Australian Journal of Social Issues最新文献

HEALing Matters is an online professional development training program being implemented across the Victorian out-of-home care sector. HEALing Matters uses a trauma-informed philosophy to guide carers' understanding of the link between young people's healthy lifestyle behaviours and improved physical and psychosocial outcomes. This article reports the findings of a qualitative evaluation, which sought to understand whether participation in HEALing Matters fostered a sense of commitment, dedication and/or the introduction of new practices to create a healthy “home.” Semistructured interviews were conducted with 27 residential carers who completed the training and transcripts underwent thematic analysis. Four major themes evidencing healthy lifestyle behaviours were developed: (1) promotion of a healthy eating environment, (2) making physical activity a habit, (3) building connection through food and physical activity and (4) improved predictability and consistency. Implementation of HEALing Matters facilitated positive changes in health behaviours, supported carers to use food and activity to provide responsive caregiving and created a sense of safety and security through the introduction of household routines. The findings emphasise the importance of upskilling carers in preventative health practices and approaches to best support the health and well-being of young people in care.

Brian Howe was elected to the federal Parliament in 1977 as the Labor Member for Batman (now Cooper). Following the election of the Hawke Government in 1983 until his retirement from politics in 1996, Howe held several key social policy portfolios in both the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments, and was Deputy Prime Minister from 1991 to 1995. As a politician, Howe held a strong commitment to policy development and implementation. During his career as a Government Minister, he oversaw some of the most significant changes in social policy in Australian history. This article sets out his reflections on policymaking over this period.

Institutional racism within Australia, grounded in the country's settler-colonial structure, has sidelined Indigenous interests in public policymaking since federation. In an attempt to redress this, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was endorsed by the Australian government in 2009. UNDRIP is an authoritative international standard that could inform the ways that governments engage with Indigenous peoples and protect their rights. This paper introduces Indigenist Critical Policy Analysis (ICPA). While mainstream policy evaluation assesses whether policies and processes have met the governments stated objectives, ICPA assesses whether they uphold or violate Indigenous rights. ICPA involves reviewing policy documents against the key principles and specific Articles of UNDRIP. Presenting a worked example of ICPA, the NSW Regional Health Strategic Plan 2022–2032 is assessed against the five phases: (1) Orientation; (2) Close examination; (3) Determination; (4) Strengthening practice; and (5) Indigenous final word. This analysis finds that the Strategic Plan is poorly aligned with UNDRIP. Specifically, there is little evidence that Indigenous values influenced or held any authority in the process. ICPA offers a practical approach to analysing policy for compatibility with Indigenous rights under international law that could be used by Indigenous organisations and policymakers.

Worldwide, many children experience corporal punishment. Most research on corporal punishment has focused on parents' attitudes and use of corporal punishment; however, other relevant parenting factors and practices have rarely been examined. This study explored differences among countries with various levels of progress toward a total legal ban of corporal punishment in parents' acceptability of corporal punishment, perception of parenting as a private concern, relationship with their child and parenting practices: consistency, coercive parenting, use of smacking and positive encouragement. Parents (N = 6760) of 2 to 12-year-old children from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom completed the International Parenting Survey, an online cross-sectional survey. One-way ANOVAs, and MANCOVAs (after controlling for parent age, gender and educational level), indicated significant country differences. Overall, there was no clear link between corporal punishment bans and positive parenting beliefs, practices and behaviours. The two countries where corporal punishment is banned showed different patterns. Parents in Germany showed less acceptability and use of smacking; however, parents in Spain reported the highest use of coercive parenting. Country differences suggest that beyond a legal ban, attention is needed on how to support parents to raise their children in a positive, nurturing environment.

