New Zealand Rehabilitation Association, Inc.

Sponsors and Partners

This website was create with funding from the New Zealand Digital Strategy’s Community Partnership Fund and in partnership with the following organisations:

• The National Assembly of People with Disabilities (DPA) New Zealand, Inc.
  
• The Rehabilitation Teaching & Research Unit at the University of Otago, Wellington
• The College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University
• The AUT University

These organisations have provided time, resources and additional funding to ensure the completion and ongoing support of this website project.

While preparing our application for a Community Partnership Fund, we also received many letters of support from a huge range of individuals and organisations.  Their interest and endorsement of this project made it possible to get the funding required to develop a quality website.  Our thanks to all those who have supported this project during its development.

Development of this website

Plans for an NZRA website began at our 2005 AGM, which was held during the NZRA Conference in Auckland that year.  The challenge at the time was how a group of health professionals with limited finances and next to no previous website experience could establish a presence on the Internet.  The following six month was spent exploring the level of support from within the organisation for a website and the options available for creating one from scratch.  In July 2006 the NZRA purchased the domain name: www.rehabilitation.org.nz, and in September that year we officially launched our first website.

The original NZRA website was built using template-based software.  There were however several limitations to this approach.  The website design was restricted to certain layouts and it was complicated to maintain and update.  This meant the site tended to be a relatively static, non-interactive and the potential for development of the website was constrained.  Also, given that we did not have an entirely user-friendly interface for updating information on the website, there was a risk that, should the person who developed the website resign from the role, the website might not have been sustainable.

In November 2006 however, an opportunity arose for funding to further develop our website.  The NZRA submitted an expression of interest for a grant from the Community Partnership Fund (part of the New Zealand Government’s Digital Strategy) following which we were invited to submit a Comprehensive Application for funding.  The fund itself required that the NZRA build partnerships with other community groups, and so to this end we entered into an agreement with four other organisations with vested interests in the development of rehabilitation in New Zealand (our Website Project Partners - see above)

Prior to submitting our Comprehensive Application for funding we also sent out a general request for letters of support for the project – to gauge the degree of interest in the wider community for a website of this nature, but also to strengthen our full application.  Letters of support came in from:

• Accident Compensation Corporation,
• Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers,
• Asthma and Respiratory Foundation of New Zealand,
• Brain Injury Association New Zealand,
• Burwood Academy of Independent Living,
• Catwalk Trust,
• Integrated Partners in Health Ltd,
• New Zealand Association of Occupational Therapists,
• New Zealand College of Physiotherapy,
• New Zealand Society of Physiotherapy, and
• A number of individual clinicians and members of the general public.

Their support was greatly appreciated and assisted with the success of our Comprehensive Application for funding from the Community Partnership Fund.

In July 2007 we were awarded $32,556.00, which we were required to match dollar-for-dollar, either by direct funding or by payment-in-kind (in our case the contribution of free hours of labour from members of the NZRA or our project partners).  Our first payment from the Department of Internal Affairs came through in June 2008, and our new website progressed rapidly after that.

The current NZRA website has been developed by Springload, “a web design company dedicated to providing a better web experience”, with consultation provided by AccEase, a company specialising in information accessibility “for all people, all of the time”.  NZRA’s project manager for this website re-development was William Levack, who also contributed much of the initial content for the website from columns written for the NZRA newsletter between December 2005 and June 2008.  Ongoing content on this website is provided by our website columnists.  To read more about them, click here.