Chapter 7: The Community Approach to Participation (CAP) Model For Community Integration in People with Acquired Brain Injury

In Australia, disability services have largely been developed to meet the needs of people with congenital disabilities. Policy and funding of services needed by the ABI population has been slow to align with the reality that many people with various forms of ABI live long lives and require disability support due to medical advances over the last 20 years. Complex care involving many different health care professional services may be needed by individuals for many decades. Once discharged from a hospital, ABI survivors must navigate the disability services system that is separate from the health care system (Winkler, personal communication, January 12, 2010). While 66% of resources for noncompensable disability funding in the State of Victoria, Australia is allocated for intellectual disability and 4% to ABI services, numbers of individuals with intellectual disability and ABI are similar, being 20% and 14%, respectively (Kelly & Parry, 2008 ).