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AFDSRC TEAM
Updated August 2008
Professor Gwynnyth Llewellyn
PhD, MEd, BA, Grad Dip ContEd, Dip OT
Professor and Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney
Professor Llewellyn is Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney and Director of the Australian Family and Disability Studies Research Collaboration. Her research areas are in family and disability studies and in the ageing field. Her work is funded by the Australian Research Council, Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and the National Health and Medical Research Council and by state and federal government departments. She has published widely in international and national journals and contributed book chapters and consumer resources in the field of parental disability and families with children with disabilities. She continues to supervise research candidates from many disciplines in these areas. She is currently Consulting Editor for the Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research and is an editorial board member of several international journals including the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities. Gwynnyth serves as a ministerial appointee to the NSW Children’s Court Advisory Committee; NSW Disability Research and Development Group; Department of Community Services Research Advisory Council; and is a Director of the Royal Rehabilitation Centre, Sydney.
Gwynnyth can be contacted at the following e-mail address: fhs.dean@usyd.edu.au
Rebecca Barton
BAppSc (OT) Hons
PhD candidate
Rebecca graduated from the University of Sydney with a B.App.Sc (Occupational Therapy) (Hons I) in 2007. Her honours thesis explored the interplay between culture, mental illness, and the daily occupations of people living with a mental illness in Bangladesh. Rebecca was also employed as a support worker for people with disabilities during her undergraduate studies. Following this she worked as a research associate on the Family Well-being project for 18 months and has developed a particular interest in the area of culture and disability. She was awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award in 2008 and is currently enrolled as a PhD student. Her research aims to explore the experiences of migrant families raising a child with a disability in Australia.
Rebecca can be contacted at the following e-mail address: r.barton@usyd.edu.au
Professor Susan Balandin
PhD, MA, Dip RCSLT
Associate Researcher
Susan is a professor in the Department of Health and Social Sciences at University College Molde, Norway. She has many years clinical experience in the field of lifelong disability and people with complex communication needs. Her research program includes ageing with a life long disability and complex communication needs, health care interactions, including those of refugees, vocabulary selection, and student learning. She has research links with several universities in Europe and ongoing involvement with the Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy. She supervises postgraduate students with research interests in lifelong disability, complex communication needs and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) in Australia, Norway and the UK. From 2009 she will be the joint editor of the Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability, she is an associate editor for The International Journal of Speech Language Pathology, Evidence Based Communication Assessment and Intervention and a consulting editor on several international journals. She is a past president of the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication and a past chairperson of the Australian Group on Severe Communication Impairment. She has published extensively in the area of lifelong disability and complex communication needs.
Sue can be contacted at the following e-mail address: susan.balandin@himolde.no
Professor Anita Bundy
ScD (Boston), MS (Boston), BS (WMich), FAOTA
Associate Researcher
Professor Bundy is Head of Discipline of Occupational Therapy. Her research and scholarly activity has been in three areas: play and leisure; the development of assessments to measure occupational roles and performance and paediatric occupational therapy. Professor Bundy is the author of two assessments related to children's play, widely used by occupational therapists throughout the world: the Test of Playfulness (ToP) and the Test of Environmental Supportiveness (TOES). She also has contributed to assessments of driving and sustainability of family routines. She has published widely in international journals, and is the lead editor and author of several chapters in Sensory Integration: Theory and Practice (2nd ed.). Together with a North American colleague, she is editing a new textbook entitled: Kids Can Be Kids: Promoting the Occupations and Activities of Children. She has lectured on 5 continents and supervises graduate students from all over the world.
Anita can be contacted at the following e-mail address: a.bundy@usyd.edu.au
Angela Dew
MA(Hons), BA (Sociology)
PhD candidate
Angela has worked in the field of disability for the past 27 years in the government and non-government sectors in direct service provision, management, teaching and research. Angela's particular area of interest is the relationship between family members where one has a life long disability. Her PhD research is examining the transition of care from ageing parents to siblings for people with cerebral palsy who are 40 years and over. Angela's other areas of research interest have included: the de-institutionalisation of people with disabilities and their subsequent integration and participation in their local communities; the ageing of people with disabilities, particularly women.
