BUSHkids Annual Report 2011-2012

GM

The 2012 BUSHkids conference was a great success clinically, largely due to the support and facilitation of Dr Doug Shelton, a paediatrician and Director of Community Child Health on the Gold Coast. Dr Shelton has a particular interest in optimising the development of children so they can achieve their potential across their life course. He pursues many interests including the development of a society for paediatricians who work in child development, attempting to improve child development services and establishing a clinic for the diagnosis of FASD.

IT systems Our IT systems remain a major challenge, with ageing network and systems in need of a major upgrade; issues include, but are not limited to: • network speed and latency • network manageability and security • disaster recovery risks • video conferencing (remote sites isolated) • hardware and software replacement • database inadequacies • flexibility for changing needs • photocopier requirements • remote systems unworkable due to bandwidth limitations • unnecessary complexity and network manageability issues With the help of Council member Julian Martin we are currently reviewing our needs and providers for our IT network and systems. A number of providers have been consulted and proposals received. This exercise has the potential to be expensive and we are exploring outsourcing the use of hardware and data storage. We are working towards a solution for the New Year. Thank you to TLC IT solutions for their support through their IT help desk support. MODEL OF CARE After consultations with internal and external stake- holders we identified we needed to investigate the efficacy of our current Model of Care. The intention of the 2012 annual conference was to review our clinical functioning and ‘draw a line in the sand’ as an organisation to move towards a more focused and consistent service across Queensland.

Thank you, Dr Doug Shelton, for your passion and enthusiasm for the work we do at BUSHkids. The key Conference topics workshopped were: BUSHkids’ unique qualities Staff were divided into small groups and asked to create a short radio or television advertisement for BUSHkids. The products coming from this activity were entertaining and highlighted the unique characteristics of BUSHkids. Model of Care The key elements that came out of all the group discussions were that BUSHkids’ focus should be on early intervention, prevention/health promotion and multidisciplinary work that is family-based.

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