The NSW child development study. Research shows that a child's development predicts health and social outcomes later in life. This Australian project will be the first to identify risk and protective factors associated with these outcomes in 87,000 children from birth to 10 years. The results will help inform governments to improve our children's health and educational achievements.
Levelling the Playing Field: Starting with the School Playground. This project aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of simple, cost-effective programs for changing the way parents and teachers view manageable risk-taking for children with disabilities and increasing the level of responsibility that children take for their own actions. The well-being of all children with disabilities is at risk and the gap continues to widen. New programs, such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme, will p ....Levelling the Playing Field: Starting with the School Playground. This project aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of simple, cost-effective programs for changing the way parents and teachers view manageable risk-taking for children with disabilities and increasing the level of responsibility that children take for their own actions. The well-being of all children with disabilities is at risk and the gap continues to widen. New programs, such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme, will place increasing demands on young people with disabilities. Innovative approaches are desperately. Such programming must begin early, by including children in an age-appropriate ways and simultaneously addressing the issues of adults who have the most significant influence: parents and teachers.Read moreRead less
Improving health and criminal justice outcomes among Australia's offender population using a multi-disciplinary, all of government approach. Offender populations comprise some of the most marginalised and socially excluded individuals in society. With this comes poor health, engagement in risk behaviours and reduced social outcomes. Violence, mental health, infectious diseases, and substance misuse are all characteristics of offender populations and have a huge impact on the wider community. The ....Improving health and criminal justice outcomes among Australia's offender population using a multi-disciplinary, all of government approach. Offender populations comprise some of the most marginalised and socially excluded individuals in society. With this comes poor health, engagement in risk behaviours and reduced social outcomes. Violence, mental health, infectious diseases, and substance misuse are all characteristics of offender populations and have a huge impact on the wider community. The research programme linked to this application will collect new information aimed at reducing this impact and also develop a much needed intervention to reduce violent reoffending. Indigenous people are over-represented in the Australian prison system and will benefit from the work programme associated with this application.Read moreRead less
Transition to retirement by adults with chronic disabilities: increasing community capacity. This project will contribute to healthy, productive ageing by people with chronic disabilities. This group are living longer and will retire from their disability-specific supported employment and day program services. They then risk social exclusion, loneliness and associated poor health outcomes. This project will provide training and support to local community groups and voluntary work settings, to in ....Transition to retirement by adults with chronic disabilities: increasing community capacity. This project will contribute to healthy, productive ageing by people with chronic disabilities. This group are living longer and will retire from their disability-specific supported employment and day program services. They then risk social exclusion, loneliness and associated poor health outcomes. This project will provide training and support to local community groups and voluntary work settings, to increase community capacity to support this group to participate actively in and contribute to their community in retirement. This will result in increased participation by this group and improvements in their well-being. Training resources developed by the project will be available to disability service providers nationally.Read moreRead less
Attentional and conditioning mechanisms that mediate overcoming anxiety. Anxiety is a common emotion for most Australians that can cause substantial costs for individuals and society. This project uses dominant psychological models to identify critical mechanisms that are believed to predict capacity for, and change in, anxiety. Outcomes substantially advance knowledge about how humans overcome anxiety.
Memory consolidation - Integrating cognitive science and neuroscience approaches to how we remember and how we forget. How can we forget what happened yesterday, but vividly remember our first kiss? Neuroscientists think the brain has a special mechanism to strengthen memories with time, but many psychologists disagree. The project aims to bring the brain and the mind closer together, using the cutting-edge combination of brain imaging and psychological modelling.
Testing for scale up: An Indigenous social and emotional learning program . This project takes key learnings from prior research that conceptualised, set up, and tested a social and emotional learning program, Skills for Life (SFL), with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in grades 7-9 in remote Northern Territory and Queensland schools. It aims to: establish the process and necessary conditions for scaling up SFL to diverse remote schools with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander s ....Testing for scale up: An Indigenous social and emotional learning program . This project takes key learnings from prior research that conceptualised, set up, and tested a social and emotional learning program, Skills for Life (SFL), with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in grades 7-9 in remote Northern Territory and Queensland schools. It aims to: establish the process and necessary conditions for scaling up SFL to diverse remote schools with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students across Australia's top end. Further evidence for the program’s effectiveness will also be built by measuring students’ resilience, help seeking, and psychological distress; and teachers’ cultural awareness; quality of teacher-student relationships, and perceptions of students’ emotional and behavioural difficulties. Read moreRead less
ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders. The ARC Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders will advance theory and research in three areas of cognitive science: models of cognitive disorders, the treatment of cognitive disorders, and the neural basis of cognition and its disorders. The Centre's research programs focus on five key domains of cognition, to be investigated individually and collectively: language, memory, person perception, belief formation and reading. Th ....ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders. The ARC Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders will advance theory and research in three areas of cognitive science: models of cognitive disorders, the treatment of cognitive disorders, and the neural basis of cognition and its disorders. The Centre's research programs focus on five key domains of cognition, to be investigated individually and collectively: language, memory, person perception, belief formation and reading. The Centre's interdisciplinary research teams will tackle basic questions in cognitive science, and will implement intervention programs that will inform educational policy and practice, with considerable potential impact for the health and social well-being of Australia.Read moreRead less
Public health approach to child abuse and neglect: antecedents, outcomes and international comparisons of trends. Child maltreatment is a significant public health issue. Findings will identify characteristics of at-risk children, families and communities; mental health and juvenile justice outcomes. Findings will be used to develop policy recommendations for intervention and prevention strategies to reduce vulnerability and improve monitoring of maltreatment.
Strengthening Indigenous adolescent mental health and wellbeing. Using Continous Quality Improvement processes, the research will collaboratively conceptualise, design, implement and evaluate the effectiveness of new approaches to mental health service delivery for adolescents aged 10-24 in three regionally diverse Indigenous Primary Healthcare Services. Expected research outcomes are a rigorous assessment of the impact and economic benefits of making quality improvements to mental health servic ....Strengthening Indigenous adolescent mental health and wellbeing. Using Continous Quality Improvement processes, the research will collaboratively conceptualise, design, implement and evaluate the effectiveness of new approaches to mental health service delivery for adolescents aged 10-24 in three regionally diverse Indigenous Primary Healthcare Services. Expected research outcomes are a rigorous assessment of the impact and economic benefits of making quality improvements to mental health services for Indigenous adolescents, Key benefits are 1) A locally-responsive adolescent mental health screening instrument; 2) Comprehensive evidence-informed service model in adolescent mental healthcare; 3) Best practice protocol for developing and managing adolescent mental health as a service delivery stream. Read moreRead less