In this update:

convergence of business & IT e-learning digital content & not-for-profits care coordination General Practice in NSW power of patient data Type 1 diabetes in Australian children

health of Australia's males health &wellbeing of young Australians making food safer to eat Australia's disaster future supporting people with dementia rethinking end-of-life care parenting and mental illness court-based mental health diversion

valuing care workers National Indigenous Reform Agreement commercialisation & sexualisation of childhood housing affordability raising standards & improving children's lives disability employment support housing assistance in Australia specialist homelessness accommodation

	Tech trends 2011: the natural convergence of business and IT   10 important trends, clustered in two categories have been identified: Emerging Enablers and Disruptive Deployments ..... the technologies themselves are not necessarily disruptive, but when deployed as discussed, they could disrupt the cost, capabilities, or even the core operating model of IT and the business. The 2011 trends list plays significantly to the convergence of Social and Mobile computing – a convergence that is fundamentally changing how information is accessed and used in business operations and decision-making. Deloitte LLP (June 2011) Practices that sustain e-learning training solutions  This booklet summarises the: evidence for the uptake of e-learning in the delivery of training; benefits of e-learning for employees, employers and training organisations; findings from the Framework funded research into practices that sustain the use of e-learning in training; guidelines around e-learning good practice. Australian Flexible Learning Framework (June 2011) Funding for sustainability: how funders’ practices influence the future of digital resources   Over the past decade, government agencies and philanthropic organisations have made significant investments in the creation of digital content in the not-for-profit sector .... what can funders do to help the digital resources and projects they fund have the best chance for success and long-term impact? UK Strategic Content Alliance/JISC (June 2011) Care Coordination Model: Better Care at Lower Cost for People with Multiple Health and Social Needs. IHI Innovation Series white paper    Offers a framework for better understanding and supporting the population of individuals with complex needs, while pushing towards improved individual health outcomes and better experience of care at lower overall per capita costs (referred to as the IHI Triple Aim). Partnerships between health care and community organizations offer an elegant solution in the form of individualized, wrap-around planning and supports.  See also Atul Gawande’s article, “The Hot Spotters," from the January 2011 New Yorker. US IHI (June 2011)   Guide to understanding and working with General Practice in NSW   Significant variation exists in the size, workforce, context and capacity of individual general practices which often makes the discipline difficult to fully comprehend and/or to apply a one-size-fits-all approach to collaborative projects and other initiatives. General practice faces a range of daily pressures not the least of which is maintaining a viable small business. See Report Developed by GP NSW Funded by NSW Health Department - May 2011 National healthcare agreement: performance report for 2009–10  There are seven objectives of the Agreement: prevention; high quality and affordable primary and community health services; high quality and affordable hospital and hospital-related care;  high quality and affordable health and aged care services; patient care—positive health and aged care experiences which take into account of individual experiences and care needs; a health system which promotes social inclusion and reduces disadvantage, especially for Indigenous Australians; and, a sustainable health system The COAG Reform Council (June 2011)   Connect: Patients and the Power of Data  There have been huge technological advances about how information can be used and by whom, which have been under utilised by the NHS. It is now possible to give people control over their own data. This discussion paper sets out seven practical ways and examples, each of which the Young Foundation believes would transform health care delivery. These could improve patient experiences, reduced errors and omissions, improve communication and make healthcare more efficient and effective.  UK Young Foundation (May 2011)  Prevalence of Type 1 diabetes in Australian children, 2008   The report focuses on children with Type 1 diabetes who were aged 0–14 years when they began using insulin. It includes information on the prevalence of the disease among children aged 0–14 years who were registered on the NDR as at 31 December 2008 by age, sex, and state or territory of current residence. It also provides projections of prevalence in 2013 AIHW (June 2011)
	The health of Australia's males   Drawing on a range of data sources, this report presents a snapshot of the health and wellbeing of Australia’s males. AIHW (June 2011) Young Australians: their health and wellbeing 2011   the fourth in a series of national statistical reports on how young people, aged 12–24 years, are faring according to national indicators of health and wellbeing. Indigenous young people and young people living in remote areas are far more likely to be disadvantaged across a broad range of health, community and socioeconomic indicators. AIHW (June 2011)     Making Food Safer to Eat: Reducing contamination from the farm to the table   During the past 15 years, a dangerous type of E. coli infection, responsible for the recall of millions of pounds of ground beef, has been cut almost in half. Yet during that same time, Salmonella infection, which causes more hospitalizations and deaths than any other type of germ found in food and $365 million in direct medical costs annually, has not declined. Each year, 1 million people get sick from eating food contaminated with Salmonella. Applying lessons learned from reducing E. coli O157 infections could help reduce illness caused by Salmonella. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Released 7 June 2011) King-hit: preparing for Australia’s disaster future   This paper makes recommendations as to how Australia can be better prepared for and recover from future natural disasters.  