Angela can be contacted at the following e-mail address: a.dew@usyd.edu.au
Professor Eric Emerson
Visiting Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences and Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney Professor of Disability and Health Research, University of Lancaster
Eric is a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences and Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney for 9 weeks each year. The focus of Eric’s study during this period is on population disability research utilising UK and Australian population databases. He has many years research experience studying intellectual disabilities with a particular interest in the use of population databases to explore the social and health inequalities faced by people with disabilities. His current projects focus on: the interaction between child disability, poverty and the well-being of children and families in the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children; child disability and poverty dynamics in the UK; and the well-being of young Australians with long-term health conditions.
Eric can be contacted at the following e-mail address: eric.emerson@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Rebekah Grace
PhD, BA Hons (Psychology)
Associate Researcher
Rebekah has worked with the Family Support and Services team on a number of different projects from 1995 on. She has been involved in our research on the family variables influential in choosing out of home placement for a child with special needs, our research on the issues facing the parent carers of adults with disabilities, our research on supporting parents with intellectual disability and school age children, and our research looking at the ways in which families with special needs engage with early childhood services. Rebekah's PhD is from the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Sydney. Her thesis took a qualitative semi-longitudinal case-study approach, and examined the interaction between the ecocultural variables of a family and the manifestation of Tourette's symptoms in a child. Rebekah is currently a Research Fellow in the Children and Families Research Centre at Macquarie University, where her current research interests are primarily focused on the service and support needs of families who experience socio-economic disadvantage, models of service delivery, and including the perspectives of young children in research.
Rebekah can be contacted at the following e-mail address: rebekah.grace@aces.mq.edu.au
Kylie Gregory
B.App.Sc.(OT)
Postgraduate Student
Kylie is an Occupational Therapist with 15 years experience working in diverse mental health roles, including acute psychiatry; drug and alcohol rehabilitation, counseling and methodone case management; and parenting. She is currently employed as Parenting Programs Co-ordinator for Sydney South West Area Health Service (Eastern Zone), and is chair of the management group for the Strengthening Families – Resourcing Parents, Inner West Small Grants Scheme, and it’s website www.resourcingparents.com.
Kylie is completing a Masters by research, and is embarking on a qualitative study seeking to discover the experiences of parents with twins aged 3-5years, using an ecocultural framework.
Kylie can be contacted on following e-mail address: kylieg11@tpg.com.au
Dr Marie Gustavsson Holmström
PhD (Disability Research), MA (Sociology)
Associate Researcher
Marie has a special interest in parenting and disability issues. Her doctoral thesis, (published in 2002) was written on parenthood and family life for parents with physical disabilities. This was produced at a cross-disciplinary graduate program at the Swedish Institute for Disability Research at Linköping University, Sweden.
Marie worked with the Family Support and Services Team as a visiting scholar on a scholarship from the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (2002 - 2003). The project is a qualitative study on parents with intellectual disability and their involvement and connections in the community from their own perspective. To Marie, doing research on intellectual disabilities was a new and interesting experience.
Marie can be contacted on following e-mail address: margu@tema.liu.se
Dr Anne Honey
PhD, BAppSc (OT) Hons, B.Ec
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Anne is a Faculty of Health Sciences Post-Doctoral Fellow with AFDSRC. Her research will a) illuminate how health care and autonomy are negotiated in families in which an adolescent has a mental illness and b) develop strategies for optimising mental health self-care and wellbeing in these families. She is also working on projects using large data sets to illuminate the interactions between social inclusion/exclusion and mental health and wellbeing for young Australians with disabling conditions. Anne completed her PhD, which examined the place of employment in the lives of people with mental illness, with AFDSRC and worked on the randomised controlled trial that resulted in the development of "Healthy and Safe", a child health and safety program designed for parents with learning difficulties. After 4 years as project manager of "Multiple Perspectives of Eating Disorders in Girls", an ARC Linkage funded project at the University of Western Sydney, Anne returned to AFDSRC in 2007. Anne has published widely in the fields of adolescent eating disorders, mental health and vulnerable families.
Anne can be contacted at the following email address: a.honey@usyd.edu.au
Gabrielle Hindmarsh
BA (Hons)
Project Manager
Gabrielle is a psychologist who for over 10 years in Queensland was a member of a multi disciplinary team which followed up high risk infants throughout childhood. In 2002 she joined the University of Sydney and assisted with the development and evaluation of a system that classifies the support needs of adults with disabilities, a collaborative project between the University of Sydney , Centre for Developmental Disability Studies and the Royal Rehabilitation Centre Sydney.
