Oral 02 | AllPlay: Moving evidence-based practice from the clinic to the community

Tracks
Track 9
Saturday, May 16, 2020
1:30 PM - 3:10 PM

Presenter(s)

Agenda Item Image
Prof Nicole Rinehart
Deakin University

Oral 02 | AllPlay: Moving evidence-based practice from the clinic to the community

1:50 PM - 2:10 PM

Outline

The mental and physical health of many Australian children living with disabilities is poor. Community-based interventions for children with disabilities complement and enhance best practice clinical care, improving social, emotional, motor and physical health outcomes for children. Despite this, many children with disabilities in the community experience difficulties accessing treatment or receive no treatment at all. Barriers include geographic location, affordability, and cultural appropriateness. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children encounter further access barriers due to their disability as well as their Aboriginality (Dew et al., 2018). In addition, the ‘open market’ nature of schemes such as the NDIS means that any organisation can register to provide products or services that seem effective but in reality lack a clear scientific basis or evidence base for efficacy and safety, cause unnecessary financial burden, and raise false expectations of curative outcomes (Rinehart, Wilson, & Jeste, 2019). The aim of this paper is to present a new intervention framework called AllPlay which enables evidence-based interventions for all children living with disabilities to move beyond the clinic to the community. AllPlay was developed at Deakin University together with a multidisciplinary team of Australia’s leading disability and neurodevelopmental disorder clinical specialists, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers, sociologists, health economists; and peak sporting, education, and dance industries. This presentation will provide an overview of the AllPlay research methodology and findings from four research programs (AllPlay Footy, AllPlay Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Footy, AllPlay Dance, and AllPlay Learn), which use novel intervention approaches to deliver evidence-based strategies and resources for children, families and AFL football, dance and education providers to support children with disabilities in community activities.

Biography

Professor Nicole Rinehart (PhD, Monash University, 2000) is an international leader in neurodevelopmental disorders, and a practicing clinical psychologist specialising in autism, Asperger’s disorder, and ADHD. She has been at the forefront of international efforts to improve the diagnosis and definition of childhood disorders, with a focus on using novel neuroscientific techniques. She leads the NHMRC funded Sleeping Sound trial, a novel sleep intervention for children with autism. Nicole has consulted at the Melbourne Children’s Clinic for the last 13 years. In 2013 she established the Deakin Child Study Centre and developed the AllPlay program, Australia’s leading multidisciplinary platform that aims to improve the quality of life and mental health of young people through sport, dance, and education: to ‘make the world fit for all kids’.
loading