Health and Social Policy (Disability, Youth and Paediatric Health Unit) at the Ministry of Health provides an opportunity for sharing ideas, strategies, local solutions and concerns with respect to COVID-19 Pandemic preparedness.
The community of practice is multidisciplinary and include representation from all districts, relevant networks, pillars, and the community. It enables clinicians, clinical managers, program managers and key stakeholders from all districts and networks to work in partnership to provide expert advice and guidance to the system, and to escalate matters that require a statewide or system response.
The aim of these community of practice sessions are to:
Health and Social Policy will escalate issues raised by the community of practice to Strategic Reform and Planning.
Collated issues/advice will be escalated by Ms Willcox through to the Public Health Response Branch (PHRB) and/or the State Health Emergency Operations Centre (SHEOC) as appropriate.
PHRB and SHEOC responses will be provided to Strategic Reform and Planning and then to the community of practice secretariat(s).
Regular community of practice updates will be provided to NSW Health Chief Executives.
Each community of practice will have a clinical lead appointed by Deb Willcox, Deputy Secretary, Health System Strategy and Resources.
The clinical/policy lead will:
A group which is able to endorse statewide changes or make decisions that impact a unit or system or allocate funding to recommendations.
This community of practice is open to all key district contacts of disability health care services, and contacts from other relevant services. As a minimum it will include representation from all relevant districts and networks. Membership may be extended more broadly to include all interested NSW Health staff, professional colleges, private providers/clinicians and other non-government organisations as appropriate to the clinical speciality.
To join the Disability Community of Practice participants should email: MOH-COPDisability-COVID-19@health.nsw.gov.au.
Monthly meetings on Wednesday at 2:30pm using digital platforms. Meetings will occur via Microsoft Teams. Details will be attached to the calendar invite.
Members can raise COVID-19 issues by emailing the secretariat before the next meeting via MOH-COPDisability-COVID-19@health.nsw.gov.au. For urgent issues that are not emailed prior to the meeting, members can raise them during the meeting.
Members should include the following in the email:
Existing communication mechanisms remain for all issues not related to COVID-19.
