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This article brings together a number of key issues that emerge in research around the problem of teacher shortages in hard-to-staff schools. It offers a broad overview of the hard-to-staff schooling sector as discussed in recent academic literature and provides a context-specific overview of the literature around workforce shortages in hard-to-staff schools with relevancy for high poverty contexts. In line with Williams et al. (2022) position on "Local Strategies, Global Inspiration," this paper focuses on the problem of teacher shortages in hard-to-staff schools in Australia while looking to both Australian and broader Anglosphere literature (p. 120) to reconsider responses to teacher recruitment and retention. The paper begins with a survey of the current state of this issue of workforce shortages in hard-to-staff schools in Australia. Turning our attention to literature from both Australia and Anglosphere countries, the summary then focuses on the specific initiatives and mechanisms employed for recruiting and retaining teachers in hard-to-staff schools, particularly the organisational contributions of Initial Teacher Education that support recruitment into hard-to-staff schools. The article concludes by highlighting limitations and critiques of hard-to-staff initiatives in the literature to inform policy and organisational considerations when addressing the issue of teacher shortages going forward.

Academic underachievement of students from disadvantaged backgrounds is an ongoing and unresolved problem. Schools serving vulnerable communities often fail to meaningfully engage their students who are often exposed to significant family and environmental adversities. However, where the educational landscape is overwhelmed with neoliberal processes of accountability and testing, education generally comes to be understood as a cognitive process with little attention to the bodily or affective dimensions of learning. This paper draws on new theoretical ideas in affect and embodiment to build a case for an embodied, affective and creative pedagogy for students who live with poverty and adversity. Specifically, I report on research that investigates how two teachers utilised "Creative and Body-based" (CBL) provocations to redesign curriculum for disadvantaged students in their sites. In utilising the analysis of two narrative portraits, I highlight examples of bodily affectivity as well as affective pedagogical practices that impact on students' capacity to learn and teachers' capacity to teach. Analysis suggests that embodied and creative approaches enable new forms of communication and learner identities through bodies, senses and imaginings. Such approaches provide much needed affective conditions that 'hook' students in, encourage dialogue and help them to realise their potential as learners. Outcomes of this work signal an epistemological and pedagogical shift toward understanding bodies and creativity as agents of learning and knowledge production. By engaging with notions of a 'learning body' potential exists to challenge neoliberal practices in complex classrooms and support young people to foster stronger connections, hope and a re-inspired aspiration to learn.

Purpose: Compared to men, older women have poorer mental health and are more vulnerable to poverty, especially when living alone. However, few studies have examined how gender, marital status and poverty are inter-related and are associated with mental health. This study examines the gendered associations between relative poverty, marital status and mental health in older Australians., Methods: Drawing on 17 waves of the HILDA Survey, fixed-effects longitudinal regression analysis was utilised to examine the association between: (1) relative poverty (< 50% median household income) and mental health (MHI-5); (2) marital status and poverty, in a cohort of Australians aged 65 + years. We then examined effect modification of the association between relative poverty and mental health by marital status., Results: Within-person associations, stratified by gender, showed that women in relative poverty reported poorer mental health than when not in relative poverty, however no association was observed for men. Being divorced/separated was associated with increased odds of relative poverty for women, but not men. Widowhood was strongly associated with relative poverty in women, and also among men, albeit a smaller estimate was observed for men. There was no evidence of effect modification of the relationship between relative poverty and mental health by marital status for either men or women., Conclusion: This study provides evidence that relative poverty is a major determinant of mental health in older Australian women. Addressing gender inequities in lifetime savings, as well as in division of acquired wealth post marital loss, may help reduce these disparities.

The Chameleon Educational Policy Reforms' (CEPR) 25th anniversary was celebrated at the Global General Assembly with the 2075 Decennial Analysis of Schooling (DecAS) announcement of the attainment of a benefit-cost ratio of >1.0. The attainment of a global positive net value of education is directly linked to the educational reforms established to 'provide the right access to the right education for all people' (CEPR, 2050). The Chameleon reforms, informed by The Algorithm, produce policies that instantly adapt to the learning environment and needs of students. Barriers that effect students' learning are removed, in stark contrast to historic processes that viewed students as the barrier to be removed from learning environments. The case studies presented in this paper are guided by three questions: 'Where are we now?', 'How did we get here?', and 'Are we there yet?'. Questioning the 'here and now', directs a look back from educational engagement currently governed by the CEPR to key moments and movements in the attainment of past grand policy announcements that no child be left behind to live in poverty. And 'yet', leads to critical consideration of the ongoing engagement with The Algorithm. Artifacts detailing the 2045 commencement of annual donations from the richest two percent to fully fund global education remain sealed. The results of the annual donations are, however, publicly available; and some would say exploited (Gerve, 2072). Achieving self-sustainable economic cost-benefit status for the CEPR may release the Donators from those agreements and untether society from the Donators.

The current research investigates whether higher economic inequality disproportionately intensifies the financial hardship of low-income individuals. We propose that higher economic inequality increases financial hardship for low-income individuals by reducing their ability to rely on their community as a buffer against financial difficulties. This may occur, in part, because a frayed community buffer reduces low-income individuals' propensity to seek informal financial support from others. We provide empirical support across eight studies (sample size N = 1,029,900) from the United States, Australia and rural Uganda, through correlational and experimental data, as well as an instrumental variable analysis. On average across our studies, a 1 s.d. increase in economic inequality is associated with an increase of financial hardship among low-income individuals of 0.10 s.d. We discuss the implications of these results for policies aimed to help people living in poverty buffer against the adverse effects higher economic inequality imposes on them.

