People with disability use a range of mainstream health services—such as GPs, medical specialists and dentists. Some experience difficulties in accessing these services, such as unacceptable or lengthy waiting times, cost, inaccessibility of buildings, and discrimination by health professionals. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has released a web report on this.
Support Coordination will play a critical role in ensuring that National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) participants are able to use their NDIS Plan to live a good life. This is especially the case for participants who are vulnerable and socially isolated – such as younger people in residential aged care – where Support Coordination will be a key determinant of whether younger people have the supports in place to leave aged care.
Some topics of conversation are off limits…right? Maybe not.. Clients of Jewish Care’s Disability Services were posed a range of questions they wouldn’t usually be asked. You’ll be surprised by their responses, and captivated by their humour, honesty, and personality.
Jeremy the Dud is a comedy set in a world where everyone has a disability, and those that don’t are treated with the same prejudice, stigma and condescending attitudes people with disabilities face in our own society.
This project investigated the prevalence of persistent restraint and its predictors among individuals with a disability accessing residential services in Victoria. Taken together the results suggest that people who are administered antipsychotic medications or who have autism or difficulty communicating to others are at greater risk of being restrained or secluded in the long term and staff report that positive behaviour support is reducing the number of people subjected to restrictive interventions.
The Office of the Disability Services Commissioner held a conference called Preventing and Responding to Abuse: Guidance for Victorian disability service providers’ on 12th September 2017. It was well attended by over 400 people. The resources from this conference and videos are available now on their website.
The objective of this audit was to assess the effectiveness of controls being implemented and/or developed by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) to ensure National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) access decisions are consistent with legislative and other requirements.
Unfitness to plead laws in Australia have been widely recognised as requiring reform and modernisation. The Unfitness to Plead Project sought to develop practical and legal options to address the problem of people with cognitive disabilities being found unfit to plead and subject to indefinite detention.
Mechanical restraint refers to the use of materials or devices to restrict the behaviours of a person with a disability, where the restraint is neither for therapeutic purposes or required by law. The inappropriate use of mechanical restraint is recognised in legislation and policy as a violation of people’s human rights, and a risk to their health and wellbeing. Understanding who is at risk of mechanical restraint may assist service providers to better support people with a disability.
Why 19 stories? Because Article 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities refers to the right to live independently and participate in the community. Australia has ratified the Convention and under Article 19, it must ensure “the equal right of all persons with disabilities to live in the community, with choices equal to others, and [must] take effective and appropriate measures to facilitate full enjoyment by persons with disabilities of this right and their full inclusion and participation in the community.”
This research report aims to help tertiary response services to respond effectively to the needs of women with disabilities. Women with disabilities who have experienced violence seek help and support from tertiary services for similar reasons that other women do, including family and intimate partner abuse, sexual harassment and assault, coercive control, and stalking. However, women with disabilities also experience abuse related to their disability, including institutional violence and denial of provision of essential care
This report summarises the responses received to the Discussion Paper, meetings with stakeholders by phone, in small groups and in large forums, and relevant research and review findings. It describes the themes and strategies identified, and provides some clarification of aspects of disability advocacy.
Rethinking our assumptions about people with impairments is a critical step towards more inclusiveness Social epidemiologist Professor Eric Emerson argues that “disability” and “being disabled” really refer to the effects of social and economic marginalisation of people with certain types of physical or mental impairments, and not the personal impact of the impairments themselves.
This report reveals that although online participation is increasing across Australia, gaps continue to exist- and widen- between those who are digitally “included” and “excluded”. The report found that Australians with low levels of income, education and employment are less digitally included – as well as Indigenous Australians and people with a disability.
A nine part series of interviews covering the remarkable life of David Blyth, with a particular focus on his role in developing advocacy services for people who are blind and vision impaired.