AQC to present at Developmental Disabilities World Congress in Melbourne

With our long standing experience on Quality Checking (since 2007, Choice Support employed and trained hundreds of people with learning disabilities to do QC) the Involvement Team has been accepted to present a paper at the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities World Congress in Melbourne, in August 2016.

Thomas Doukas, the Involvement Team Leader will attend the conference and present the paper. The research paper, titled ‘Quality Checking – the gateway to taking control of our lives’, provides twofold insight on the impact of quality checking firstly for individuals employed as quality checkers and secondly of the impact of the checks on the individuals having their support services checked.

The aim of this piece of research is to investigate the how Quality Checking is distinctive from professional led approaches and how such tool empowers the individual. 

A mixed methodology was used; firstly interviews and direct quotes of checkers at work were used. Secondly we conducted both interview visits and evaluation of the impact of the check to providers and people and we analysed action plans submitted after a visit followed by a revisit.

Qualitative analyses of the data revealed that co-production and inclusiveness gives the individual the power to use their experience to shape their own support being in control and this peer-support based model is highly effective.

Following the conference in Melbourne, Thomas have been invited by Professor of Disability Studies, Patricia O'Brien, the director of the Centre of Disability Studies at the University of Sydney, to do seminars and workshops with the centre’s inclusive research group.