Australia is a world leader in providing valuable resources that support multilingual access to healthcare services. However, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that these resources are not always effective in ensuring that linguistically diverse citizens have access to information in a crisis. In this paper, we consider whether authorities around the world have implemented effective approaches that might be adapted to enhance multilingual communications in public health crises in the Australian context. Using a systematic literature review, we identify strategies implemented by governments and public health authorities to effectively support communication in a range of languages during public health emergencies. Four databases were searched and resulting studies analysed. We found that substantial bodies of the literature document the communication needs of culturally and linguistically diverse communities and the role of community and religious organisations in providing that support. However, there is almost no attention to the role that governments or public health authorities might play in implementing strategies to address those needs. Analysis of the studies suggests that public health authorities could benefit from working more collaboratively with community organisations to establish communication strategies that are timely, trustworthy, efficient and capable of cultural and linguistic nuance in public health emergencies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created major challenges globally. The social work and human services profession has been required to rapidly respond to policy and social changes. This research aimed to understand how the pandemic has affected social work and human services staff within Melbourne, Victoria. In this paper, we analyse the practice and policy implications of these responses, and outline learning for the human services sector. We draw on interviews with social work and human services practitioners, exploring their experiences during the pandemic, including social and economic impacts on service users and agencies, and organisational and practice changes. Participants highlight compliance requirements, digitalisation of services, loss of social connection for service users and service impacts. In addition, participants highlight how people from low socioeconomic backgrounds were immensely affected throughout COVID-19 lockdowns. However, this research also identifies service benefits, resulting from the rapid adjustments made by agencies that need further exploration for future practice. This article highlights how, despite the challenges posed by COVID-19, agencies and workers developed innovative responses to this crisis. Drawing on these insights can help to understand how such initiatives can be implemented in the future. This article contributes to knowledge about innovation in a time of crisis.

Using nationally representative data from Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia, this paper examines the impact of poor health, family impaired health and family time on the labour market participation of couples aged 25–64. We address sample selection bias and endogeneity bias by employing instrumental variable Tobit models. Our findings indicate that health selection into the labour market occurs not only due to individual's own health but also due to other family members' health, and family time—which is largely determined by various family factors such as a presence of preschool children (childcare) and partner's major life events. We find a significant trade-off between family unpaid time and labour market participation, which is augmented after correcting for endogeneity of family unpaid time in market time consideration. This supports our argument that health selection should be considered within the family context, in which each member makes decisions conditional not only on their own but also other family members' health and time resources.

Achieving timely “permanency” for children after statutory child removal has become a key policy driver internationally. In New South Wales, child protection reforms include prioritising reunification; introducing time frames for resolution of legal proceedings; and outsourcing a substantial proportion of casework to the non-government sector. In assessing the viability of reunification, courts place responsibility for behaviour change on parents and obscure the role of systems in supporting these changes. Professionals, as actors within a complex system, have an insider perspective on factors that influence reunification. A qualitative study was undertaken to elicit the perspectives of professionals working with parents involved in care proceedings. A total of 29 caseworkers and lawyers took part in focus groups. Complexity theory was used as an interpretive framework, and thematic analysis was completed. Themes about barriers to reunification exposed the unintended consequences of change in a complex adaptive system. Far from making reunification more achievable by streamlining the legal process, changes introduced impediments in the form of role, goal and process confusion and low levels of professional confidence in their capacity to help parents and achieve predictable legal outcomes. These results strengthen calls for a different approach to confront system-induced barriers. Embedding interagency collaboration, challenging risk narratives about parents and offering them dedicated services are areas that demand urgent attention in order to ensure no child, whose safety and best interests could be met by reunification, remains in care.

This paper is focussed on literacy and the literacy experiences of people who are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of homelessness. Drawing on 23 in-depth interviews with people who have lived experience of homelessness in Sydney, Australia, the paper examines literacy, literacy needs and interest in literacy programmes from a social practice perspective of literacy. Amartya Sen's (1999) capability approach is drawn on to examine the multidimensional barriers that impede access to literacy. Our findings show literacy needs and how literacy is understood and valued in the lives of people with lived experience of homelessness. We show the ways that spatial and temporal conditions enable and create (im)possibilities for the realisation of literacy as a capability. We also discuss how the capability is imagined to fit into existing worlds, as both an instrumental tool, as well as for personal satisfaction and broader participation in social life. Our interviewees also point to the possibilities of literacy learning and programmes supporting the realisation of other capabilities, emphasising the prospects of achieving multiple capability realisations through program design. We show how the findings bear out the principles of a social practices pedagogy in adult literacy programmes.