The purpose was to develop a nationwide collaborative strategy to improve the economic sustainability and geographic availability of university-based niche social profession courses that meet specialist social needs in disability services, social gerontology, and youth work. This included:

• Raise awareness about the need for urgent system-wide action on niche courses in general and niche social professions in particular;
• Develop collaborative network(s) to strengthen cross-institutional relationships between staff offering courses in niche social professions;
• Strengthen relationships with relevant state and federal professional bodies;
• Establish a network of colleagues to help resolve these challenges and find practical collaboration arrangements to improve the availability of these courses;
• Propose changes to support a nationwide collaborative strategy that will enable institutions to offer viable programmes for the niche social professions; and,
• Move beyond known interest groups to outline issues and document successful strategies for consideration by other niche courses in Australian higher education.”