The Water Research Laboratory (WRL) of the University of New South Wales has undertaken the first national assessment of the performance of the HI-WAM wave model developed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). The model was validated against wave buoy measurements from 18 locations around Australia over an 11 year period 1 (1997 to 2008). This high resolution, modified version of WAM was found to generally reproduce the overall natural variability of the sea...

Potential Impacts of Climate Change Related Extreme Weather Events on NSW Healthcare Infrastructure (report), NSW Health Environmental Health Branch & CHAA (Report issued 30 October 2007)

This report was commissioned by Landcom to assist in the development of its Moderate Income Housing Policy. This policy aims to develop market based affordable housing options for households with moderate incomes. For the purposes of this report, Moderate Income Households (MIHs) are defined as households with incomes between the 40th and 60th percentile of household incomes, which equated to approximately $42,000 to $65,000 per year in Sydney in mid-2003. This report also aims to...

The Parent Support Project aimed to develop an understanding of the support and information needs of parents. In addition, the project aimed to develop, implement and evaluate systems to improve the coordination between existing parent support services within each local government area (LGA) in the Cumberland Prospect Families First Area (Auburn, Parramatta, Holroyd, Baulkham Hills and Blacktown) to increase the access families have to these services. In this report, parent support means services to assist...

This report presents data collected as part of a periodic cross-sectional study of people who used community-based pharmacies to obtain sterile needles and syringes in 2009. Specifically, it presents data about the demographic profile of respondents, patterns of acquisition of needles and syringes, recent drug use, self-reported incidence of risk practice for transmission of hepatitis C and HIV and self-reported rates of testing for hepatitis C and HIV, and self-reported prevalence of hepatitis C and...

The Disability Policy and Research Working Group has commissioned the UNSW Consortium to research the effectiveness of supported living in relation to shared accommodation to improve service delivery to people with disabilities. The research has two parts: improving access to housing and improving models for people with disabilities who require 24-hour support. The project is to build on the priority area of strengthening access to services, including housing. It will build on knowledge and research...

With the e-IRG White Paper 2021 e-IRG is following up on its previous policy paper entitled “National Nodes – Getting organised; how far are we? - Implementing the e-Infrastructure Commons and the European Open Science Cloud.” The e-IRG White Paper 2021 responds both to the 2018 Council Conclusions on EOSC that called for the e-IRG expertise, and also to the 2020 Council Conclusions on the new ERA, both of which encouraged the EC and the...

Monograph 3/2011

This is the 13th annual report of the Australian and New Zealand Neonatal Network and presents information on the network's 2007 annual audit of high risk neonates. All level III NICUs in Australia and New Zealand participate in the network's quality assurance measure. Of the babies admitted to an NICU in Australia and New Zealand in 2007, 8,002 fulfilled the registration criteria for inclusion in the ANZNN audit. The population represents 2.4% of the 356,071...

Little scrutiny has been directed toward the nature of the assessment of children with a disability or what support needs families may have specific to the assessment process. A need for this analysis emerged from the responses of families who participated in a study conducted by Families First Inner West Sydney in 2001 about general support needs of families with young children. This project was conducted by the UNSW Consortium of the Social Policy Research...

Australasian Health Facility Guidelines (AusHFG) User Survey - South Australia (report), Centre for Health Assets Australasia (CHAA), Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales.

心理衛生服務不被廣泛採用﹐不單是澳洲也是全球性的現象﹐尤其是那些多元文化和語言背景 (Cultural and Linguistically Diverse)的社區。改善接觸服務的各種 門徑自然是當前急務﹐還需要考慮到服務範疇對多元文化的社區是否適切。華裔人士早於一百五十年前從中國及東南亞地區移民到澳洲﹐他們包括來自不同社會﹑政治﹑經濟背景的人士。悉尼的華人人口是澳洲近年增長最迅速的少了民族! 有見及此, 我們需要了解一下文化對情緒表現的影響. 華裔人士怎樣解釋他們的 抑鬱經歷呢? 要回答以上的問題﹐這個研究主要探討參加者怎樣尋求醫療和非醫療的服務。一般華人做這些決定時所持的病理概念就得以揭示出來! 混合式的研究設計 正好提供一個 機會去從一個垮躍多個學術領域 (公共衛生﹑ 跨文化心理學和 醫護人類學)的角度 來進行研究。這個在悉尼市區進行的研究,融合了‘數量’的問卷調查和‘質量’的社區座談會。取得的資料包括 病癥﹑病人的詮釋方法﹐求助途徑等. 問卷搜集到背 景資料, 病癥識辨﹐以往的抑鬱經歷和 曾向那些專業服務求助, 抑鬱症的量表和其 他跨文化的工具都經過嚴格測試覆核﹐其中用來量度華裔參加者的文化適應能力的量表 Suinn-Lew Self-Identity Acculturation Scale, 把參加者客觀地分成較傳統 和較澳洲化兩個組別﹑ 和澳洲人的一組作比較。 問卷調查顯示兩組華人和一組澳洲人對抑鬱症的病癥識辨能力相約﹔社區座談會的討論則引出了有關求助途徑的豐富資料。較澳洲化的華人跟澳洲人組別在很多個研究指標 (或稱變數﹐variables) 上都很接近。不過座談會資料卻指出文化上的差異對選 擇甚麼樣的服務有一定影響,很明顯這是超越語言上的障礙!參加者認為對專業人士或服務機構的信任是連接服務與病者的重要一環。研究結果呼籲澳洲心理衛生的策劃者必須正視‘建立良好關係的重要’。專業人士必需增強了解個別病者和少數民族對精神或心理病的詮釋。尊重求助者和施予援助者之間的文化差異’是踏出推動多元民化心理衛生服務的第一步.

