Self-directed supports for people with disability: A community psychology lens

Australia is immersed in its largest reform of disability services in a generation. The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), now in its final stages of rollout, mirrors shifts towards individualised funding for self-directed care in Western Europe, North America, and other OECD countries. The scheme aims to increase both funding and access to services and support for people with permanent and significant disabilities and the control that people with disabilities have over the design and delivery of their care, and frames this not as welfare, but as insurance underpinned by actuarial analysis, economic modelling and human rights.

The $22 billion (AUD) scheme promises to design and deliver disability services differently, with emphasis on service user self-direction, choice and control., increased social, economic and community participation and improved wellbeing. One of the markers of success for the NDIS is that people with disability are increasingly engaging in the economic, social and cultural life of their community.

Research demonstrates that people with self-directed support have more active social networks, increased social, economic and community participation and improved wellbeing. Adopting a human rights and trauma-informed approach, Guidestar is a service providing positive behaviour support, therapy, training and support coordination services to people in receipt of NDIS funding with multiple and complex needs. Within its interdisciplinary team, Guidestar employs several Community Psychologists and regularly hosts Community Psychology students on placement. This paper explores the self-directed care model, particularly for those with multiple and complex needs applying a community psychology lens against the backdrop of a newly implemented NDIS system.

Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) is an increasingly popular form of qualitative inquiry that attends to discourse and its role in creating and reinforcing social norms and power differentials. The term discourse encompasses a wide range of interactions including talk, text, cartoons, dance and news articles. FDA was developed in the 1970s and is informed by the philosophies of Michael Foucault and other post-structuralists. Willig (2013), and Wiggins and Riley (2019), have presented guidelines for conducting an FDA that can be applied to a range of data types, however, the authors primarily focus on interview data. This presentation will discuss some of the nuances associated with conducting an FDA on media data, drawing on two examples broadly related to the construction of individuals with an intellectual disability. The first example explores the framing of psychotropic medications in relation to people with an intellectual disability by the Australian news media. Three discourses were identified through the analysis of 129 Australian news media articles published between 2013 and 2019. These discourses include: the voice of people with an intellectual disability being absent and discredited within psychotropic medication commentary; the positioning of people with an intellectual disability as ‘other’ and a threat to society in relation to psychotropic medications; and the justification of psychotropic medications being contingent on whether people with an intellectual disability are portrayed as either a victim or a burden. The second example aims to examine how the Australia news media frames the maltreatment of people with an intellectual disability by a family member. News media articles published within the last 10 years will be analysed. This study is currently ongoing. Through these examples the benefits, processes, and pitfalls of conducting an FDA on news media data will be examined.

Evaluating quality of enterprises including employees with disabilities

Introduction. Based on the Community Impact Evaluation model (Meringolo, Volpi, Chiodini, 2019) - which aims at evaluating material and non-material outcomes of services by involving stakeholders and local communities – a practice will be presented. This practice was carried out with a Social Consortium “COOB” which includes employees with physical and psychological disabilities. The aim of COOB is to provide quality services and to contribute to the effective integration of all workers. The first two steps of the evaluation process will be shown, related to a) drawing up a shared vision and mission within the Consortium, in order to achieve the construction of a “quality label” able to meet needs coming from employees, clients and local communities; b) building – by means of group work – a common definition of the procedure for providing quality services for integration, taking into account the well-being of workers, involved professionals and beneficiaries.
Methods. In the first step, a group, consisting of at least two representatives of each enterprise of the Consortium, attended six-sessions training with the supervision of community psychologists, where the learning process was combined with the proposal of an action platform useful for the Consortium.
In the second step, an instrument for mapping and collecting data in each enterprise has been created. By means of SWOT Analysis, shared and adequate strategies for developing inclusion working and social processes have been identified. Participants in group produced a strategic plan, taking into account the general objective and the internal and external variables, in order to manage weaknesses and turn limitations in resources.
Outcomes. Effective indicators for evaluating the Community Impact of this kind of organizations have been defined.
Conclusion. Participatory practices provided employees with instruments for monitoring and evaluating continuously their work, allowing the future sustainability of the experience.

Sharing knowledge with community stakeholders to promote inclusive cities

Over one billion people experience disability worldwide, 15% of whom live in urban area. Urban areas offer many opportunities for disabled people, but limited accessibility may prevent them from fully engaging in their communities. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) represents a useful approach to engage stakeholders, including urban planners and city officials, to promote inclusive cities. Our team used a CBPR approach to develop and implement various knowledge mobilization (KM) activities with co-researchers living with disabilities as part of a mixed-method study on urban accessibility which included videos, a photo exhibit and an interactive board game entitled “On the move: Inclusion game”. This presentation will focus on the findings of the evaluation of the impact of the KM activities for various stakeholders. The evaluation used different indicators based on the Knowledge Translation Planning Template (Barwick, Sick Kids Hospital, 2013): Reach, Usefulness, Use, Partnership and Collaboration, and Practice change A log journal, observations and a survey with closed and open-ended questions were used to document those indicators of impact. The results suggested that the videos, photo exhibit and On the Move game were experienced more than 300 stakeholders from various backgrounds as part of 13 different community events or presentation. The KM activities led to the development of a new research project, invitations to present to additional events and to new partnerships between the co-researchers living with disabilities and other stakeholders. The survey findings revealed that all of the KM activities were perceived to increase knowledge on how to create inclusive cities and they were assessed as more useful for city staff such as urban planners and engineers. These findings emphasize the importance of developing various KM activities collaboratively and fostering less hierarchical relationships among researchers, co-researchers with disabilities and knowledge users to promote the creation of inclusive cities.