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Virtual Disability Conference 2022: Raising Expectations
Virtual Disability Conference 2022: Raising Expectations
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Lunch and Poster Presentations / Networking Rooms

1:25 pm

21 September 2022

Streams

VDC 2022

Session Description


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Session Program

In our own practice as inclusive educators and researchers we have observed multitudinous barriers and challenges for individuals entering and succeeding in post-compulsory education. Therefore, we used an intersectional lens (Crenshaw 1989, Bilge 2016) to understand how students disclosing a disability during their post-compulsory education face systemic barriers to inclusion. These barriers appear concomitantly at the intersection of their multiple and inter-related identities. Exploring further and drawing on data collected through document analysis and stakeholder consultations, we worked as inclusive educators/researchers to design options for change based on a social justice framework. 
 
Using this framework, we conceptualised a model which describes a heuristic and can support practitioners, policy makers and researchers in understanding and engaging in inclusive practice. Our model aims to ensure that such practice moves beyond a tokenistic understanding of diversity (Ahmed 2015). While we believe that Universal Design for Learning (Cast 2016) has the potential to offer solutions for all needs of people with disabilities, nonetheless we believe that certain gaps remain. These gaps potentially detract from a wholly inclusive educational experience for students with disabilities. 
 
Our model offers a tripartite approach interweaving UDL, IPA (Inclusive Pedagogical Approach, Florian 2015) and CCC (Critical Cultural Competence, Levin, He & Cooper 2011). We aver that inclusive practice often suffers from being engaged with in silos which means innovations. Our model would help in practice to expand the horizons of support and inclusive practice through understanding that there are cultural positioning and anticipatory needs to prepare for, individual engagements with all learners and a holistic approach to student engagement and to disrupt entrenched deficit notions of disability. This in turn would destabilise systemic barriers helping stakeholders move beyond stereotyping and labelling and a tokenistic understanding of disability. We offer this as a model for human contact, stressing difference is the norm. 

Website: http://www.vu.edu.au/cires 

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Sport and recreation form an important element of everyday life, offering benefits including improved physical and mental health, and social and community connections. Communication is critical for people to connect with their peers and community. People with communication disabilities are disadvantaged when it comes to accessing sport and recreation due to communication barriers. 

Scope was funded to deliver a “Communication Access Australia: Sport and Recreation for All” project by the Department of Social Services Information, Linkages and Capacity-Building program. The aim of this project is to increase the accessibility of mainstream sport and recreation activities for people with communication disabilities. 

 Sport and recreation peak bodies were engaged for this project, including Gymnastics Australia, Tenpin Bowling Australia, AustSwim, and Australian Camps Association among others. 
 
 The project has two stages. Stage one involved 12-months of free access to three eLearning modules on Disability Awareness, Accessible Information, and Communication Access. Stage two involved the development of customised communication resources e.g., communication boards, and a training webinar. 
 
 By December 2022, it is anticipated that 6000 staff/ volunteers across 20 organisations will have accessed the eLearning modules, and staff/volunteers from 10 organisations will have access to communication resources and training webinar.
It is widely recognised that more needs to be done to support people with intellectual disability to transition into community-based jobs. Currently, Australian Disability Enterprises (ADEs) provide employment support to thousands of people with intellectual disability. A key role of ADEs is to support the development of foundational employment skills, skills which could open up opportunities within the open labour market. There is therefore a significant opportunity to strengthen organisational models to enhance the employment skills and outcomes for this cohort. 

The Work Integration Social Enterprise (WISE) model was developed by The Centre for Social Impact (CSI) Swinburne. The model provides a framework for the development of supportive environments which focus on skill building and pathways out of supported employment. In particular, the model endorses a wraparound approach to bridging and community-based employment through person centred planning, skill building and recognised qualifications, work experience opportunities and employer facing supports to build the capacity of local businesses to provide employment opportunities.

In 2021 CSI and genU disability services received an ILC grant to adapt and implement the WISE model in a genU supported work environment in order to test its applicability within the disability sector. This presentation will outline the findings of the project, highlighting the aspects of the model that offer a way forward for the supported employment sector in terms of assisting people with an intellectual disability into community-based employment. The presentation will include perspectives from the research project lead, genU staff and supported employees.




Extra Resources

Issues and consequences relating to domestic violence, gender and sexuality permeate all parts of society. The very nature of domestic violence in particular, affects people with and without disability, yet requires careful consideration in the delivery, understanding and support for people with intellectual disability who may require multiple levels of support and engagement. 
 
