Australian Journal of Social Issues最新文献

The involvement of people with lived experience is broadly recognised as beneficial, and possibly essential, to effective service and policy planning. However, in the field of homelessness service delivery, this has not been thoroughly researched. To build a greater understanding of participation activities and identify opportunities for lived experience contributions in addressing homelessness, this study investigates the representations of consumer participation by a homelessness service network in Victoria over 10 years (2011–2020). This study found that the homelessness services appear to have actively aspired to meaningful service user participation however tensions for policy and practice remain. These include whether lived experience contributions are valued as “experience” or “expertise”; whether participation is available for those with “living” (current) or “lived” (past) experience; and whether feedback can translate into influence, affecting services and policy change.

The National Elder Abuse Prevalence Study, conducted by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, was the first major national study to gauge the prevalence and nature of elder abuse in Australia. [The phrase, “conducted by the Australian Institute of Family Studies”, was added to the preceding sentence on 19 October 2023, after first online publication.] A survey of older people aged 65 years and older living in private dwellings was carried out in 2020, with 7000 participants across the nation who were interviewed by telephone. The survey data suggested that 14.8 per cent of the population aged 65 and older who live in the community (rather than residential care settings) have experienced elder abuse in the past 12 months. Psychological abuse was found to be the most common subtype (11.7 per cent), followed by neglect (2.9 per cent), financial abuse (2.1 per cent), physical abuse (1.8 per cent) and sexual abuse (0.7 per cent). Interconnected with an experience of elder abuse were poorer physical health, poorer psychological health and a lower sense of social support. The findings demonstrate that elder abuse has strong familial dynamics, with perpetrators involving intergenerational and intimate partner relationships to a significant extent. Most older people who experienced elder abuse tended to manage the experience themselves—not seeking help, taking actions which would not expose the perpetrator.

In this paper, we assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Australian visual arts sector. We base our analysis on the responses of over 1500 visual artists and arts workers to a survey conducted by the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), the national peak body for the visual and media arts, craft and design sector in September 2021. NAVA employed this online survey to study the relationship between the pandemic and both the incomes and mental health of artists and arts workers. Using regression analysis, we find that there has been a significant impact for both artists and arts workers, with the severity of the impacts varying by gender, age and the availability of state-based and Australian Government support programmes. Reduced hours and loss of contracted work and commissions due to the pandemic were both related to declines in income and mental health outcomes for artists and for arts workers. Housing stress was associated with a higher likelihood of a significant or extreme mental health impact for artists and arts workers. In addition, artists' incomes and mental health outcomes were impacted when faced with a reduced ability to sell, although some artists were able to increase their online profiles.

Previous research demonstrates that businesses that are Indigenous-owned are far more likely to employ Indigenous people than non-Indigenous-owned businesses (Hunter, 2015). The majority of the literature on Indigenous employment uses a deficit discourse, describing factors that prevent or exclude Indigenous people from non-Indigenous-owned organisations. There is markedly less literature using a strength-based approach, detailing how Indigenous-owned businesses create workplaces without barriers to Indigenous employment. Through 32 semistructured interviews with Indigenous business owners, managers, and Indigenous employees of Indigenous-owned businesses, this paper provides insights into how participants' businesses create workplaces that are more supportive of, and conducive to, Indigenous employment. This paper finds that Indigenous approaches to governance inform an organisational level of cultural competence, which creates tailored and specific practices that support better Indigenous employment outcomes. This resonates with the concept of Indigenous ways of “knowing, being, and doing,” and how this framework encompasses participants' approaches to business operations. In the light of increasing public and private policy commitments to improve Indigenous employment outcomes, it is imperative that the Indigenous business sector's best practice inform said policies, given its successes. However, inherent in these findings are broader discussions into more systemic and societal issues that go beyond workplace policy.

This article highlights the lessons learned from a study of the 2021 Intergenerational Report hosted by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. That study, published in a book, More than Fiscal, (Podger et al., 2023, More than Fiscal, ANU Press), also advises how to improve future IGRs. The article includes a brief assessment of the extent to which the recently published 2023 IGR takes up the improvements suggested.

For more than three decades, official and independent enquiries have documented the poor outcomes experienced by many young people transitioning from out-of-home care (OOHC) in Australia, known as care leavers. Yet, until 2017, most of the state and territory governments cut off financial support to these vulnerable young people at no later than 18 years of age and failed to provide them with the ongoing material and relationship assistance into early adulthood guaranteed to most of their non-care peers. Australia was regarded internationally as a leaving care laggard. This paper examines the remarkably effective advocacy strategies used by the Home Stretch campaign, formed in 2016, to persuade all Australian jurisdictions to extend OOHC until 21 years. By the end of 2022, every state and territory had agreed to introduce some form of extended care, and Australia was recognised as a global leader in leaving care policy and programmes provision.

When Australia ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (the Convention) in 1990, all children within its borders became entitled to the protection of the rights set out in the Convention. Children, thus, became rights holders. More than just human rights holders, they became children's rights holders. The Convention is the first international instrument to address the protection of children from violence directly. Corporal punishment (CP) is increasingly recognised internationally as physical abuse and a violation of children's rights. However, CP in the home is still legal in all Australian jurisdictions even though it violates several of the rights protected by the Convention. This contribution will examine Articles 2, 3(1), 5, 16, 19(1), 24(3) and 37(a) of the Convention to outline how parental CP undermines the legally binding obligations of the Convention by violating the rights espoused by these provisions. This article then calls for CP to be outlawed by all state and territory governments to adhere to the aim of the Convention that because of children's unique vulnerabilities, all their rights need to be protected, respected and promoted by those who ratified the Convention.