Day 11 #WCMTLD and it was an early start and a bus ride up to La Trobe’s Bundoora campus for a 9am coffee with Professor Chris Bigby. Chris is the Director of the Living with Disability Research Centre. A unit committed to not just conducting good quality research, but also to translating and applying that […]
Day 10 #WCMTLD today, feels like time is flying by. Today I visited the Office of the Disability Services Commissioner (ODSC) in Melbourne. I got to spend time with their Systemic Review Team, who are a very newly formed (still forming) team charged with looking into reviewable deaths. The Disability Act 2006 was amended in […]
I took the weekend off from blogging and just enjoyed taking in the rays, wandering the city (I flew down to Melbourne from Sydney on Saturday afternoon), people watching and musing on what I’d heard and thought from week one of #WCMTLD. I know I’ve already said it but I feel so totally and utterly […]
Last day of my first week in Australia, Day 7 of #WCMTLD. I had left my diary clear this morning which I was exceedingly grateful for, my head is buzzing with ideas and reflections and it was good to spend a couple hours in another cafe, Scout’s Honour with a stunning breakfast and some time […]
Day 6 in Australia today and I spent the day at the New South Wales Ombudsman’s office for a training workshop Handling serious incidents in the disability sector. The workshop looked at handling allegations of abuse and neglect in a disability service setting. It covered: Identifying serious incidents – the legislative and policy framework Planning and […]
I’m not sure whether it was coffee consumption, nerves/excitement about today, jetlag or something altogether different but I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. I woke feeling a little jaded and stumbled across the road to the cafe for breakfast. Turns out avocado on toast is like the food of superheroes, I felt […]
Pinching myself today, that I’m in Australia, spending dedicated time looking at learning from deaths. Feels somewhat surreal, a real privilege and a huge opportunity. I’ve deliberately kept my focus broad during this trip, trying to combine multiple perspectives, as much as it’s tempting (and possibly safer) to go deep on just one issue, I’ve […]
Day 3 of #WCMTLD today and my first day of face to face meetings. I spent the morning and early afternoon at the New South Wales Ombudsman‘s office, talking with Kathryn McKenzie their Disability Director and team members from the reviewable deaths team and the disability reportable incidents team. One thing I hadn’t expected was […]
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…. and George a very grouchy and overly analytical girl, so luckily for me I arrived in time for the Sydney weekend. The timing of my trip was set up around a work event, the JusticeforLB book launch and the JusticeforLBGMC tribunal (I rejigged slightly to […]
Busy week for my ‘I AM Challenging Behaviour’ badge. I’ve worn it at the two day NHSE event #LearningfromDeaths, at the brilliant #JusticeforLB Book Launch (you can buy the book here if you’ve not got it already), and for two days now at the MPTS Tribunal into the fitness to practice of Dr Valerie Murphy, […]