Equitable access to health and disability services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children with intellectual disability

Project Details

The overarching objective is to improve the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children with intellectual disability (ID) by identifying effective models of care to ensure equitable access to appropriate and timely diagnoses and high-quality health and disability services across Australia.

Specific aims are to:

1) Identify regional differences in the use of supports funded by the National Insurance Disability Scheme (NDIS) by Indigenous children with ID, including differences in:
a. the proportion of Indigenous children across Australia who are participants in NDIS with a diagnosis of ID.

b. the use of NDIS funding and the influence of individual and family level factors, including age, functional level, and parental/carer employment.

c. longitudinal trajectories of participation in NDIS, including age at first contact with the agency, whether transferred from state services, assistance received with application, and time between milestones along these trajectories, and associations between the different trajectories and carer-reported child and family outcomes.

2) Assess whether these patterns differ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children.

3) Identify local barriers and facilitators in current models of care in regions with high/low uptake of NDIS-funded services from the perspectives of healthcare and disability service providers and other key informants.

4) Explore the experiences of Indigenous families in obtaining diagnoses and accessing NDIS-funded services for primary healthcare needs, including negotiating the interfaces between the health sector, the disability sector, and informal care, and the resulting outcomes.

Researchers

Prof Sandra Eades

Dr Alison Gibberd

Dr Robyn Williams

Prof Richard Chenhall

Mr Robert Griew

Assoc Prof John Gilroy

Assoc Prof Helen Leonard

Dr Anita D’Aprana

Ms Lesley Nelson

Prof Dorothy Badry

Funding

NHMRC Project Grant 2022/GNT2015929 - Equitable access to health and disability services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children with intellectual disability.