on the Disability Advisory Council Victoria from mid 2003-April 2007.
Ria was at the forefront of the self-advocacy movement for people with an Acquired Brain Injury, and was for many years a driving force in ABI self-advocacy organisation Bear in Mind (now Brain Injury Matters). She currently co-leads Wesabi, a group for people with ABI/stroke in the Western suburbs of Melbourne, and has been active in the establishment of Victoria's new Self-Advocacy Resource Unit.
She works at RMIT, on a research project about restrictive practices in disability services.
Ria is passionate about access for people with cognitive and/or communication impairments, community building, community education, and individualised planning and support.
She is also a published poet, an art photographer and a former competitive swimmer.
She plans to study multimedia in 2009.
