Australian Journal of Social Issues最新文献

This research seeks to understand the challenges faced by settlement service providers (SSPs) in assisting humanitarian migrants to secure appropriate employment. In-depth interviews with 26 SSPs identified that current impediments to facilitating humanitarian migrants' employment related to employment support programmes; settlement service partnerships; cultural appropriateness of services; employment readiness, experience, skills and knowledge; social support and networks; and limitations of funding and service agreements. While employment is recognised as key to effective settlement, the findings of this study show that employment services are not currently a focus of settlement services, that is, most employment services delivered by settlement services were coordinated as part of job preparedness or readiness programmes. The paper argues for government to ensure financial and human resources to enable SSPs to deliver services that can formally recognise and overcome barriers to humanitarian migrants' employment.

Financing human service delivery through social impact bonds (SIBs) is the subject of some critical commentary in the academic literature, but this tends to be largely theoretical rather than empirically based. This paper presents empirical evidence of how SIB financing can promote positive social and economic outcomes for governments, not-for-profit providers, individual service beneficiaries and society more broadly. The paper presents some of the results of an evaluation of the Aspire SIB, which financed an innovative intensive case management program providing housing and wraparound supports over a 3-year period for people experiencing chronic homelessness. Aspire participants experienced significantly improved outcomes and decreased service needs, delivering downstream cost savings across several areas of government service delivery. This paper describes how the SIB financing mechanism underpinned the success of Aspire by promoting flexible, collaborative, outcome-focussed and data-informed responses to a challenging, multi-faceted social problem.

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.

In recent years, Australia has embarked on a digital transformation of its social services, with the primary goal of creating user-centric services that are more attentive to the needs of citizens. This article examines operational and technological changes within Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) as a result of this comprehensive government digital transformation strategy. It discusses the effectiveness of these changes in enhancing outcomes for users of the scheme. Specifically, the focus is on the National Disability Insurance Agency's (NDIA) use of algorithmic decision support systems to aid in the development of personalised support plans. This administrative process, we show, incorporates several automated elements that raise concerns about substantive fairness, accountability, transparency and participation in decision making. The conclusion drawn is that algorithmic systems exercise various forms of state power, but in this case, their subterranean administrative character positions them as “algorithmic grey holes”—spaces effectively beyond recourse to legal remedies and more suited to redress by holistic and systemic accountability reforms advocated by algorithmic justice scholarship.

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.

Training and supervision of disability support workers (DSWs) has, in most developed countries, been the primary means of supporting quality of service, adequate worker skill and prevention of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of both service users and DSWs. However, in Australia, there is no requirement for DSWs to obtain a minimum level qualification. This paper examines service user perception and decision making in relation to training and supervision of their DSWs. We report findings from semi-structured interviews with 30 National Disability Insurance Scheme participants. These findings suggest that users of disability services do not universally prioritise formal DSW supervision and training. Many interviewees described that being able to train and supervise DSWs themselves achieved better support outcomes and reduced power differentials in receipt of services. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of recent policy reviews and the need to refocus safeguarding schemes on providing people with disability with the tools they need to ensure the quality and safety of their services.

This article examines the contested impact of financial sanctions on Australian employment services, with government evaluation relying on job-search theory to justify sanctions while research from sociological and psychological perspectives suggests they exacerbate labour market disadvantages and poverty. The division in perspectives reflects both methodological differences and ethical stances within scholarship. Welfare conditionality scholars propose value pluralism as an approach to reach consensus on shared policy goals across disciplines. This article engages in a simulation of the value plural approach to identify evidence gaps in the research and evaluation of sanctions and conditionality in employment services. The article identifies a research and evaluation agenda for conditionality policy, emphasising the importance of reaching a consensus to advance ethically robust policy.

Standardised tests of academic basic skills are an established feature of contemporary Australian schooling. Assessment results are widely reported and directly influence educational policymaking. Furthermore, Australian national educational priorities are linked to educational system accountability via the results of standardised tests. Given the influence and importance of assessment data, this paper aimed to collate publicly available data from four assessment programmes undertaken by Australian students, and document long-term trends in average achievement across all available assessments. Results are reported from three international assessments, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), along with the only Australian assessment, the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy. Of these four, only PISA demonstrated systematic declines in average scores over time. For the remaining three programmes, results in the primary school years showed initial improvements that were subsequently maintained over remaining iterations of the tests. In secondary school, students' average results neither declined nor increased appreciably over time. The consensus of the four largest assessment programmes undertaken by Australian students since 1995 thus fails to support the prevailing narrative of a broadscale decline in academic skills attainment.

This article examines the digitalisation of employment services in the UK and Australia, countries that have been on similar policy trajectories with respect to the development of quasi-markets and increased digitalisation. The article deploys comparative mixed methods comprising surveys of employment service providers and interviews with providers and technology developers in both countries to analyse the extent of, forms and challenges around digitalisation across both countries. The survey data analysis suggested considerable similarities in the UK and Australia regarding the drivers of digitalisation and the tasks which were digitalised. However, the interview data highlighted some differences between the two countries, including the persistence of face-to-face delivery in the UK compared with accelerated digitalisation in Australia. In both countries, there were clear differing motivations between stakeholder communities (policymakers and developers), which providers had to negotiate.