About AFDSRC | AFDSRC Team | Contact us
AFDSRC TEAM
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 disability and disadvantage. Her work is funded by the Australian Research Council 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 in the field of parental disability and families with children with disabilities. She continues to supervise research candidates from many disciplines in these areas. Her recent co-edited book – Parents with Intellectual Disabilities. Past, Present and Futures - published by Wiley Blackwell 2010 is the first international publication to bring together the latest research on the lives of parents with intellectual disabilities and their children. She is currently Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities and Consulting Editor for the Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research and is an editorial board member of several international journals. Gwynnyth serves as a ministerial appointee to Community Services, Research Advisory Council and she is a Director of the Royal Rehabilitation Centre Sydney.
Gwynnyth can be contacted at the following e-mail address: fhs.dean@sydney.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: rebecca.barton@sydney.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: anita.bundy@sydney.edu.au
Susan Collings
MPH, BA (Hons)
PhD Candidate
Susan graduated from Macquarie University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts with Class 1 honours, in English literature and behavioural science. She worked in the field of community care for people with disabilities and the frail aged as a case manager, client service manager and executive manager. Susan developed innovative service models, including an independent living skills program for young adults with intellectual disabilities and acquired brain injury and a transition program for ageing adults with intellectual disabilities retiring from supported employment. In 2007 Susan completed a Master of Public Health at UNSW. Susan took up a research position in a large non-government organisation and undertook several program evaluations including one examining the effectiveness of a program to support parents with intellectual disabilities and their children. Susan has recently started a doctorate focused on children of parents with intellectual disabilities. She aims to extend current knowledge about these children, explore how they experience their family and what community factors can help build their resilience.
Susan can be contacted at the following e-mail address: susan.collings@sydney.edu.au
Angela Dew
MA(Hons), BA (Sociology)
PhD candidate
Angela has worked in the field of disability for the past 28 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: angela.dew@sydney.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 at the University of Sydney for nine weeks each year. Much of his research involves the use of data from large scale longitudinal and cross-sectional surveys to explore the social and health inequalities faced by people with disabilities. His current projects focus on: the well-being of young Australians with long-term health conditions, impairments of disabilities; measuring the well-being of disabled children; the interaction between child disability, poverty and the well-being of children and families; and understanding risk and resilience factors impacting on the emotional and behavioural health of disabled children.
Eric can be contacted at the following e-mail address: eric.emerson@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Vikki Fraser
PhD, BA (Hons)
Associate Researcher
Vikki graduated from the University of Western Sydney in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts with Class 1 Honours. She has completed her PhD in the School of Education, also at the University of Western Sydney. Her doctoral research explored the role of the internet in the lives of sexually diverse young people. Vikki’s research areas include new media analysis, with a particular focus on cyber space and cyber cultures. In early 2008, Vikki joined the AFSRC team and is a Research Associate for projects in the Parents with Intellectual Disability and the Young Adults with Chronic Illness or Disability streams.
Vikki can be contacted at the following e-mail address: vikki.fraser@sydney.edu.au
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
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 Research Fellow with AFDSRC. Her research focuses on young people with long-term conditions, especially mental illness, within families and communities. Anne’s post-doctoral project, "Parental Support for Young People with Mental Illness", uses qualitative methods to understand how parents support young people with mental illness, how they develop these support strategies and their impact on young people. This will contribute to the development of guidelines for optimizing support and mental health care in diverse family situations. Anne is also chief investigator on the ARC funded project "Improving Life Chances for Young Disabled Australians". In this project she is using a large, nationally representative data set 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 in 2002 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: anne.honey@sydney.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 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 (www.healthystart.net.au). 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: gabrielle.hindmarsh@sydney.edu.au
Dr Carmen Jarrett
PhD, MPH, MPsychol, BA(Hons)
Associate Researcher
Trained as a clinical psychologist, Dr 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 undertook 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.
