Transition to Retirement

This Policy Bulletin describes the implementation and evaluation of the Transition to Retirement (TTR) Program that was examined in a three-year collaborative program of applied research involving university researchers and disability service providers. The Bulletin ends with recommendations for policy and practice based on our research findings and on the practical experience of delivering the program. The TTR Program offered older people with disability the opportunity to begin to build a retirement lifestyle by joining a general community group for one day a week instead of working on that day. Thus, the program fulfils an important goal of disability policy: the social inclusion of people with disability in Australian community life. The program involved: talking to people with disability about retirement, investigating their interests, finding an appropriate community group for individuals to join, seeking and then training mentors from that group, and ensuring the people with disability were actively involved so they could contribute to the group.This research was supported under the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding scheme (Project number: LP0989241) and with the assistance of two industry partners: (1) Australian Foundation for Disability (AFFORD), and (2) St John of God AccordCentre for Disability Research and Polic

Virtual worlds and people with lifelong disability : exploring the relationship with virtual self and others

An increasing number of people with lifelong disability are active members of virtual worlds. Through their avatars, people with disability are able to participate in social, work related and educational activities in the virtual world. The aim for this paper was to explore how people with lifelong disability experienced the relationship with their virtual self and others, applying the lens of Embodied Social Presence Theory. Based on data collected through participant observation and interviews with novice and experienced users of Second Life, our findings indicate that the relationship between humans and their avatar is strong. Further, the findings indicate that the relationship with a person?s own avatar and others in the virtual world requires time to develop and be meaningful for people with lifelong disability. The ability to create an avatar with no visible disability and to choose what to disclose about a disability, is important affordances offered by the virtual world to people with disability. This study contributes to an understanding of the potential for virtual worlds to support people with lifelong disability in engaging in leisure activities and social interactions