Gabrielle joined the AFDSRC in 2005 as the Project Manager for the Healthy Start project – A national strategy to promote safe, supportive and stimulating environments for children of parents with learning difficulties. This project is a joint initiative of the University of Sydney and the Parenting Research Centre and is funded by the Commonwealth Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.
Gabrielle can be contacted at the following email address: g.hindmarsh@usyd.edu.au
Katrina Horman
Postgraduate Student
Katrina can be contacted at the following email address: c.jarrett@usyd.edu.au
Carmen Jarrett
MPH, MPsychol, BA(Hons)
PhD Candidate
Trained as a clinical psychologist, Carmen Jarrett has extensive professional experience in the areas of developmental disability, child and family therapy and health promotion. Before joining the AFDSRC in 2005 as an APAI postgraduate scholar on the Family Wellbeing Project, Carmen was Parenting Project Officer for the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Team of Wentworth Area Health Service. In this capacity, she helped services to implement evidence based parenting programs and supported early childhood care and education services to develop their mental health promotion capacity. In addition to her professional involvement in health promotion work, Carmen holds a Masters in Public Health from the University of Sydney.
As part of the Family Wellbeing Project, Carmen is undertaking a qualitative investigation of the ways in which families develop strategies to cope with the extra care needs of a child with a disability and so create meaningful, satisfying and sustainable family routines. The results of this investigation will be used by industry partner, the Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care, as the basis for a family and practitioner guide to successful adjustment to caring for a child with a disability.
Carmen can be contacted at the following e-mail address: c.jarrett@usyd.edu.au
Associate Professor David McConnell
PhD, BAppSc (OT) Hons
Associate Researcher Associate Professor Occupational Therapy, University of Alberta
David can be contacted at the following e-mail address: david.mcconnell@ualberta.ca
Dr Rachel Mayes
PhD, BAppSc (OT) Hons
Postdoctoral Fellow
Rachel graduated in 1997 from the University of Sydney with a B.App.Sc (Occupational Therapy) and Class 1 Honours. Rachel spent two years working as a parent educator with the NSW Parent-Child Health and Wellbeing Project before heading overseas in 2000. Rachel worked as an OT in the UK and Africa, in diverse areas from wheelchairs and seating, to teaching occupational therapy students in the newly established OT school in Tanzania. Her final position was setting up an OT service for people with intellectual disabilities in northwest London. With her desire to work and study in the area of intellectual disabilities firmly established, Rachel has returned to the School of Occupation and Leisure Sciences and the Australian Family and Disability Studies Research Collaboration to undertake a PhD. Her research is about women with intellectual disability, their experiences of pregnancy and antenatal care services.
Rachel can be contacted at the following e-mail address: r.mayes@usyd.edu.au
Dr Louella McCarthy
PhD, MA (Women’s Studies), BA (Hons)
Associate Researcher
Louella is Manager, Community Participation at the School of Medicine University of Western Sydney and an Associate Researcher with the AFDSRC. Her disciplinary background is in history, and she has taught Australian history at the University of NSW and Public History at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her PhD thesis, undertaken at the University of NSW, investigated the role of gender in the development of western medicine. Components of the thesis have appeared in a variety of scholarly journals and she is currently reworking the thesis as a monograph.
Louella's main area of scholarship is focused on women, gender and health, and the role of historical method in public policy processes. Louella is also active in the broader areas of the history of gender and medicine. She is currently President of the NSW Society for the History of Medicine, and an Executive Member of the Australian & New Zealand Association for the History of Medicine. She is Co-Editor of the Gender and History series published by Palgrave Macmillan and is on the Editorial Advisory Committee for Public History Review.
Louella can be contacted at the following e-mail address: l.mccarthy@uws.edu.au
Heather McDonald
PhD, BA (Hons), Cert General Nurse, Midwifery, Maternal and Infant Health
Research Associate
Heather McDonald is a nursing sister and a social anthropologist. In the 1970s and 1980s she worked with Aboriginal communities in northwest Australia and the Northern Territory in the field of community health. She studied social anthropology at the University of Queensland and the Australian National University and gained her doctorate in 1998. In 2005 she completed an AIATSIS research fellowship in Indigenous social health, investigating factors facilitating or inhibiting health and health delivery in East Kimberley, especially in relation to cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses.
