Older Persons Legal Clinic

The University of Newcastle Legal Centre’s Older Persons Legal Clinic offers free legal advice and assistance to people aged 60 years and over and to Indigenous people aged 50 years and over.

It is a community legal service staffed by lawyers and law students. The Older Persons Legal Clinic can offer information, referrals, advice and representation on such things as:

• Wills and planning for the future
• Family law
• Neigbourhood disputes
• Tenancy issues
• Disputes with government departments
• Elder abuse and care issues

Law students completing the University of Newcastle Practice Program staff the Older Persons Legal Clinic under the supervision and guidance of a trained lawyer.

When you attend the Older Persons Legal Clinic you will initially meet with a law student, then with our in-house solicitor who may be able to provide you with legal advice in your matter. If we cannot assist you, we will refer you to someone who may be able to help.

A world-first healthy lifestyle program targeting fathers has been transforming the health of men and their families in the Hunter region for nearly a decade. Now it’s going global.

The Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids program is an award winning, world-first program that engages fathers in positive lifestyle role modelling and parenting strategies.

Despite a growing body of research highlighting the unique role that fathers can play in shaping their children’s dietary and physical activity behaviours, most healthy lifestyle programs for families target the mother and the mother-child relationship.

A team of researchers from the University of Newcastle’s Centre for Active Living and Learning changed that when they developed the only evidence-based healthy lifestyle program that draws on the father-child relationship.

The problem

Earlier research has found that obese children with an obese father were nearly three times more likely to remain obese as an adult compared to those children whose father was not obese.

Obesity in fathers has been associated with a four-fold increase in the risk of obesity for both sons and daughters at 18 years of age, which further increases children’s risk of various lifestyle diseases in adulthood.

Previous research also demonstrated that it was the parenting styles and behaviours of fathers (not mothers) that predicted the overweight status of preschool children. Fathers’ parenting styles also predicted better maintenance of weight loss in obese children.

Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids was developed to help fathers achieve and maintain a healthy weight while also improving the overall health of their children.

The research

Researchers conducted two randomised controlled trials of the program through a partnership between the University of Newcastle, Coal & Allied and the Hunter Medical Research Institute.

They recruited 146 overweight and obese fathers and their primary school-aged children, who were then divided into two groups. The first was part of the Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids program and the second was the control group.

All participants had their height, weight, blood pressure and heart rate taken. They also completed surveys about daily eating habits and wore monitors to measure their physical activity.

Over eight sessions, fathers in the Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids program learned about weight loss, healthy eating, how to increase activity levels in their children, and how to sustain a healthy lifestyle. Participants also received manuals and logbooks to keep track of their progress.

Importantly, dads and their kids took part in play and ‘rough and tumble’ activities designed to leverage the father-child interaction.

When physical measurements and surveys were repeated at the end of the program, fathers in the Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids trial groups achieved a significant and clinically meaningful weight loss compared to the control group, which registered little change.

Fathers in the trial group also increased physical activity levels, cut daily calorie intakes, and reduced their resting heart rates compared to the control group.

Significantly, a later trial demonstrated these health improvements could be maintained 12 months after participating in the Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids program.

Engaging local stakeholders

Local schools played a critical role in the implementation of the Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids program by providing the facilities and equipment needed to deliver the program.

School staff served as local ‘champions’, promoted the program to local families, and recruited participants.

The program secured support from local businesses, health practitioners, councils, hospitals and community groups, all of whom provided input into program development and supported recruitment efforts.

University of Newcastle researchers also trained community members to serve as program managers and facilitators in their areas.

By 2016, Healthy Dads Healthy Kids transitioned from a university-led program to a community-managed initiative with global adaptations implemented in England, Scotland and the USA.

Research impact

The Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids program has reached 400 families across the NSW Hunter region. This includes more than 500 children in 25 schools.

In 2016, University of Newcastle researchers collaborated on a $900,000 grant from the UK National Institute of Health Research to adapt Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids for ethnically diverse populations in partnership with Birmingham University and the UK Fatherhood Institute.

The Baylor College of Medicine in the United States secured $824,000 in funding to adapt and test the Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids program for Latino families in Texas in 2017.

The Scottish prison service has completed training to adapt and implement the program for incarcerated fathers in partnership with the University of Stirling.

Research awards

• World Health Organisation’s ‘Excellence in Obesity Prevention’ award in 2014
• ‘Best Community Engagement’ award from Australia’s Business and Higher Education Round Table in 2014
• Public Health and Policy award at the International Congress of Obesity in Stockholm in 2010
• Sports Medicine Australia recognised Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids with the prestigious ASICS Medal, naming the program the best research project at its 2009 national conference.

More access to life-saving nutrition advice

Each year 27,500 Australians die from preventable diet-related diseases. Unhealthy eating habits among younger Australians are leading to the premature development of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Thanks to generous funding from the nib foundation, University of Newcastle researchers are helping Australians be more informed about their nutrition-related health.

