Comparison of Australian and English Policies and Strategies for Implementing Disability Individual Funding / Personalisation Schemes

Dr Carmel Laragy and I have won an international seed funding grant from the College of Design and Social Context at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. The International Research Seed Fund provides seed funding to enable researchers to pursue international research partnerships and initiatives. The project stems from the introduction of the Disability Care Australia scheme (previously known as the National Disability Insurance Scheme) in Australia from July 2013 and builds upon the work I have done around individual/personal budgets, most notably the IBSEN study (evaluation of the IB pilots in England), the IBSEN-Carers study, and the recent TOTO study (personal budgets for young adults with physical disabilities). Carmel and I are joint Chief Investigators; the budget will be spent on employing a Research Associate to (a) update our reference material of personalisation/individualised funding in Australia and England and (b) to identify current and recent research in the field so that our full grant application would not duplicate other work but could maybe compliment or develop other research. In accepting the funding we are committed to preparing a paper by the end of the year; investigating research funding opportunities for international collaborative research; identifying research questions and writing a full research grant application.