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This paper examines the strategies that speakers employ in response to children's crying in the remote Aboriginal community of Wadeye, in northern Australia. Drawing on spontaneous interactions amongst Murrinhpatha speaking families, we analyse instances of crying by children aged 0;6 to 8;11 years, and the ways in which they are responded to. Results indicate that adult Murrinhpatha speakers manage children's distress through a variety of verbal and non-verbal strategies, and multimodal combinations thereof. The selection of strategies directly relates to the developmental stage of the crier. Adult caregivers respond differently to the crying of infants, of children who can walk unaided but are producing little if any language, of children who can talk intelligibly, and children more advanced again who have a degree of social independence. In the particular strategies that caregivers apply, they guide children towards a developmentally appropriate self-sufficiency. Caregivers encourage autonomy in ways that reflect a child's current abilities, be it physical, linguistic, emotional, or social. By exploring responses to crying in an under-researched cultural and linguistic context, this paper offers a unique perspective on the pragmatics of managing distress and what this reveals about local constructions of personhood within the context of carer-child interaction. • Analysis examines responses to children's crying in a remote Australian Aboriginal community. • Methods utilize multimodal analysis of spontaneous crying events in early childhood. • Findings show how caregiver responses are situated in relation to local expectations of children across developmental stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the strategies that speakers employ in response to children's crying in the remote Aboriginal community of Wadeye, in northern Australia. Drawing on spontaneous interactions amongst Murrinhpatha speaking families, we analyse instances of crying by children aged 0;6 to 8;11 years, and the ways in which they are responded to. Results indicate that adult Murrinhpatha speakers manage children's distress through a variety of verbal and non-verbal strategies, and multimodal combinations thereof. The selection of strategies directly relates to the developmental stage of the crier. Adult caregivers respond differently to the crying of infants, of children who can walk unaided but are producing little if any language, of children who can talk intelligibly, and children more advanced again who have a degree of social independence. In the particular strategies that caregivers apply, they guide children towards a developmentally appropriate self-sufficiency. Caregivers encourage autonomy in ways that reflect a child's current abilities, be it physical, linguistic, emotional, or social. By exploring responses to crying in an under-researched cultural and linguistic context, this paper offers a unique perspective on the pragmatics of managing distress and what this reveals about local constructions of personhood within the context of carer-child interaction. • Analysis examines responses to children's crying in a remote Australian Aboriginal community. • Methods utilize multimodal analysis of spontaneous crying events in early childhood. • Findings show how caregiver responses are situated in relation to local expectations of children across developmental stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the wellbeing effects of the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires, the deadliest wildfire event in Australia's known history. Using subjective wellbeing data from a nationally representative longitudinal study and adopting an individual fixed-effects approach, our results identify a significant reduction in life satisfaction for individuals residing in close proximity of the wildfires. The negative wellbeing effect is valued at A$52,300. This corresponds to 80% of the average annual income of a full-time employed adult in the state of Victoria. The satisfaction domain most negatively affected is how safe the person feels, and the group most affected are people with low social support. A delayed adverse mental health effect is also identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the impact of economic insecurity on the mental health of Australian adults. Taking microdata from the 2001–2011 HILDA panel survey, we develop a conceptually diverse set of insecurity measures and explore their relationships with the SF-36 mental health index. By using fixed effects models that control for unobservable heterogeneity we produce estimates that correct for endogeneity more thoroughly than previous works. Our results show that exposure to economic risks has small but consistently detrimental mental health effects. The main contribution of the paper however comes from the breadth of risks that are found to be harmful. Job insecurity, financial dissatisfaction, reductions and volatility in income, an inability to meet standard expenditures and a lack of access to emergency funds all adversely affect health. This suggests that the common element of economic insecurity (rather than idiosyncratic phenomena associated with any specific risk) is likely to be hazardous. Our preferred estimates indicate that a standard deviation shock to economic insecurity lowers an individual's mental health score by about 1.4 percentage points. If applied uniformly across the Australian population such a shock would increase the morbidity rate of mental disorders by about 1.7%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The study shows how mentoring programs create supportive communities for youth. • Mentors felt more prepared to support youth after training & practice as a mentor. • This helps to illustrate group- or community-level benefits from mentoring. • The paper shows what a "mentor rich" community may look like. Having a trusted adult in one's life can be a key support to young people in making and managing the transitions of young adulthood, however not all young people have access to such an adult. Formal youth mentoring programs aim to fill this gap for individual young people, but there is less understanding of the capacity of such programs to contribute to community-building and skill-building, so that there are more adults with the skills and sensibilities to support young people generally and be trusted adults for them, wherever they come across them in their communities. Drawing on a qualitative study of 15 mentors in an Australian youth mentoring program for high school students, this paper therefore examines mentors' perceptions of the capacity of the program to help cultivate supportive communities for young people, beyond those specifically mentored. It does this by examining how the mentors expected or anticipated applying the mentoring skills they learnt through the program to the support of other young people in the future. The findings show that, with some limits, mentors perceived that the program built their capacity to better support young people in the future, including young people beyond the program participants, such as those in their families, personal communities, workplaces and other volunteering contexts. These findings highlight that beyond contributing to youth support at an individual-level, youth mentoring programs may also hold some benefits at a group- or community-level, at least from the perspective of mentors. Implications for youth mentoring research, program delivery and funding are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we focus on the perspectives and practical needs of a group of adult immigrants from language backgrounds other than English as they encounter the pragmatic demands of communicating in the workplace and in the community. Drawing on a subset of data from a large-scale longitudinal study of recent adult immigrants with low levels of English, we explore what they notice about the pragmatics of communication in Australia and the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic skills they need to ‘fit in’ and function successfully through English. The pragmatic issues they identify encompass a range of sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic issues not normally addressed in interlanguage research, including the importance of small talk and how to participate in it, the role and interpretation of informality and indirectness, different perceptions of sociability and the ‘need to be nice’, recognition of the need to be pragmatically flexible, and differences between the language taught in the classroom and that used every day in the community. We consider the implications for language classes in an ESL setting and suggest some activities designed to help immigrants prepare for the transition from classroom language learner to competent language user in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The principle of evaluative reasoning is a neglected area in educational research. • The applied principle provides findings for program refinement and improvement. • PSE programs can bridge gaps in work experience opportunities for adults with DS. • PSE programs can foster more inclusive education and work settings. • Speech therapy in PSE programs can facilitate transitions to a workplace setting. Low employment rates of individuals with intellectual disabilities in Australia stem from apprehensions about their abilities to engage in work, and employers' low confidence in hiring them in paid positions. Drawing on principles of evaluative reasoning, this paper reports on findings from a mixed-methods formative evaluation. It was conducted to understand the need for a two-year Education-to-Work training program, the quality of its content, and the views that 8 parents, 5 facilitators, and 4 students had about changes attributable to the program after its first year. Program performance was assessed against the quality standards of excellent, good, satisfactory, marginal, and needs improvement. Findings from the evaluation highlighted the potential usefulness of post-secondary education (PSE) transitioning programs to secure longer term employment, for adults with Down syndrome. Specific recommendations are made to improve the quality of the program, and abstractions gleaned from the study are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]