Rather than speak the language of violence, Endeavour Foundation – under the banner of Thrive – has created learning content across multiple formats with a focus on healthy relationships. Ideas, feedback and co-design processes were leveraged with people with intellectual disability, support workers and behaviour support and complex support specialists to create a series of videos, delivery guides and workbooks. Outcomes related to values and actions that demonstrate healthy and unhealthy relationships; identifying forms of open communication; identifying appropriate responses to conflict and determining suitable types of relationship supports if required – for example, family, friends, websites, phone numbers/hotlines.
 
This presentation will focus on the design of content, feedback and case studies received from complex support teams. It will note positive engagement with content yet also calls out the need for continued development of multiple forms of engagement and content required to ensure appropriate behaviours and knowledge of supports.  
Supported decision making is about helping people with a disability make their own decisions with the right support. There have been many supported decision-making projects in Australia, but very few led by people with an intellectual disability. 

Inclusion Australia’s Make Decisions Real project is co-designed and co-delivered with people with intellectual disability. We are aiming to help people with an intellectual disability and their supporters learn about supported decision making.

We have reviewed existing supported decision-making resources across Australia to identify gaps, delivered pilot training workshops, and held an art competition, titled “I make my own decisions”, for people with an intellectual disability to contribute artworks for the project’s resources. We are currently developing videos about what supported decision-making looks like for different people in their daily lives.

Through the review of existing resources our project team identified five clear steps for supported decision-making which we would like to share with the conference audience.

Our project is funded by the NDIA and Department of Social Services through an Information Linkages and Capacity Building (ILC) grant and will run until 2023.
Positive behaviour support (PBS) is recommended as a service response to challenging behaviours. In Australia, however, there has been substantial criticism regarding PBS as it is implemented within the NDIS system in disability and community settings. These criticisms will be presented, along with a proposed service model that is intended to address these issues, and also meet the intention and rigor in practice that respects the PBS discipline. Drawing from relevant literature, policy guidelines, and clinical experience, the PBS-Disability and Community Services (PBS-DCS) model articulates systems-wide practices that support effective PBS provision within a human rights approach. 
Related to established tiered models of support (e.g., schoolwide PBS), this model proposes different categories of support; it proposes who (e.g., family members, support workers, PBS practitioners) should deliver which intervention elements, and when in the intervention process this can occur. A proof-of-concept model of community-based PBS can be investigated - and can compare and contrast current practice with professional expectations of PBS. The development of a clearly articulated model of PBS for the community will promote high quality to services to people with disabilities.

This presentation aims to explore the need for universal design in accessible communication and information as a means of raising expectations to enable self determination and self actualisation.


As a neurodivergent person with a sensory disability, I have felt the weight of low expectations all my life. My experience of low expectations is one of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is said to occur when the individual feels they are not in control (Curtis, 2012). It is my position that accessible communication and information can avert learned helplessness through the provision of opportunity for successful autonomous participation.


Article 9 of the UNCRPD outlines accessibility as a key to supporting autonomy and section 1b specifies that information and communication barriers should be removed. Where information imperative to autonomy is inaccessible, the end user is denied control and forced into dependency to access information; potentially reinforcing the belief they lack capacity regardless of ability. 


Easy-to-Read and Easy English are two forms of accessible information for those who have low literacy or another issue that affects their ability to process written information.  However, there are currently no set standards ultimately impeding consistent and reliable access to basic information required to achieve autonomous participation. 



Increasingly young people with intellectual disability are seeking the same ordinary life outcomes as their peers, including having a paid job in the community. Research suggests that employment outcomes are improved when young people are actively involved in planning for their own life. This presentation will explore how young people can be actively engaged in learning about work and supported to make decisions about their future work opportunities. The role of work experience, paid employment and self-determination will be explored, drawing from the literature and the experiences of nine young people with intellectual disability.
 
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Feeding and swallowing disorders (dysphagia) affect a significant proportion of individuals with a disability and choking and aspiration pneumonia are two of the leading causes of deaths for this population (Sheppard, 2006; Salomon and Trollor, 2020). An absence of comprehensive nutrition and swallowing assessments, and a lack of staff knowledge in the provision of safe mealtime assistance are two of the key contributing factors to dysphagia related deaths (Salomon and Trollor, 2020). Whilst the NDIS provides individual funding for swallowing assessments, this may be insufficient for additional mealtime assessments when an unexpected decline in swallow function occurs, or to provide adequate staff training and support, resulting in increased risk. 

Scope has appointed a Senior Dysphagia Clinician, to address this gap, and to ensure that all Scope customers are safely supported with their mealtimes. This has included developing further staff training, provision of expert advice for all staff in the area of mealtime management and conducting urgent, unfunded, mealtime reviews. 

This presentation will explore current issues, how Scope has addressed these, outcomes, as well as recommendations for service providers seeking to raise their ability to safely support customers with dysphagia.