Producing creative solutions in a sector necessarily steeped in regulation is an ongoing challenge for disability service organisations, but it’s one that The University of Western Australia research is helping to meet head on.
Dr Christine Soo, an Associate Professor at the UWA Business School, has been working on major projects within the disability sector for the past 10 years, coinciding with its values-driven ideological overhaul and rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Her findings have been shared internationally and have directly influenced service design, delivery and government policy.
She said while most industries grapple with similar issues when it comes to organisational culture – chief among them effective knowledge sharing and building a psychologically safe work environment – the disability sector has additional tensions to overcome by virtue of its vulnerable clientele and the simultaneous need for both rigid compliance and creative solutions.
“There are many tensions and paradoxes in the disability space that come with that combination of regulation and legislation – which are obviously essential for health and safety – and the need to be agile and creative; to find solutions that actually meet the specific needs of individuals,” Associate Professor Soo said.
Her first project in the sector grew out of growing awareness among disability service providers that truly effective care needs to be underpinned by certain values.
“Those values are about removing restrictions for people living with disabilities and opening up opportunities for them to better participate in employment, sports, community and to live independently, ultimately leading to better quality of life and increased wellbeing,” she said.
“My research looked at the organisational factors that enable the delivery of values-driven service and care, and also which factors are barriers to it.
"I interviewed people across different levels at 18 disability services organisations and produced a raft of findings, among them the need for senior leadership support and commitment of resources, a learning culture that facilitates voice and collaborations, and a mindset that looks at a person’s ability rather than disability.
“I think the findings really resonated with care providers, especially in terms of creating environments in which people have the ability and freedom to voice their ideas and concerns, because without that, people feel restricted in how creative they can be in helping clients – they’re constantly feeling as though they’re not allowed to try something new or talk to other family members to create better care solutions.”
Significantly, while many people go into disability care roles to make a difference, one in four of them will leave the sector within 12 months – a turnover rate roughly three times as high as the general Australian workforce.
Another project undertaken by Associate Professor Soo and her research team looked at building capabilities for family members who care for a loved one, usually a child.
“I worked with an organisation that provided training for family carers to better understand their child’s needs and therefore better support them,” she said.
“Parents have such a deep understanding of their children, but they need the skills and confidence to provide the right support, so my research looked at pre-training versus post-training results to see whether the parents had developed strategies to better understand their child’s needs and in turn, a higher sense of self-efficacy in their ability to support their child.”
More recently, Associate Professor Soo was engaged by the National Disability Services to conduct a comprehensive literature review of what is being done around Australia to develop culturally safe disability care and support for Indigenous communities.
“There is a pressing need for research in this space and one of the most significant factors that my review identified, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the level of family and community involvement in Indigenous care provision," she said.
"Disability care simply can’t be designed in isolation from the community in which it’s provided.
“Indigenous communities have a holistic view of wellbeing that recognises the importance of familial and communal ties, ancestral heritage, cultural practices, spiritual beliefs and connection to the land.
"Understanding this holistic view is integral to designing and delivering culturally safe disability care.
“It’s very satisfying to me that the NDS will use the findings of this research in their training and development materials, as well as in recruitment because it’s so important to identify people with the skills that enable cultural awareness.”