Awardee: Dr Ye In (Jane) Hwang
Affiliation: University of New South Wales
Grant: $19,685
Understanding the care and service needs of older adults post-incarceration: Enabling society’s most disadvantaged to successfully reintegrate and age well
This project aims to advance knowledge, collaboration, services and policy regarding the quality of life, mental wellbeing and psychosocial needs of older Australians after being released from prison. Interviews, a deliberative roundtable and health surveys will provide novel insights and form targeted priorities to ensure the successful reintegration and care of this vulnerable group. Specific objectives include:
- Understanding the lived experience of exiting prison in older age (quality of life, mental wellbeing, and psychosocial needs)
- Identifying priorities for intervention to enable wellbeing after transition and ultimately successful community reintegration of this group
- Engaging a wide range of stakeholders to collaboratively workshop barriers and enablers to successful care and reintegration of this group (aged care, research, justice, health and government stakeholders)
- Producing a ranked list of recommendations for research, service and policy reform
Dr Jane Hwang is an early career researcher at the School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney, with interests in improving outcomes for marginalised populations, including autistic adults and justice-involved individuals. She has conducted mixed-method projects including re-conceptualising ‘ageing well’ for autistic adults, and developing digital health screening tools to assess accelerated ageing/frailty in Australia’s growing prisoner population. She is an associate investigator of the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute, and of the Australian Human Rights Institute in the ‘ageing rights’ stream.