FactSet: The real-time data

FactSet is a financial database which we subscribe to at NBS. FactSet provides access to financial data and analytics that investors, fund managers as well as researchers use across the world. The Greater Bank Finance Lab workstations are connected to FactSet. Further, students enrolled in Finance and Economics courses also get access to the web version of FactSet. This database is extensively used in workshops conducted in the Greater Bank Finance Lab. Assessment items in undergraduate and postgraduate finance courses (for example, Corporate Finance, Investment Analysis, Portfolio Management) are also developed based on the use of this database. This approach provides students the opportunity to use real-time financial data to test/apply their classroom learning.

Rotman Interactive Trader: Integrating theory with practice

Newcastle Business School subscribes to Rotman Interactive Trader (RIT). This is currently provisioned in the Greater Bank Finance Lab. This is a market-simulator that provides students with a hands-on approach to learning finance with real world cases to apply finance theory in a stochastic setting. This platform provides similar stock trading order management systems as those used by major financial institutions. Students control their order types, negotiate and book a trade with counterparty students, thus navigate real-life issues faced by investors and fund managers.

The Business Analytics Co-Design Lab

The Greater Bank Finance Lab also serves as the Business Analytics Co-Design Lab. The Lab is aimed to bring business managers, data scientists, academics and students together for reproducing a digital experience in business higher education. This will enhance our pedagogies for preparing business graduates to succeed and make them “Tech-Ready” for their digital futures. We are keen to educate the next generation talent and foster analytics skills for accelerating Australian rural and urban communities and transforming businesses and other social organizations. The objectives are to disseminate practical knowledge of various emerging digital technologies that may have various applications in business data collecting, treating, analyzing, and visualizing for the benefit of business decision making. For achieving these, the lab enables a practical learning environment that engages students with the latest business analytics tools and techniques, building industry collaborations and stakeholder engagements into the process of various solutions co-designing. Students’ analytics skills and talent development are the central aim of this initiative.

By engaging in the foregoing activities, students will gain experience and exposure to essential analytics platforms, tools and techniques including Hadoop, Tableau, R, Python, Power BI, Spark and TensorFlow. For instance, for processing natural language or textual data, various natural language processing (NLP) algorithms will be available, including topic modelling, sentiment analysis, text classification, summarization, annotation, translation and question answering. As a result, students will be proficient in the manipulation and analyses of large unstructured text datasets for knowledge discovery, will understand how to design NLP solutions, and will be aware of their commercial application. From social media mining, brand awareness, marketing research and automation, students will be well prepared to meeting industry demand for various NLP and other relevant analytics applications. These include financial evaluations, trend detection and monitoring of business functions as well as for unfolding insights of selection of marketing content that better resonates with consumers.

As NLP capabilities continue to mature, unstructured text progressively expands, and business analytics resources are increasingly accessible, industry demand for professionals experienced in understanding various analytics and NLP solutions continue to grow.  The lab is therefore aligned to meeting industry demand, by producing professionals with proficient analytics skills in this business-essential technical area, leading to produce competitive business graduates with world-class knowledge of data-driven problem solving in this digital era. The entire understanding is to promote the latest industry-oriented teaching and learning in business disciplines for enhancing employability.

Greater Bank Finance Academy

Since 2019, the University of Newcastle and Greater Bank have worked together to build financial literacy for high school students through the Greater Bank Finance Academy.

To date over 2,000 high school students from across New South Wales have undertaken the Finance Academy. Almost 30% of high school students who have participated in the Finance Academy are located in the 10% most disadvantaged socio-economic areas of Australia.

The Greater Bank Finance Academy is a free, online and face to face financial literacy education program for high school students. Ambassadors from Greater Bank, and students from the Newcastle Business School host workshops on varied topics from savings and budgeting through to investing and cybercrime. This program combines theoretical knowledge with practical examples of what young people need to think about as they plan for their future.

Greater Bank Finance Sessions

Financial Literacy education programs and workshops designed for the broader community. These short courses, open to the community, share practical information on financial topics such as reducing debt, managing finances and how to avoid being scammed.

Programs include Financial Literacy for Seniors and Financial Literacy for Women at Risk.

Junior Finance Academy

The Junior Finance Academy is a free financial literacy education program where students from year 3 to year 6 can learn about the concept of money in a fun way with age appropriate activities. The program is 100% online and on demand. This means it’s perfect for parents to lead their children through the program at a time that suits them best. Follow these links to learn more:

Junior Finance Academy stage 2

Junior Finance Academy stage 3

High School Finance Academy

The High School Finance Academy is an on demand program for stage 5 students, designed for use in the classroom or the home, at a time suitable to the instructor and can be paced according to the ability of the student. With lessons targeted to Year 9 and Year 10 students (also appropriate for year 11), the course content is created in partnership with the University of Newcastle (theory) and Greater Bank (practical) and is delivered by University of Newcastle student ambassadors and Greater Bank staff.

High School Finance Academy  stage 5

Other engagement activities

The Greater Bank Finance Lab is also used to facilitate various engagement activities. For example, workshops are conducted for students majoring in Finance and Economics. These workshops typically focus on how to use the Finance Lab, financial databases, and research tools for learning purposes. The Greater Bank Finance Lab also hosts community clinics for retirees and high school students. These clinics concentrate on basic taxation, investment, and financial planning issues. The lab will also introduce a webinar series on contemporary finance and economics issues.