The Disability Information and Resource Centre

National Conference 22-23 March 2010

This national conference over two days will explore the emerging agenda of consumer-centred health care.

It is an event not to be missed for anyone with a passion for reforming our health system so that consumers and their families are at the centre of the system – in practice as well as in rhetoric.

Speakers include

• Christine Bennett, Chair, National Health and Hospital Reform Commission
• Ian Hickie, Executive Director, Brain and Mind Institute, Sydney University
• Just Stoelwinder, Chair, Health Services Management, Monash University
• Maxine Drake, Health Consumers’ Council of WA
• Siegried Drews, Web2Care, Consumer-Directed Care Management
• Philip Davies, Health Systems and Policy, University of Qld
• Barry Welsh, Ministry of Health, New Zealand
• Enrico Coiera, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, UNSW
• Coralie Wales, President Chronic Pain Australia
• Russell McGowan, Health Care Consumers Association ACT
• Di Batterham, Westgate Health Co-operative Ltd
• Angela Mackenzie, Paediatrician, Royal Children’s Hospital Vic
• Bruce Rumbold, Palliative Care Unit, LaTrobe University

Key themes include

• Commonwealth reform initiatives: making change happen
• Organising and empowering health consumers
• Medicare Select: policy design and opt-in health plans
• Self-care and self-management in health
• Consumer-directed aged care
• Consumer-centred innovation in mental health
• Consumer-centred innovation in drug and alcohol rehabilitation
• Consumer-centred systems
• Consumer-centred funding arrangements
• Chronic illness consolidated budgets
• Capitation-based payment systems
• Health brokers, care co-ordinators, health info-mediaries
• Community engagement in health reform
• Partnerships between practitioners and consumers

Who Should Attend?

• Health consumers and self-help groups
• Carers and family support organisations
• Health providers and practitioners
• Health services and community sector organisations
• Health researchers and analysts
• Health funds
• Corporates with an interest in better health care
• Governments and policy makers

The venue is Angliss Conference Centre in Melbourne’s CBD, corner of LaTrobe and Kin Streets, close to public transport and a range of accommodation options.

Click here for the program.

Click here to register.

Registrations are now open for the ACAA Conference “Challenges, Achievements and Opportunities” being held at Twin Towns Resort, Tweed Heads, NSW from 28-30 April 2010.

This conference brings together academics, advisors, practitioners and all levels of government into a conversation about the issues and opportunities presented in providing equitable access to the built environment for all people. This year’s conference will include particular reference to codes and standards, Australia’s civic spaces as well as cultural and educational facilities.

More information, including a full conference program can be found at http://www.access.asn.au/conferences_and_events.

Registration and accommodation bookings can be made at http://registration.ozaccom.com.au/ei/2010/aca10/.

Julia Farr Association’s The Loop Conference is also presented in several country areas.

The focus of this years conference is on quality in human services.

These one-day conferences are aimed at people living with disability, older persons, people living with mental illness, other people receiving personal assistance, service agency leaders and staff, policy makers and other people interested in supportive communities.

2010 Locations and Dates

• Murray Bridge – 24 March
• Port Pirie – 19 April
• Whyalla – 20 April
• Port Lincoln – 23 April
• Mt Gambier – 27 April

For more information and to register please view this document.

This document provides an update on the Siblings Australia Adult Sibling Project (funded through a grant from the Julia Farr MS McLeod Benevolent Fund). It was prepared by Kate Strohm.

Why is this Project important?

The Project is aiming to develop strategies and resources which will support adult siblings, both in relation to any of their own emotional issues and also in their role as a support person to a brother or sister living with disability. It is hoped the project can contribute to helping to maintain and / or strengthen relationships between adult siblings and their brother or sister living with disability.

In the current ageing population it is likely to be the siblings who will have the longest relationship. Having a positive, strong relationship with a sibling may add to the quality of life of the person living with disability.

You can check the Siblings Australia web site for more information about the Project at www.siblingsaustralia.org.au/ps_cprojects.asp.

Recent Adult sibling project activities

Our previous email update talked about the Focus Groups which were run for Adult Siblings to let us know their needs now and into the future. As highlighted in those sessions, adult siblings would like information about a number of issues related to future planning, including legal and financial issues, models of funding & accommodation options etc.

Information Session

Based on feedback from Adult Siblings at the Focus groups we planned an Information Session focusing on “Legal Issues for Adult Siblings” of people living with disability. The session was held on 26 March 2009 at 7pm at DIRC and presented by Ian Bidmeade, AM. Ian is a legal consultant with a particular interest in the areas of health and disability. The session was attended by 20 people. Ian presented information about the Guardianship Board, the Office of the Public Advocate, Wills and Financial Trusts. Ian’s presentation concentrated on these issues from the perspective of Adult Siblings and the roles they might play in the lives of their brother or sister living with disability.

Those who attended the session gave positive feedback about the relevance and quality of the session. Some comments about what was useful in the session included;

“Exposure to legal terms and overview of [Guardianship] boards and roles in the law”,

“Defining roles of siblings – legal and chosen”

“Clarification of need for will and provisions to include in will”.

Participants expressed an interest in knowing more about Future Planning for their brother or sister living with disability, legal issues and Advocacy.

Where to from here?

Consulting people living with disability

We plan to talk to people living with disability about their relationship with their sibling(s). We hope to find out which factors contribute to maintaining strong relationships between people living with disability and their siblings and which factors contribute to a negative experience of the sibling relationship.

We have developed an Information Sheet for parents/carers/guardians of people living with disability, an Easy English Information Sheet for people with an intellectual disability / cognitive impairment and an Information Sheet for people living with disability.

