Christiane Purcal

Analysing Choice in Australian Individual Funding Disability Policies

The Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) will allocate funding packages to people with disability who are assessed as needing paid support. The NDIS is an example of individual funding, which is currently not the dominant way of organising disability support in Australia. Individual funding aims to increase opportunities for personal choice. We present a framework for understanding current individual funding policies in each Australian jurisdiction according to two policy dimensions that potentially enable greater personal choice for people with disability: who holds their allocated funds and where support can be purchased. The findings show wide disparities in choice across the country, particularly due to constrained funds and the shortage of support to purchase in regional areas. The analysis demonstrates that NDIS implementation will need to consider that, while individual funding can be empowering for some people with disability, enabling choice can be challenging for administrators and service providers

Policies to change attitudes to people with disabilities

ABSTRACTNegative attitudes are a major barrier to the equality of people with disabilities. Governments and other organizations have implemented numerous programmes to change attitudes towards people with disabilities. We analyse published evidence about the effectiveness of such programmes using a framework of the interrelationship among three levels of policy intervention to change attitudes: personal level – directed at changing the attitudes of individuals; organizational level – concerning attitudinal barriers in domains such as employment, education and health; and government level – legally mandating behaviour change. The analysis finds that the following policy types can be effective if used together: policies that involve direct contact with people with disability; information and awareness campaigns; education and training about disability; and antidiscrimination enforcement. Policy characteristics that contribute to effectiveness include a positive programme experience for participants; multifa...