Intellectual Disability Health Service

In 2019, the NSW Ministry of Health (the Ministry) established the Intellectual Disability Health Service (IDHS) to address the barriers people with intellectual disabilities face when accessing appropriate healthcare. The service uses a hub-and-spoke model to service all Local Health Districts (LHDs) with:  

•  7 LHDs hosting IDHS Teams (hubs)  

• 8 LHDs hosting IDHS Positions (spokes).  

The service aims to increase access to coordinated and inclusive healthcare for people with intellectual disabilities and enhance the skills and confidence of NSW Health staff and primary care providers to support this population. It does this by providing comprehensive health assessments to people with intellectual disabilities, capacity building supports for NSW Health and primary health clinicians, and partnership development with relevant health services.  

ARTD was engaged by the Ministry to conduct an evaluation of the IDHS over a 9-month period.  

The evaluation focused on the operational effectiveness of the IDHS. Given the project’s scale, we adopted a highly collaborative approach with the Ministry and the evaluation working group to deliver a robust evaluation. As primary data collection from people with disability was being addressed in a separate project, this evaluation focused solely on operational effectiveness.   

The ARTD team worked collaboratively with the Ministry team and the evaluation working group to design the evaluation, collect data, and workshop findings. The team used a mixed-methods approach involving interviews with IDHS staff, government and sector stakeholders as well as a survey with healthcare providers who had either referred clients with intellectual disability or received capacity building support from the IDHS. We also drew on Ministry-collected data, such as the IDHS Executive Sponsor Survey (capturing LHDs’ perceptions of the IDHS), service level data (capturing things like the number of clients and occasions of service) and de-identified LHD client surveys completed by clients with intellectual disability and their families or carers  (capturing their perspectives of the IDHS). 

To answer the key evaluation questions, we analysed interview data thematically and produced descriptive statistics from survey and administrative sources. These were synthesised to generate key findings. In addition to this, we used the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research to guide analysis of what’s helping or hindering implementation, and inform the recommendations.  

Our collaborative approach resulted in a clear evaluation report for the IDHS, with recommendations tailored for the Ministry and for the individual teams and positions.  The evaluation findings and recommendations were shared with the evaluation working group and the IDHS staff to inform future improvements.