Housing Options is a national charity that provides advice and support to people with their housing and support issues. It was established over 10 years ago to work with people with learning disabilities and their families and professional advisors. 

Housing Options: 

• Provides a telephone advice service throughout the week. Tel : 0845 456 1497
• Provides fact sheets on the website that tells you the real facts about housing and support  www.housingoptions.org.uk
• Campaigns on behalf of really important issues such as benefit changes and Court Of Protection decisions
• Works very closely with other organisations to have a bigger impact on sharing information and best practice
• Provides national training with paradigm www.Paradigm-uk.org
• Provides local training and support to members and others who are interested
• Works closely with national and local Carers organisations to deliver information about housing

Housing Options service is funded by membership fees. 

Membership of Housing Options will mean: 

• Regular bulletin on latest policy and practice changes in housing and support
• Links with other members at events and on web based members forum
• Increased awareness of best practice and new models of support and housing
• Discount on training and events hosted by Housing Options
• Access to guidance and support for staff involved in remodelling services
• Independent advice for families and advocates

Membership fees start from £10 for individual families and £100 for Carers centres, Carers groups and Advocacy groups. If you are interested in joining, or want to know more  follow this link

or email the team at Housing Options and they can talk to you about what we do and membership offers /discounts in 2012

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The Champion Centre is an early intervention centre in Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand providing therapy service to infants and children with multiple developmental delays.

The Centre is administered by an independent charitable trust and funded by a combination of charitable donations and government grants. This article describes the services it offers and provides a brief history of the programme's origins and development. 

The Champion Centre serves close to two hundred children at any one time, offering early intervention to infants and preschool children from all social and ethnic backgrounds who have been diagnosed with, or are at risk for, significant delays or deficits in at least two areas of functioning/systems (e.g., cognitive, motor, speech and/or language, social/interactional). 

Children gain access to this free service by being referred by a paediatrician to a cross-agency group representing all of the Health and Education early intervention providers in Christchurch. This group makes offers to families in one or more services depending on family need and availability to places in each service. Children attending the service include those born extremely prematurely, those with pervasive developmental disorder and autism, those with a variety of syndromes, and those with global developmental delay of both known and unknown aetiology.   

The programme works in partnership with the families and whānau[2] who play a vital role in the early intervention programme of their child with the support of the specialists who are either core therapy team members or contribute, together with parents, family and whānau to helping the child generalise their new learning in their everyday lives. Figure 1 is a schematic of the various team members at the Champion Centre and their positions in the Bronfenbrenner inspired model of service delivery. 

A key feature of the model is the Family Support Team that works to ensure that families are as capable as possible of supporting their children to develop to their highest potential. This team consists of social workers (one of whom has special responsibility for Māori families) and psychologists who offer counselling, behaviour support and practical assistance. Parents also provide informal support and assistance to each other. This is made possible by the programme being centre-based; by the fact that groups of families attend programmes on a regular day and so get to know each other; and by the fact that there is time set aside (morning tea) in each programme session for families to engage with each other. 

Please note that this is an introduction to an essay in the coming Issue 13 of the TAC Journal to be published in March 2012.

Dr. Susan Foster-Cohen

Director, The Champion Centre & Adjunct Senior Fellow, University of Canterbury

The Champion Centre

Private Bag 4708

C/- Burwood Hospital

Christchurch 8140

New Zealand

Phone: +64 3 383 6867

Fax: +64 3 383 6866

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

http://www.championcentre.org.nz

[1] 'Tamariki' is the Maori word for 'children' and 'toiora' means 'to raise up'.

[2] 'whanau' is a Maori word that translates loosely into 'extended family'. Maori are the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa/New Zealand who trace their family lines back before the arrival of Europeans.

Expressions of interest sought. This is an invitation to express interest in taking part in a research project entitled Children's participation in theory and practice: (re)theorising the everyday enactment of children's participatory rights with early childhood educators. This project is the PhD research of Cassandra Kotsanas from the University of Melbourne and is supervised by Dr Kylie Smith and Ms Margaret Coady.

This research project seeks to explore how children's participation rights might be enacted and understood by educators in the everyday practice of early childhood education. The National and Victorian early years frameworks both refer to children's rights and citizenship and require early childhood educators to give children choices and a voice in matters that affect them. Research and other literature suggest that work in the area of young children's participation rights is limited. 

There is still much to explore about how to achieve this in a way that supports the rights of all children. Additionally there are few theoretical or practical resources about the participation of children in early childhood that are able to support early childhood educators. This research seeks to address this gap by working with early childhood educators to generate theory and practice that makes sense for everyday early childhood practice in a Victorian context.

This project will use an action research methodology and participation requirements will include:

• One individual interview of approximately one hour, in March-April 2012 at a location near you.
• Six group meetings of 1.5 hours each approximately monthly between April and October 2012. Meeting dates, times and venues will be negotiated but will take place out-of-hours on a weekday evening in a metropolitan Melbourne location central to participants.
• A follow up meeting of 1.5 hours in early 2013
• Keeping a research journal (journal writing time will be included in meetings).

Group meetings will involve discussion about children's participation, collaborative exploration of the Frameworks and other documents and ideas and how these relate to children's participation, and the identification of an area of your own practice to focus your thinking on.

Up to eight early childhood educators will be selected to participate in this research. Participants will be early childhood educators who:

• Are interested in and committed to enacting children's participation in their work
• Work in direct contact with children aged from birth to five years:

         - With any level of qualifications and experience                                        

 - In any setting/service type                   

 - Who are employed or a fulltime or part time basis

• Are able to attend all meetings which will be held in metropolitan Melbourne location and outside of business hours

If you meet the above criteria and you are interested in taking part in this research please email your expression of interest to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by Friday 2nd March 2012 and include the following information:

• Name
• Preferred contact details (email, phone number and/or mail address)
• Current role/position in early childhood setting, including age range of children
• Suburb of residence
• Suburb where you are employed

If you have further questions please contact Cassie via email or phone using the details below.

Please feel free to forward this expression of interest to others.

Many thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

Cassie Kotsanas (PhD candidate, University of Melbourne)

Ph:            83444794

Email:            This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.