Costing the Place of Birth in New South Wales: New knowledge to support maternity service reform.

Midwifery 2

This project aims to provide evidence on the costs of providing maternity care for low risk mothers in three different settings – hospital, birth centre, and home. This will provide health planners, policy makers and managers with the data they require to implement innovation in maternity service provision. We will focus on the costs of care in NSW using 10 years of linked data.

The project is collaboration between the CMCFH, the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation (CHERE) at UTS (Prof Rosalie Viney) and Western Sydney University (Prof Hannah Dahlen, Dr Charlene Thornton).

The first publication from this project, entitled Costing Alternative Birth Settings for Women at Low Risk of Complications: A Systematic Review was published in February 2016. 

UTS staff and students involved: Caroline Homer, Rosalie Viney, Maralyn Foureur, David Sibbritt, and Vanessa Scarf.

Breaking the cycle

This study aims to develop new knowledge about NSW incarcerated parents’ learning and support needs to enable a shift towards pro-social parenting practices.

The expected Breaking-the-Cycle (BTC) study outcomes include:

  1. generation of new knowledge about incarcerated parents and their parenting including current knowledge, skills requirements, support needs and appropriate delivery points for parenting interventions;
  2. an increased evidence base to inform CSNSW policies and inform the design and implementation of effective parenting support and education interventions for incarcerated parents;
  3. enhanced understanding of the effectiveness of two parenting programs for parents in custody (and those run under CSNSW supervision in the community).

Breaking-the-Cycle for Incarcerated Parents: Towards Pro-Social Parenting

Funding: UTS Partnership Grant, and additional funding from Corrective Services NSW and Keep Them Safe funding (2013-2015).

UTS staff involved: Cathrine Fowler, Angela Dawson, Tamara Power, Michael Roche, Debra Jackson and Chris Rossiter