Heather recently joined the AFDSRC to contribute to research on Indigenous adolescents with chronic diseases and Indigenous families with children who have disabilities. She is also working with Indigenous Health Studies on new curriculum development
Heather can be contacted at the following e-mail address: h.mcdonald@usyd.edu.au
Dr Ann Poulos
PhD, BA (Hons), Dip Radiography ( UK)
Associate Researcher
Dr Ann Poulos is a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Medical Radiation Sciences, University of Sydney and has been involved in radiography research and education since 1984. Her radiography experience, an Honours degree in Psychology and Sociology, a Diploma of Education and a PhD have provided an excellent background for her vision to develop and enhance the research profile of radiography generally and mammographic practice specifically. She has developed a long association with the State Coordination Unit of BreastScreen NSW and is currently a member of the State Accreditation and Quality Assurance Committee.
Ann’s research focus is mammography within the context of breast screening programs. Her PhD awarded in 2001 is regarded as the first in Australia to be concerned with radiographic practice rather than radiography education. The outcomes of her PhD have been built on and extended by international researchers and gained externally funded government research grants. Her research in mammography has ranged from investigation of the application of breast compression, discomfort experienced during the procedure and image quality and image evaluation criteria. She is currently developing mammography research in two new areas: image interpretation and disability.
Women with a disability have been found to underutilise breast screening services. She is currently involved in two grants which aim to determine the barriers to breast screening by mammography for disabled women. Of particular interest are the barriers experienced during the mammogram. It is anticipated that understanding the barriers will result in adaptations to procedures and equipment as well as dissemination of information to disabled women. These grants are funded by the University of Sydney Research and Development Scheme and the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
Ann can be contacted at the following e-mail address: a.poulos@usyd.edu.au
Dr Margaret Spencer
RN, BTh, BSW
Associate Researcher
Margaret holds qualifications in nursing, theology and social work. Margaret has 19 years clinical experience providing community support to individuals and families with complex care needs. Since 1996 Margaret has coordinated the Parent Access Program - A program auspiced by the Family Support Services Association of NSW. The Parent Access Program provides training and individual consultation to professionals supporting parents with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. In 1999 Margaret was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to research supported parenting initiatives in the USA, UK and Denmark. Margaret is currently undertaking doctoral study with aim of developing an assessment method that can be used by family support workers to assess the support needs of parents with intellectual disability.
Margaret can be contacted at the following e-mail address: marg.spencer@ozemail.com.au
Catherine Wade
M Psych, Grad Dip App Ch Psych, BBSc
PhD Candidate
Catherine is completing a PhD with the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney. Her research will investigate success indicators of effective parenting programs for at-risk parents. Specifically, the relationship between parent, child, family and contextual variables and intervention outcomes in a large Australian sample of at-risk families headed by parents with intellectual disability will be examined. The aim of the study is to understand child, parent, family characteristics and contextual factors influencing ‘response’ to interventions for parents with intellectual disability. Her research is supported by a scholarship through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). Her supervisors are Professor Gwynnyth Llewellyn (University of Sydney) and Associate Professor Jan Matthews (Parenting Research Centre)
Catherine also works as a Senior Research Fellow with the Parenting Research Centre (www.parentingrc.org.au). Her current work is primarily related to the Healthy Start Project (www.healthystart.net.au), although she has been involved with a number of other projects in a variety of roles, including project coordination, research, consultancy, grant and paper writing, data analysis, and the delivery of interventions to families.
Prior to her current study and employment, Catherine worked as a psychologist in a range of settings including Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, State Government Departments and in hospitals.
Catherine can be contacted at the following e-mail address: cwade@parentingrc.org.au
Dr Nikki Wedgwood
PhD, BA(Hons)
Research Fellow
Nikki Wedgwood is a sociologist and research fellow in the Australian Family & Disability Studies Research Collaboration. Her current research is on the role of sports participation in the adolescent development, embodiment and social inclusion of adolescents with physical impairments. Her past research includes the gendered embodiment of schoolgirls, schoolboys and adult women who play Australian Rules football and the remasculinisation of Australian schoolboys in times of significant socioeconomic change. She is also involved in a long-term project on the oral history of women who have played Australian Rules football from the 1890s to the 1970s. Her main research interests include gender, embodiment, sport, disability and life history research. She has published in international journals and books in the fields of gender, education, disability, sports history and sport sociology.
Nikki can be contacted at the following e-mail address: N.Wedgwood@usyd.edu.au
