Building belonging and connection for children with disability and their families: A co-designed research and community development project in a regional community

Sally Robinson, Danielle Notara

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Belonging and connection of children with disability and their families are contested and fragile in many regional communities. This article reports on a project that aimed to better understand and strengthen belonging and connection for young children with disability and their families within a regional Australian community. The project involved a series of community capacity building initiatives which were grounded in participatory research about facilitators and barriers to belonging and connection. It used co-design principles to involve children and their families in the research design and collection of information, and in the direction of project resources post-research. This article describes the research, reviews the effectiveness of the methods used to facilitate involvement of children with disability and family members at a range of points in the project, and discusses the innovative way the project extends participatory methods used in research into project management and community development with a group not often included in either participatory research or community development.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)724-741
Number of pages18
JournalCommunity Development Journal
Volume50
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2015
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Building belonging and connection for children with disability and their families: A co-designed research and community development project in a regional community'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this