Australian Journal of Social Issues最新文献

Research on care increasingly emphasises the “care-less” or “uncaring” nature of state-coordinated interventions imposed on marginalised communities. However, these perspectives tend to eliminate discussions about modes of care or the ways in which care is differentially experienced and performed. This paper argues for scholars to think multimodally about care, proposing a typology of four different modes of care: care-as-gift, -burden, -control and -cure. The paper makes a case for locating these modes of care within a post-capitalist political horizon to respond to the demand to “unburden care.” That is, the political demand to provide the economic and social conditions that best enable caregiving and reduce gendered pressures on caregivers. The paper develops these arguments through the post-productivist thought of Kathi Weeks (2011, The problem with work: feminism, marxism, antiwork politics, and postwork imaginaries. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press) and a critical discursive examination of care representations made by submitters to two parliamentary inquiries into the Australian “pre-employment” programme ParentsNext—a labour market activation programme that targets single-parent caregivers “at risk of welfare dependency.” The paper contributes a critical and multimodal approach to better conceptualise competing framings of care's value and the ways in which the state can (un)burden caregiving.

To better understand the discrepancy between women's motherhood aspirations and outcomes, this study explored the impact of socio-cultural structures of gender. Taking a qualitative phenomenological approach, interviews were conducted with 24 Victorian women aged between 25 and 45 years. Three themes resulted from data analysis, reflecting the meaning women gave to their lived experiences: Motherhood is central to womanhood; motherhood ambivalence; and the tension of navigating motherhood and career aspirations. Most women aspired to be valued as women who could balance motherhood with a rewarding career. However, hegemonic gender, particularly in the workplace, continues to ensure that these roles remain incompatible, forcing women to anticipate career pauses, changes and/or absences. Overall, these themes demonstrated how socio-cultural structures of hegemonic gender continue to shape women's lived experiences of gender inequality and constrain their ability to achieve their aspirations for their future lives.

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.

Pathways into and the impact of homelessness on young people have been extensively explored. There is less emphasis on young people's perspectives of the interventions designed to assist them to avoid or exit homelessness. This study undertook a systematic review of the youth homelessness interventions literature that included the perspectives of young people experiencing these interventions. Our review identified five key approaches as useful in assisting young people to exit or avoid homelessness, namely (1) the centrality of relationships, (2) a youth-centred approach, (3) integrated and multi-disciplinary service provision, (4) a beyond housing approach and (5) strength-based therapeutic models/interventions. The review enhances the capacity of practitioners to provide supportive and contextually situated services to young people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. However, further research is required to understand the bundles of interconnected practices within these approaches that are performed by workers and young people to address homelessness and risk.

Codesign is an increasingly common term in Indigenous education policy settings. However, it is unclear exactly what it means and how it is enacted. This systematic review examined 15 papers relevant to codesign in the context of Indigenous education, clearly distinguishing between codesign as a process and a method. These papers provide a snapshot of the various ways codesign is conceptualised, enacted as a process and evaluated in Indigenous education settings. In this paper, we respond to these three areas of codesign to inform a more nuanced framework to help policymakers and practitioners in the future.