Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Utility Of Virtual Communities For `Carers Of Children And Disabilities', Rodney J. Clarke, Elias Kyriazis, Gary I. Noble, Jennifer Ann Algie

Elias Kyriazis

A pilot study of services for children with disabilities conducted in the Illawarra (Noble et al.2005) identified a basic lack of awareness on the part of parents and carers about available services. In particular, there was a lack of awareness of the availability of different support services, application processes to acquire assistance, information about specific disabilities,and the location of various support services. The study indicated that there was no centralsource of information for parents and carers of children with a disability in the Illawarra. Instead, parents and carers had to learn about these issues by `word of mouth', raising issues …