Anna Fieldhouse commenced her PhD at RegNet in February 2020. She will be studying full-time, with the support of a Sir Roland Wilson Foundation Scholarship.

Anna has been a social policy director in the Department of Social Services since 2016, after many years working for government and non-government welfare services in the homelessness, domestic violence, mental health and disability sectors. Anna’s more recent focus has been on regulatory systems for welfare services, in particular developing the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Quality and Safeguards Commission which was established in 2018.

Anna’s involvement in NDIS policy has informed her research topic, with a particular focus on the regulatory implications in welfare models which include consumer-directed funding.

Her thesis will examine how consumers of welfare services interact with a regulatory system – and whether their representative civil society organisations become regulatory actors. The research will use a case study approach to construct network/ node models to compare the impact of consumers on welfare regulation in Australia to other more mature commodified care markets in Europe and the United Kingdom.