Living with Disability Research Centre Online Seminar Series
Event status:
Event page for October 2025 Living with Disability Research Centre
- Date:
- Wednesday 08 October 2025 03:00 pm until Wednesday 08 October 2025 04:30 pm (Add to calendar)
- Contact:
- James Pilbrow
lids@latrobe.edu.au - Presented by:
- Living with Disability Research Centre and School of Allied Health, Human Services and Sport
- Type of Event:
- Public Lecture; Seminar/Workshop/Training; Public
Living With Disability Research Centre Seminar and 2025 School of Allied Health, Human Services and Sport Oration
For our October online seminar, our director, Professor Christine Bigby will be delivering the yearly School of Allied Health, Human Services and Sport Oration.
Our research centre sits within La Trobe University's School of Allied Health, Human Services and Sport, which is responsible for teaching and research programs that are changing the face of health and wellbeing in Australia and abroad.
Progress on deinstitutionalisation and community living for all people with intellectual disabilities: The significance of good support practice.
Professor Christine Bigby, Director, Living with Disability Research Centre
Since the 1970s, deinstitutionalisation has been a central component of policies and practices designed to help people with intellectual disabilities achieve a good life.
A key feature of this has been avoiding the transfer of institutional practices to community living.
Bigby reviews evolving understandings of deinstitutionalisation and the research that has informed its implementation for the diverse population of people with intellectual disabilities.
Her presentation comparatively explores the policy and practice landscapes of countries with very different trajectories of deinstitutionalisation but which have made similarly-poor progress: the Nordic countries, which were the first to close all their institutions but with limited investment in community living since the 2000s, and Australia which has exponential growth in funding for disability support since the establishment of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in 2013 and its fully individualised and marketised system since 2020.
Bigby will then draw upon empirical data from a longitudinal study of disability group homes in Australia to illustrate what is possible in small group home settings and what is necessary to sustain good practice in them, while also identifying the continuing disadvantages experienced by people with higher support needs. These findings also illustrate the potential for individualism, markets and regulation to undermine and divert attention from best practices and tend to lead to inequitable outcomes for people with intellectual disabilities.
Please email lids@latrobe.edu.au to register.
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