When Friends of Woodstock (FOW) wanted to increase their capacity to understand the needs of their clients and address those needs more appropriately, they turned to Charles Sturt University (CSU). FOW is an Albury-based non-profit organisation which supports people with disabilities and their families, predominately young people and children, by providing early intervention and care services. Earlier this month, FOW signed an MoU with CSU’s School of Community Health. Head of the School Associate Professor Julia Coyle says the MoU will work on several levels. “As well as FOW supporting the teaching of respite care with the nursing students, we have the clinical education honours projects set up for next year, so we hope to have a team of honours students working with them then. There will also be professional development between our academics and their clinicians, and we are undertaking research projects that are of importance to them. That is something we are doing in the School quite consistently, changing our research focus to be much more community driven.”