MDI COVID-19 Call for Funding and
Interest Groups 

Thank you to those who were able to join the COVID-19 response call on Monday and help us shape our funding call. We sincerely appreciate the expertise, passion and innovative ideas brought to the discussion. If you missed the call or would like a summary, please contact us at
md-i@unimelb.edu.au.

We are now doing two things: opening a funding call for projects that can deliver quick wins and shaping interest groups to facilitate interdisciplinary discussions around priority issues.

Interest groups 

Based on the discussion on Monday in which lots of people had shared interests, we are also shaping four interest groups and encourage researchers to join these to progress conversations about possible research projects. We encourage anyone who is interested to contact the nominated person who will coordinate the first meeting and share details:

• Innovative service delivery
  • Delivery of services in new and innovative ways, including therapies, early childhood intervention, local area coordination, support and support coordination, and more.
  • Contact Tessa de Vries: tessa.devries@unimelb.edu.au
• Workforce & employment
  • Safeguarding and maintaining the disability workforce, maintaining and supporting employment for people with disability
  • Contact Sue Olney s.olney@unimelb.edu.au
• Education
  • Supporting teachers and students in delivering and receiving virtual education, identifying supports needed.
  • Contact Matt Harrison: matthew.harrison@unimelb.edu.au
• Connectedness, mental health & inclusion
  • Building connectedness during physical distancing, supporting mental health and enhancing inclusion of people with disability.
  • Contact Sara Donaldson sara.donaldson@unimelb.edu.au

If you would like to facilitate an additional interest group we would be delighted – please contact Tessa who will help.  

Also please note Christine Dew, Project Lead – Inclusion and Diversity is happy to have conversations with researchers about supporting students with disability at the University of Melbourne during this time. Thanks Christine! christine.dew@unimelb.edu.au

Additional support

Alongside our COVID-19 funding call we can provide two area of additional support:

1. Policy translation. MDI can help fast-track research outputs to policy makers and can help create policy briefs and infographics where needed. Please note this in your application form.
2. Agile disability advisory touch point for researchers to seek quick input or advice from a small group of people with disability. We can advise on enquiries related to lived experience and involvement in research, including thoughts on language, framing, specific disability-type questions, and connecting to communities of interest. The Disability Advisory Touch Point aims to assist better and faster research that will have meaningful and timely outcomes for people with disability. While every effort will be made to meaningfully engage (employ) people with disability where ever possible, we support the need for fast movement and are here to help.

Contact Campbell Message campbell.message@unimelb.edu.au or Georgia Katsikis georgia.katsikis@unimelb.edu.au for advice, ideas or just to brainstorm! 

Community of Practice Teams

Finally, we’ve set up a Disability Research Community of Practice Team site to provide a platform for resource sharing, continued conversation around COVID-19 and anything else related to disability research. We will also use this site to share information about upcoming Community of Practice meet-ups and events. We encourage you to join the ‘team’ via the link below.  Please note you will need a University of Melbourne email account to access this tool. 

Disability Research Community of Practice Team Site

Thank you again and we are looking forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions at all please don’t hesitate to reach out. 

Many thanks,

Tessa
tessa.devries@unimelb.edu.au