School readiness program for Aboriginal children with additional needs: working with children, families, communities and service providers

This report presents an evaluation of a school readiness program for Aboriginal children with additional needs, assessing the benefits for the children, their families and communities as well as local service providers. The outcomes of the evaluation may be useful when considering future service models to support Aboriginal families of children with disabilities, developmental delay or challenging behaviours.Executive summaryNorthcott Disability Services in partnership with the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) is evaluating Northcott’s school readiness program for Aboriginal children with additional needs (the Program), which works with Aboriginal children with developmental delays or disabilities and their families to support school readiness and successful transition to school.In the Program, Northcott provides inclusive playgroups; preschool and school based support; family information, training and support; information and training for preschool and school teachers; and therapy. The Program is in two sites in NSW: one urban and one rural Local Government Area (LGA). The urban LGA is located in metropolitan Sydney, and the rural LGA consists of small towns and remote areas. In both sites, Program services are delivered in several locations from January 2012 to June 2013. The Program is funded by Ageing, Disability and Home Care (ADHC), Department of Family and Community Services NSW.This interim report presents the findings of the first round of data collection for the evaluation. Data were collected close to the beginning of service provision, from February to April 2012. The evaluation applies participatory research principles and includes a literature review; interviews with teachers, service providers and families; and program data about changes in the capacity of children, families and communities. It is conducted over eighteen months to June 2013, concurrent with service provision.ConclusionsIn the rural Program site, staff recruitment and retention were difficult, travelling took considerable proportions of staff time, and a shortage of health specialist and therapy services impeded Program implementation.The Program needed a set up time of more than one year to build trust within communities, and it would benefit from longer service delivery times of more than one year to achieve sustainable outcomes. The Program was extended by six months to June 2013. Engaging Aboriginal families in the Program required time to build trust with the families and communities, identifying support for general needs of the family in addition to the child’s disability needs, and achieving some short-term goals. Collaboration with schools and preschools was facilitated by existing experience with disability issues among teaching staff, and by good internal communication within schools and preschools. Partnerships with other local service providers were easier to establish in locations where Northcott was well-known and staff had personal connections in the community. The participatory action research methodology used in the evaluation gave Northcott staff the opportunity to gain research and evaluation experience and to improve the Program as it progressed.Authored by Christiane Purcal, BJ Newton, Karen R. Fisher, Christine Eastman and Terri Mears

Self-directed disability support: building people’s capacity through peer support and action research

How are people with disability experiencing and managing the transition towards self directed support and preparing for the NDIS? In this project, small groups of people with disability around Australia met over 6 months to talk about their disability support. The peer support groups enabled action research about how they are deciding the practical details about support, such as how, when and by whom it is provided

Supported accommodation evaluation framework (SAEF) guide

High hopes for the NDIS are that people with disability will be able to live as independently as they choose, with the housing of their choice, and with the paid support that suits their preferences and life goals. Research conducted by the Social Policy Research Centre for the NSW government about disability housing support that is like the NDIS found that most people did achieve some positive outcomes. Least change was evident in people’s interpersonal relationships and employment, and some people did not live in housing that met their needs.&nbsp

On the study of Malaysia’s private annuity

Mortality improvement in many countries nowadays has drawn policymakers’ attention towards providing a financially stable retirement scheme for retirees. In some countries like Chile and Switzerland, annuities are common and a successful product with a good retirement benefit. Private annuities specifically designed for Employees Provident Fund members were also introduced in the Malaysian market in 2000. Despite the high annuitisation rate during that time, this product was suspended by the government a year after. Objections towards the scheme included a belief that insurance companies may profit excessively from the scheme and it provided a lack of protection for contributors’ retirement savings. Annuities have been almost non-existent since then. In a recent Malaysian Government Budget an increase in tax relief for income used to purchase annuities seems to promote the development of annuity markets in Malaysia. Until now, there has been a lack of proper analysis in Malaysia to help buyers understand the value of annuities, especially upon retirement. This study aims to calculate the value for money of Malaysia’s private annuities by computing the Money’s Worth Ratio (MWR) and the Annuity Equivalent Wealth (AEW) of the annuity component of recent products. This analysis will be used to evaluate whether Malaysian private annuities are worth buying

Excel implementation of finite difference methods for option pricing

This paper presents and explains finite difference methods for pricing options and shows how these methods may be implemented in Excel. We cover both the explicit and the implicit finite difference methods. Each uses a numerical approximation to the partial differential equation and boundary condition to convert the differential equation to a difference equation. The difference equation can be solved using Excel and this solution is a numerical approximation to the option price. This paper explains how we obtain the difference equation from the differential equation and shows the reader how to implement and solve the difference equation using Excel

How do self‐advocates use community development to change attitudes to disability?

Background Negative attitudes remain a major barrier to the equality of people with disability, especially when coupled with the lack of autonomy imposed on many people. This paper analyses how disability self‐advocacy groups seek to change community attitudes and work towards systemic change by mobilising knowledge from their lived experience. Methods The paper applies a cycle of praxis community development approach (a cycle of experience, learning and reflection, synthesis and planning, and implementation and review) to conceptualise and analyse their activities. The methods were a desktop document search, focus groups and reflective analysis with members of two self‐advocacy groups. Findings A synthesised data analysis found that applying the four‐part community development framework was useful to understand the practice and the purpose of work by self‐advocacy groups to change attitudes. The analysis also demonstrates the benefits for advocates and codesigned activities to intentionally apply the cycle of praxis model to guide their future efforts to change attitudes. Conclusions The research provides evidence that self‐advocacy groups achieve sustained impacts on attitudes in the community, beyond the direct benefit to their members. Government investment in self‐advocacy has potential to leverage wider system change in attitudes to achieve policy goals for the rights of people with disability. Methodologically, the research also has implications for the benefit of inclusive roles in reflective analysis to understand the lived experience of how practices contribute to system change. The design is an opportunity for inclusive researchers to intentionally incorporate reflective analysis into research processes

Barriers and facilitators to implementing community outreach work, and inter-professional collaboration with regional partners

Abstract : Objective. Community outreach workers support individuals in accessing the health and community services they require through various forms of proximity approaches. Even though community outreach has been available in the province of Quebec (Canada) for the past 40 years, it is still difficult to implement and sustain, especially with families of young children. The aim of this study was to document barriers and facilitators to implementing community outreach practices, and to describe how such workers collaborate with sectoral (e.g. health care) and inter-sectoral (e.g. municipalities, community organizations, schools) partners. Methodology. We performed a content analysis on 55 scientific and grey literature documents, and transcriptions of 24 individual interviews and 3 focus groups with stakeholders including parents, community outreach workers, health care employees, and inter-sectoral partners. Results. This study reveals four categories of barriers and facilitators to the implementation of community outreach work (i.e. organizational factors, nature of the work and worker-related factors, family-related factors, external factors). With regards to collaboration, community outreach workers deal with various partners. Good inter-professional collaboration is achieved through positive interactions and communication, shared or co-developed activities for the families, co-intervention with families, and strategies to enhance role awareness and inter-sectoral meetings. Conclusion. Results highlighted that many factors interact and can either influence, positively or negatively, the opportunity to implement community outreach work. The collaborative practices identified may help to maximize facilitators and overcome barriers. Advocacy and a better understanding of how to integrate community outreach work within health services while maintaining the workers’ flexibility are needed to sustain this practice