Meet the Independence Australia research team

 

Research Lead, Alison Crowe

Alison has managed Independence Australia’s Community Projects team for five years, managing a number of state and national community programs including the NDIA initiative Inform – a national online information hub for people with disabilities, and a partnership initiative with the Transport Accident Commission (Vic), SpinChat – a school based education program that aims to reduce the incidence of risk-related spinal cord injuries (SCIs) in young people by connecting them with presenters who have a SCI. In previous positions Alison has worked as a research assistant, specialising in mapping insights and survey data.

With her role situated heavily within the disability services division of Independence Australia, Alison has a keen interest in mapping the impact support services has on people’s lives. She hopes that this project can bring anecdotal data alive and give people with disabilities a voice in research moving forward.

Research Lead, Dr Andrew Sinclair

Andrew has managed Independence Australia’s psychology and counselling services for over ten years. In this role he has coordinated the delivery of a range of psychological services including individual, couple and family counselling. He has collaborated in the development of our health and wellbeing group programs to help our clients manage their complex health, including improving sleep, pain management and other challenges they face.

Andrew has continued to be engaged in research and evaluation since finishing his doctorate, and has co-authored a number of published papers mapping the wellbeing of people living with spinal cord injury in Victoria. Andrew is very focused on outcomes measurement within the psychology service and was very excited to be involved in the social impact project. Andrew see’s great potential for this project to develop innovative outcomes measurement strategies that can help the organisation improve their services while also offering something practice to participants to assist them with their goals.