Otto Botac Positioning Statement

According to the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, a disabled person “has a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. ” Around 11 million people in the UK are living with a limiting long term illness, impairment or disability with less than half employed. With developing technology,

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is being implemented to provide long term, high quality support to people with a permanent disability that significantly affects their communication, mobility, self-care or self-management. The Scheme focus on intensive early intervention, particularly for people where there is good evidence that it will substantially improve functioning, or delay or lessen a decline in functioning and comprehensive information and referral service, to assist people with a disability who need access to mainstream, disability, specialist and community supports. (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, 2008)

However, this causes a financial burden. Medicare is a program which provides insurance benefits to all individuals aged sixty-five and older, including younger people with disabilities (Grabowski, 2007). Medicare covers few long-term care services and Medicaid covers the rest of the huge amount. “Policy options include capitation, pay-for-performance, and federalization, in which federal government would assume the Medicaid’s costs for the dually eligible population” (Grabowski, 2007). Medicaid and Medicare programs do not sufficiently cover acute and long-term care services, an example. After the injury the disability process takes long. There is a language barrier, institutional barrier, and ratio cost-sharing. Also, cost shifting within health care settings, and cost shifting across health care settings needs major improvements. Policy holders should expand their critical

Her goal is to enter the field of biomedical engineering to eventually create an exoskeleton type prosthetic for legs that works with the existing human nervous system. Her inspiration for this comes from her family. Her mother is a military trained electrician and has shared her fascination of physics and engineering with Alex. Her father is a colonel in the the military and has worked with wounded warrior foundations. This influenced Alex to work with those who have severe trauma to their nervous systems. Last, her own brother inspires her through his disorder of Chiari Malformation Type I. This disorder presents as a physical defect in the cerebellum at birth, and hinders the person’s balance and walking for

One of the strengths that the company has is its good quality brand and product. Their products are light and travel friendly as they are folding bikes making them very unique and popular with people who commute a great deal. This leads to the next strength which is the company’s wide target market. People who tend to commute daily to work or university, who have caravans and boats

Zip-Zap, Gaier talks about one of her client building a new strategy that can be used outside the rehabilitation hospital. As an OTR/L, CHT, Gaier incorporated her client’s needs into one program by looking at the whole picture. “Mr. Yalta had suffered a stroke that resulted in right hemiplegia and aphasia, which left his right arm and leg partially paralyzed and made it almost impossible for him to find the right words to speak clearly” (Gaier, 2003, p.279). Though he is proud of his accomplishment in self-care skills, he had to be able to dress completely in order to go home. Mr. Yalta had trouble tying his shoelaces and he always says Zip-Zap while he puts on the shoes. In addition, as Gaier took him for the dressing training, she was able to understand that Mr. Yalta is looking for Velcro adaptations for his shoes. Mr. Yalta has discovered that since Velcro’s are easily managed and because of his condition he don’t have to use both hands while putting on the shoes. Nevertheless, Gaier was able to talk with a physician to write an order for Velcro closures for Mr. Yalta’s shoes. Thus, with the help of Gaier, Mr. Yalta was able to receive his newly adapted shoes and he was able to dress completely with little to no help. Mr. Yalta started to become more independent and he continued to improve his new skills and was able to return home to his family. Therefore, Mr. Yalta has restored his lost function which was tying shoelaces with Velcro’s and was able to

‘For instance functional electrical stimulation (FES) bikes are core to our work and have been for many years,’ says Mrs Paddison.

All they want is to take part of society as a normal individual. The disability-movement has fought for the disabilities rights throughout the years and has achieved goals such as accommodation of architectural infrastructures to serve better people who are physical impairments. The public policies have been great accomplishments because it has helped people with disabilities to be part of society. The disability-movement points out the healthcare finance policies have taken freedom away from the disability community, “ Health-care financing policies force disabled people into Institutions and nursing homes rather than funding independent living. Income-maintenance and public health-insurance policies include “disincentives” that penalize disabled individuals for trying to work productively.”(p.4). The government has done a great job on protecting disabled individuals’ rights. However, the health-care system has isolated this group even more by restricting the level of productivity that they have within the system, as a result this medical model marginalizes this group of people and this program available for this community does not fully address their issues.

Van Phillips (born 1954) is an American[1] inventor of prosthetics. He is kenned for the Flex-Foot brand of artificial foot and limbs that he engendered,[2] and for his charity work for amputees.[3] An amputee himself, having lost a leg below the knee at age 21, Phillips was incentivized by the circumscriptions of then-subsisting artificial limbs to attend the Northwestern University Medical School Prosthetic-Orthotic Center. After graduation, he worked as a biomedical design engineer at the University of Utah[2] afore starting his own company, Flex-Foot Incorporated in

Working tax credits was introduced in 2003 along with disability element to help people stay in work or to return to work (Mitra, 2009). Then the 2005 Disability Discrimination Act came into force (Haralambos & Holborn, 2009). (Burchardt, 2000) cited that according to the European Commission (1998), people with disabilities have low levels of participation in society and the employment rate for people with disabilities is 20-30% lower than people without disabilities (Huang, 2009). From 2013 Disability Living Allowance for disabled people aged 16 to 64 will be replaced by a new Personal Independence Payment programme (Directgov). This is a non-means tested, tax free benefit. The DWP is to run a pilot scheme to help assist and reintroduce claimants back into the job market (Mitra, 2009), this will lead to employers paying short term benefits rather than the state.

Identifying influencing factors of a company’s macro-environment helps in the strategic development and management within a company. The macro-environment outlines an industry and the competitive environment as seen in figure 3.1, (Gamble, Peteraf, Thompson, 39). Within the macro-environment there are the political factors, economic conditions, sociocultural forces, technological factors, environment forces, and legal/regulatory factors. All of these factors blanket the habitat an industry and its competition thrive in. Inside the industry and competitive environment there are five factors that influence an individual company. The five factors are suppliers, rival firms, new entrants, buyers, and substitute products. The biggest impact on a company are these five factors. For example, Under Armour focuses on their industry and competitive environment to survive and grow. Their strategy to win over the market share from Nike and Adidas consists of expanding a stable and original brand within record time, taking an innovative approach to their product line-up and brand-name appeal where the market seemed to be barren, and lastly, the company enters in the foreign market early on to establish its brand and influence markets outside of the US.

Under Australian disability policies, there is a significant focus on individuals with disabilities making their own decisions regarding what services they wish to use and which agencies/ organisations will provide those services for them. This is highlighted in the NDIS provision of financial funding to the individual, not a service provider in order to allow the individual to choose their path as opposed to being told what services they are being allocated to. This gives the disabled individual a great sense of autonomy and empowerment as they are provided the opportunity to self direct their service use by being given choice and control over the supports they need to meet their goals.

The general environment is composed of segments that are external to the firm. Although the degree of impact varies, these environmental segments affect all industries and firms competing in them. The

How can the environment influence the company? How can the current environment influence the company?

An organization is an open system; therefore it interacts with its environment. To manage the relationship with the environment, a large part of strategic planning is concerned. The environmental factors can be divided to 2 main categories, which is MACRO and MICRO .Macro environmental factors seriously affect an organization business practice, profitability and future progress. It can