About
Setting up a National Centre of Excellence in Intellectual Disability Health is a priority action under the National Roadmap for Improving the Health of People with Intellectual Disability (roadmap). The national centre is vital to successful delivery of the Roadmap. Many actions in the Roadmap depend on the establishment of the national centre to support delivery and house essential resources.
Funding
In the October 2022 Budget, we allocated $15.9 million for a total commitment of $23.9 million over 4 years from 2022–23 for the national centre. Funding will continue beyond those 4 years.
Goals
In 2021-22 we engaged consultants who undertook scoping and co-design of options for a national centre in collaboration with:
- clinical and academic experts
- intellectual disability advocacy organisations
- people with lived experience and carers
- state and territory health departments
- existing specialised intellectual disability health services.
Based on the results of the scoping and co-design work, the national centre aims to:
- be a leader in intellectual disability health
- work out what research is needed so the health system can give better health care for people with intellectual disability
- improve health services for people with intellectual disability
- help people with intellectual disability and their families to find the right health services and access health information
- provide expert advice for implementing other measures under the roadmap.
Establishing the national centre
We will conduct an open competitive grant funding process in 2023. We will use this process to select a consortium to form and operate the national centre.
In January 2023, we published a forecast of the grant process for the national centre on GrantConnect. Stakeholders could view the draft grant guidelines and draft application form. We also held an online information session to give stakeholders an overview of how to apply for the funding, and the grant opportunity timeframes.
You can view the video recording of the information session (including Auslan translation).
The grant application process opened on GrantConnect on 15 February 2023. The final grant guidelines and application form documents are available on GrantConnect.
Contact
If you have any questions about the grant process for the national centre, please contact Grant.ATM@health.gov.au or 02 6289 5600.
For more information about the national centre, please contact the Department of Health and Aged Care.
