New book highlights the importance of quality of life, rights and lived experience in disability service design and delivery
A new book addressing the complexities of disability service design and delivery, Disability Practice: Safeguarding Quality Service Delivery (Disability Practice), is now available after a launch event at the La Trobe University City Campus in Melbourne.
Co-edited by Professor Christine Bigby, Director of the Living with Disability Research Centre at La Trobe University and Alan Hough, Director at Purpose at Work, Disability Practice features contributions from 13 experts in disability research and academia, and includes a Foreword by NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner, Tracy Mackey.
Ms Mackey, who attended the launch event, said that Disability Practice is an important contribution to the disability sector and congratulated the authors on its launch.
“Disability Practice is a thought-provoking and well researched book that identifies many of the barriers people with disability must overcome to live their life independently and in the way they want,” said Ms Mackey.
Chapters within the book address issues such as supporting community participation, listening and learning from people with intellectual disability and their families and support planning for people with disability.
Critically, Disability Practice emphasises the need to prioritise lived experience in designing disability services. Case studies within each chapter articulate the personal impact of the issues being explored, and the solutions needed to address them.
Using the Quality of Life model
Disability Practice uses the Quality of Life model (Schalock et al., 2002) as an anchoring principle throughout the book to focus attention on understanding the quality of life, rights and lived experience of people with disability.
The Quality of Life model contains eight domains, including emotional wellbeing, social inclusion, physical wellbeing and self-determination and ensures the book’s discussions and recommendations are closely aligned to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
“By adopting this model of examination, Disability Practice highlights the virtues of using independence, freedom and inclusion as the guide to supporting people with disability,” Ms Mackey concluded.
You can access Disability Practice for free online via Springer.
Read the Commissioner’s full speech at the launch of Disability Practice.