This report details the outcomes of a review of Disability Services Queensland’s processes of referring people with a disability to private residential facilities. The review was conducted by the UNSW Consortium and took place between July and December 2004. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, the review delivers several key findings and observations relating to DSQ’s current referral policies and practices, their adequacy and constraints, definitional perspectives of ‘complex support needs’ and...

The NSW Youth Drug Court (YDC) pilot program is aimed at reducing offending and drug use amongst young people who have become entrenched in the criminal justice system. Many participants have a range of other difficulties including poor educational achievement, dysfunctional family backgrounds and psychological problems. The YDC attempts to address this wide range of young offenders’ needs and problems in a holistic way through intensive case management. The pilot program started on 31 July...

City Futures Project Reports: Executive summary report based on research commissioned by Penrith City Council

The Social Policy Research Centre was commissioned by the Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) to focus on the policy developments that led to the establishment of Sure Start and the move from SSLPs to Sure Start Children’s Centres. A second strand of the research focused on the Australian experience of similar initiatives. This strand investigated the influence of Sure Start and other international programs on early-years intervention in Australia, and the extent...

The Linking Schools and Early Years Project (LSEY) is being led by the Centre for Community Child Health (CCCH), Murdoch Children’s Research Institute at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne and funded by The R. E. Ross Trust. It is being implemented in three sites in Victoria. This report describes the findings from the first round of data collected for the impact/outcomes component of the evaluation, and process findings from the first full year of implementation....

The Straightpoz study is a qualitative longitudal cohort study of HIV positive heterosexuals and their negative partners in New South Wales, the first study of its kind in Australia. This report explores findings from the second phase of the study which focused on health treatments, health services and sexual practice. These findings aim to provide understanding of the complex issues facing people who live heterosexually with HIV and how social and cultural contexts shape those...

The Youth Health Networks Project (YHNP) was funded by NSW Health as part of the Community Health Innovation Program. NSW Health piloted this project to trial and evaluate new models of care and partnership arrangements between health and other agencies such as GPs, local councils, Police, the Department of Community Services, the Department of Education and community groups. The key objectives of the YHNP in South Eastern Sydney Area Health Service (SESAHS) were to enhance...

The following report is a detailed description of the Indigenous Australian content of thirteen BSW courses offered at various Australian Universities. The content descriptions were collected and summarised by Joe Nipperess, a fourth year social work student, from information kindly sent by various staff members at those universities and was checked back with those staff members for accuracy. Most of the respondents returned the material with some changes which were incorporated; a small number did...

The Integrated Services Project for Clients with Challenging Behaviour (ISP) was established in 2005 and is administered by Ageing, Disability and Home Care (ADHC), Department of Human Services NSW. The Project aims to: foster improved life outcomes for people with complex needs and challenging behaviours; reduce the cost of this group to the service system and the wider community; and contribute to the evidence base in this area. The Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) was...

This paper addresses the governance of strata title developments, in the context of current Australian metropolitan planning strategies promoting increased urban consolidation. It argues that the current focus on higher density development is vulnerable to challenges relating to regulation, representation and termination in strata developments. The governance of strata schemes is found to take the form of ‗nodal‘ governance based on market principles, where stakeholders do not have equal rights to participate, and the market...

In June 2006, the Australian Government Office for Women in the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA) engaged the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) at the University of New South Wales to research how culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) women participate in sport and recreation, and the factors that may limit their full involvement. The project is designed to inform the development of policies and programs to effectively support the inclusion of...

Report 11/08

The Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care (DADHC) is piloting a direct funding project in conjunction with the Attendant Care Program (ACP). The direct funding pilot aims to complement the objectives of the ACP, which provides support to individuals with physical disabilities with a range of tasks and activities to allow them to live and participate in their communities. The evaluation compares three ACP funding options, which differ in who employs the attendant carers,...