Suggestions include: measuring and reporting on community resilience;  asking the Productivity Commission to investigate if the Commonwealth has got value from the billions spent on disaster response and recovery; declaring an annual national disaster prevention day; developing national hazard mapping and  a national sea level rise policy statement; introducing  durability ratings for buildings; providing information to individual insurance policy holders on the risks associated with their property; developing a national policy on retreating from hazardous areas to reduce people’s exposure to severe risks; and starting a national communications campaign to encourage individual and community preparedness. Australian Strategic Policy Institute (June 2011)   Common Core Principles for Supporting People with Dementia: A guide to training the social care and health workforce   The 'Common core principles for supporting people with dementia' have been produced jointly by Skills for Care and Skills for Health. They can be used to support workforce development for any member of staff, in any health or social care setting, working with people at any stage of dementia. They can also be used to inform the content of curricula and training courses UK Health (June 2011)    Editor’s Choice: Time to rethink end-of-life care   Our health system supports a model of care that is strongly reliant on provision of services in hospital. Two studies reported in this issue of the MJA illustrate the dominance of this model, the increasing demands on the system, and the way that the quality of care provided may be inappropriate for two major groups in our community: the very old and those with terminal disease - Hospital and emergency department use in the last year of life: a baseline for future modifications to end-of-life care and The challenges of population ageing: accelerating demand for emergency ambulance services by older patients, 1995–2015   Medical Journal of Aust (vol 194 no 11, 6 June 2011) Parenting and mental illness: the early years.   How do Australians with a mental illness fare when they become parents? How well are they supported during pregnancy and the early years and what action is needed to improve care? Sane Australia, Research Bulletin 13  (June 2011) Court-based mental health diversion programs. Tipsheet no.20  Alternative criminal justice processes that have attracted the attention of policymakers are specialist mental health courts and diversion programs. Court-based mental health diversion programs seek to address the underlying causes of criminal behaviour exhibited by offenders with a mental illness and/or intellectual disability by referring them to treatment services such as drug and alcohol counselling. Australian Institute of Criminology, June 2011
	Valuing care in Australia: Achieving pay equity in the social and community services sector.   The recent case before Fair Work Australia to substantially increase award wages for social and community services workers draws much-needed attention to the issue of underpaying the workers who care for our most vulnerable members of society. The author links the current pay inequity to the sector’s volunteer past, largely female workforce and pressure to fit into a market-driven model. Brotherhood of St Laurence Research and Policy Centre (June 2011)   National Indigenous Reform Agreement: Performance report for 2009–10. Report to the Council of Australian Governments   The agreement is one of six national agreements covering the areas of school education, skills and workforce development, healthcare, disability, affordable housing, and Indigenous reform. COAG Reform Council (April 2011) Letting Children be Children : Report of an Independent Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood (The Bailey Review)   A six-month independent review into the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood, which reports today, calls on businesses and media to play their part in ending the drift towards an increasingly sexualised ‘wallpaper’ that surrounds children. UK Department for Education (June 2011)  The residual income approach to housing affordability: the theory and the practice Positioning paper   Part A provides an overview, using existing literature, of the various semantic, substantive and definitional issues around the notion of affordability, leading to an argument in support of the soundness of the residual income approach. Part B is methodological; it shows for various household types and income ranges, both for home purchase and rental. AHURI (June 2011) Ofsted: Raising standards, improving lives - Strategic plan 2011-15 (HTML format) UK Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (June 2011) This strategic plan sets out Ofsted's vision, values and priorities. It also gives details of the measures by which it can be held accountable and focuses on what it needs to do over the next four years to continue to raise standards for children and learners of all ages UK Ofsted (June 2011) Getting in, staying in and getting on: Disability employment support fit for the future The UK Government has set out an ambitious programme of employment support to ensure that people disadvantaged in the labour market will get the help they need to find and keep jobs. Our aim is that Government programmes should support more disabled people than ever before into employment. The independent review of the Government’s specialist disability employment programmes, conducted by Liz Sayce, the Chief Executive of RADAR, the UK’s largest disability campaigning organisation, was released on 9 June 2011. UK Works and Pensions (June 2011) Housing assistance in Australia 2011  Housing assistance in Australia 2011 is a compendium style publication which provides readers with information about housing assistance in each segment of the housing sector: government, not-for-profit and the private sector. Key issues including allocation and waiting lists for social housing, overcrowding, and affordability are examined as well as changes over recent years. Housing assistance provided to special needs groups such as Indigenous Australians, the young and old, and to those with a disability are also examined. AIHW (June 2011) People turned away from government-funded specialist homelessness accommodation 2009-10   data indicate that government-funded specialist homelessness agencies are operating to capacity and are unable to completely meet the demand for their accommodation. Some groups, such as families, experience more difficulty than others in obtaining accommodation. AIHW (June 2011) Government-funded specialist homelessness services: SAAP National Data Collection annual report 2009-10: Australia   In 2009-10, 219,900 people (or 1 in every 100 Australians) used government-funded specialist homelessness services. Of these, 135,700 (62%) were clients and 84,100 (38%) were children accompanying clients. In 2009-10, young people, particularly young women, children, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, were significant users of specialist homelessness services. Clients were supported for an average of 64 days and, when accommodated, were accommodated for an average of 60 days. Family groups generally had longer periods of support and accommodation than people who presented on their own. AIHW (June 2011)