We are looking to interview or survey people living with disability either in small groups or individually about their perceptions of their relationship with their siblings.

Further Information Sessions

We are having discussions about future information sessions to be held for adult siblings based on the feedback from participants at the Information Session held in March. Please contact us if you are interested in attending Information Sessions or you have ideas on topics that need to be addressed.

Written resources

We are developing brochures for adult siblings on a number of topics. If you would like to review these and provide feedback please let us know and we will send you a copy.

Siblings Australia ‘Creating Connections’ National Conference November 09

In late 2004 Siblings Australia hosted the first national conference on sibling issues and attracted 140 delegates, including 10 from overseas. We are repeating this conference in November this year in Adelaide and we are planning on including a full adult sibling stream, covering many topics of relevance to adult siblings. You can register your interest at http://sapmea.asn.au/siblings09/

Sibchat

If you would like to make contact with other adult siblings please consider joining Sibchat, our online forum for adult siblings. We have members from around Australia but also from the UK, Sweden and the Czech Republic!! Visit http://www.siblingsaustralia.org.au/forum/register.asp and register

How can you help?

There are a number of ways in which you might help.

Consulting People Living with Disability

If you are a person living with disability please make contact and we will send you the information sheets so that you can decide whether to participate in our consultations.

If you have a family member living with disability who might be interested in taking part in the project make contact and we will send you information sheets about the project so that your family member can decide whether to participate in the project.

If you are a service provider, you could identify people living with disability in your service who might be interested in taking part in either a group or individual discussion about their relationship with their brother or sister. Make contact with us and we will send you information sheets about the project so that individuals (and/or their parents/guardians) can decide whether to participate in the project.

Parents & Friends Groups

We are keen to present information about the project to, and gain feedback from, “Parent & Friends” or similar groups.

Consumer Groups

We are keen to present information and gain feedback from “Consumer Groups” for people living with disability.

If you are interested in being involved in the project in any way please contact;

Kate Strohm (Director, Siblings Australia) 0408 720 558 or email kate@siblingsaustralia.org.au,
Vicky Waldren (Project Officer) on 0418811238 or email vickyw@internode.on.net.

Thank you in advance for your support

Kate & Vicky

Kate Strohm

Executive Director

siblings: acknowledged, connected, resilient.

ph: 08 83571214

mob: 0408 720 558

23a King William Road, Unley, SA 5061
kate@siblingsaustralia.org.au
www.siblingsaustralia.org.au

This year’s Connecting Up event was up and running with an interesting keynote address from Bill Strathmann, CEO, Network for Good (USA) and self proclaimed “tree hugger”. Network for Good is an online not-for-profit donation network, which allows donations to be made to any legitimate charity in the country that’s listed in the national charity organisation database. They also provide donate buttons for charities that wish to add one to their site and a custom designed button for a nominal fee of $29/month. Some interesting facts were mentioned about the growth of online donations, for example after the September 11th attacks in 2001, only 20% of all disaster relief was donated online. Only 4 years later in 2005 after hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, a staggering 50% of all donations were contributed through online transactions. After seeing this large growth in voluntary contributions made online, I wonder if it would be pertinent for an Australian alternative to Bill’s network in order for our not-for-profit organisations to open up this avenue of income.

Now that the conference was in full swing the first presentation I attended was by Jenny Kapp from Community Connections Australia, titled “Get ConnectED: Weaving a New Social Web for People with Disabilities”. Jenny spoke about the various benefits and barriers of using the Internet for people with a disability, as well as a programme called “Get ConnectED”. Get ConnectED is a 12 week course consisting of 6 modules, totalling 24 hours of structured mentoring. Topics covered will include:

• Email and netiquette
• Telling others about yourself
• Instant messages and chat
• Using Facebook & Myspace
• Skype & Second Life
• Leadership and networking

If you’re interesting in partaking in this course online, CCA are taking expressions of interest until July 15th. Community Connections Australia’s contact details are:

PO Box 6394,
North Ryde, NSW 2113
Tel: (08) 9878 2598

Next off the mark for me was Peter Grant from Microsoft QLD. The first thing I noticed about this presentation was that it wasn’t just a 45 minute Silverlight demonstration, which after the shock had subsided made me all the more interested in what he had to say. At first Peter pointed out some of the various organisational trends we’ve been seeing such as the revolution in communications, decentralized collaboration (breaking free of the standard office building and being able to contribute from all over the world), and making a conscious effort to keep our environmental footprint in check. Following this was an interesting section about strategising your IT department to achieve the best possible results using the “McFarlan Strategic Grid”, which is much more easily explained using images.

The average IT department as it stands	The suggested distribution of resources

From this we can see non-profit organisations aren’t investing enough resources in planning for what is to come, and should try to invest some more time into planning for their future projects rather than just their current ones.

The rest of the day was spent listening to some more technologically intense presentations such as “Plan well to get the Website your Non-Profit Deserves” by Jason King, BaptCare, which basically summarised the website development lifecycle from start to finish. If you’re interesting in having a website developed then this is something I’d recommend you read before you start. It is available from Jason’s blog.

To wind things up for day one I listened to Phillip Pudney, CQR Consulting (and a fellow Adelaidian), talk about “Securing your Website”, but so spare you of a lot of technical jargon I’ll summarise some of the key points in securing your web server:

• Patch your software! Patches are released for a reason, people.
• Disable any unused services.
• Try to use secure passwords or even pass phrases.
• Check if you software has any security vulnerabilities at http://www.securityfocus.com/vulnerabilities

I’ll post more on day two of the conference at a later date.