Carmen can be contacted at the following e-mail address: CarmenJ@chw.edu.au
Dr Maina Kariuki
PhD, MSc, BSc (For)
Research Associate
Maina joined the Faculty of Health Sciences as a Research Associate with AFDSRC, in 2009, on our “Improving life chances for young disabled Australians” project. Maina has a background in forestry, completing his PhD in Southern Cross in 2004. His research involved complex modelling of the dynamics, growth and yield in logged and unlogged uneven aged mixed species rainforests. Here he gained experience in using large multivariate longitudinal datasets to develop predictive models. Like trees, people with disabilities are influenced by a multitude of internal and environmental factors, and Maina will be using his multivariate statistical modelling skills to develop a model of the psychological, social and economic impact of disability on young Australians and the way this is influenced by contextual factors over time. He will be analysing a large, representative dataset, the survey of Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia.
Maina can be contacted at the following e-mail address: maina.kariuki@sydney.edu.au
Professor David McConnell
PhD, BAppSc (OT) Hons
Associate Researcher 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 AFDSRC to undertake a PhD. Her research focused on women with intellectual disability, their experiences of pregnancy and antenatal care services. Rachel is currently a Faculty of Health Sciences Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the AFDSRC.
Rachel can be contacted at the following e-mail address: rachel.mayes@sydney.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
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: ann.poulos@sydney.edu.au
Dr Margaret Spencer
PhD, BSW, BTh, RN (Cert Nursing)
Associate Researcher
Margaret was awarded a doctorate from the University of Sydney in 2007. Her doctoral study involved developing an innovative assessment approach that frontline human service practitioners could use to assess the support needs of parents with intellectual disability. Margaret also holds qualifications in nursing, theology and social work. She has 25 years clinical experience working with individuals and families with complex care needs and during this time has been a vocal advocate for parents with an intellectual disability and their children. In 1999 Margaret was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to research supported parenting initiatives in the USA, UK and Denmark. Currently Margaret is heading up a project to enable justice for parent with intellectual disability involved in care and protection matters (see: McConnell, Llewellyn & Ferronato, 2000). The project is funded by the NSW Law Society and auspiced by the Intellectual Disability Rights Service (see: www.idrs.org.au). A key component of this project is the development, pilot and evaluation of a support model for parents involved in care proceedings. The model proposed is based on Circle of Support model.
Margaret can be contacted at the following e-mail address: margarets@idrs.org.au
Dr Catherine Wade
PhD, M Psych, Grad Dip App Ch Psych, BBSc
Associate Researcher
Catherine has completed a PhD with the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney. Her research investigated a model of contextual factors associated with parenting and child well-being among at-risk families. 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 was examined using structured equation modelling. The aim of the study was to understand child, parent, family characteristics and contextual factors influencing parenting, child well-being and the ‘response’ to interventions for parents with intellectual disability. Findings from the study indicated that parenting practices had a direct effect on child well-being, that socio-economic disadvantage, parent health and social support were associated with child well-being via the mediator of parenting practices, and that parent mental health and access to social support had a direct influence on parenting practices. Furthermore, partner support was found to be associated with program completion.
Catherine’s research was supported by a scholarship through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). Her supervisors were Professor Gwynnyth Llewellyn (University of Sydney) and Associate Professor Jan Matthews (Parenting Research Centre).
Catherine also works as a 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, sociologist, is a research fellow of the Australian Family & Disability Studies Research Collaboration in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney. Her past research includes the gendered embodiment of schoolgirls, schoolboys and adult women who play Australian Rules football. Her current research focuses on the role of sports participation in the adolescent development, embodiment and social inclusion of young people with physical impairments. Her future research will be on how young people with physical impairments meet the developmental challenges of adolescence and emerging adulthood, including consolidation of identity, peer acceptance and increasing autonomy from family. Her research interests include gender, embodiment, sport, disability and life history research.
Nikki can be contacted at the following e-mail address: nicole.wedgwood@sydney.edu.au