Microfinance has been recognized globally as a poverty alleviating strategy and particularly as a gender equality enhancing approach. There have been immense, intense and nuanced debates in the field of international development, feminist studies and comparative social policy regarding the role of microfinance in addressing gendered poverty. This paper provides an account of these debates and the conceptual and theoretical perspectives underpinning them. These debates are used as a way to frame the dominant understandings of the relationship between gendered poverty and education in the context of microfinance policies and practices. These global discourses are interrogated against particular representations of the same by consumers of microfinance. In other words, employing narratives of 27 in-depth interviews with consumers of microfinance and their kin from India and Australia, the paper highlights how global discourses are contested in the local everyday lives of poor women and men. By doing so, the paper calls for re-casting educational goals, in poverty alleviation and gender equality strategies, as moving beyond access for women to expanding freedoms of women and men.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue on poverty, schooling and research and to tease out and discuss some of the concepts that this kind of writing and research work provokes. We frame the issue, briefly introduce each paper and then discuss "keywords" in four sections: living/knowledge, justice/connection, weakness/education, and affect/anxiety.

This paper describes the aims, origins and principles of the "Australian National Exceptional Teaching for Disadvantaged Schools" programme and reflects on findings from its first eight years. As a well-established, mainstream university-based initial teacher-education programme designed to prepare social justice teachers for low socio-economic or high-poverty schools, NETDS has had significant impact on recruiting and retaining high-performing teachers in the schools that need them most. In this paper we discuss how it works, but also outline some of the complexities that arose in trying to design a teacher-education programme with equity at the centre and some of the changes we made along the way.

This paper examines the rise of social enterprise in relation (and in response) to the contemporary nexus between education and work. Contextualising social enterprise within the broader trend toward private influences in education, the paper explores how diffuse networks driven by both market ideals and a social conscience are shaping new sites of education and work on the margins. Drawing on in-depth research undertaken on the experiences of homeless street press sellers of the social enterprise "The Big Issue," I bring focused attention to the lived experience of these transformations in policy and practice. The analysis reveals how entrepreneurialism intersects with precarious poverty to frame sellers' cultivation of their skills and techniques as enterprising workers on the margins.

Students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds often contend with financial issues that have the potential to impact significantly on their success in higher education. Research has shown that students from low SES backgrounds often find themselves under economic pressure to prioritise paid work over their education. Few studies have explored the financial realities and challenges facing students who are from both low SES backgrounds and who are studying in regional areas of Australia. This paper presents some of the key findings from a recent national study undertaken by the six universities in the Australian Regional Universities Network (RUN). The study set out to explore approaches and strategies to facilitate the success of students from low SES backgrounds at regional universities. In interviews with 69 students from low SES backgrounds and 26 stakeholders recognised as experts in the field of facilitating success for these students, financial challenges were found to be one of the most significant barriers to student success. Documenting these insights, this paper has the potential to inform academics, institutional leaders and policy makers alike in their approaches to mitigating the financial challenges for these students and to facilitate their success.

For teacher educators, one challenge is how to prepare pre-service teachers to engage more deeply with students in high-poverty communities, some of whom they will ultimately teach. Addressing community engagement requires an institutionally embedded strategy to involve Indigenous, refugee, poor, and other historically vulnerable communities in central, rather than tokenistic, ways. This paper reports on the first conceptual stages of a framework for an Australian community-engaged pathway into teaching based on research into how teachers can work for and alongside under-represented families from high-poverty communities.

This paper focuses on an Australian university short-term study abroad programme in India part-funded by the Australian Government New Colombo Plan -- an initiative that facilitates transformative people-to-people encounters. Our chief interest is extending our reach, through photo diaries and interviews, to understand how participants' experiences are transformative, how their knowledge production practices contribute towards constructions of global citizenship, and where opportunities to shape future participants' learning may exist. We explore decolonial possibilities for short-term study abroad under New Colombo, contextualising our inquiries historically while exploring the concepts of global citizenship and decoloniality -- ideas that provide a framework for analysis. Although short-term ventures are problematic for enabling two-way benefits, we contemplate how such programmes may still offer space for moving toward decoloniality.

Primarily developed as an alternative to narrow measures of well-being such as utility and resources, Amartya Sen's capability approach places strong emphasis on people's substantive opportunities. As a broad normative framework, the capability approach has become a valuable tool for understanding and evaluating social arrangements (e.g. education policies and development programmes) in terms of individuals' effective freedoms to achieve valuable beings and doings. This paper explores the recent emergence of "capability" in Australian education policy, specifically in the "Australia in the Asian Century" White Paper. We explore capability as a framing device and reveal how its various meanings are at odds with the scholarly literature, specifically Sen's conception of capability and its implications for social justice in and through education. The analysis shows that the social justice intent of a capability approach appears to be overtaken in the White Paper by an emphasis on outcomes, performance and functionings that seek to serve the nation's economic interests more than the interests of students, especially the disadvantaged.

This paper articulates lessons learned about without-prejudice teaching and learning from a researcher-practitioner who has experience in both developing and developed contexts. Developing countries often look to Western countries for education standards, but Western countries rarely look to developing contexts where theory is being generated about divisions and access to education. This comparative study integrates lessons learned from both contexts. It uses an auto-ethnographic methodology and draws upon phenomenographic research and critical theory. The need for "emic" (insider) without-prejudice teaching and learning practices is articulated in three lessons: 1. culture privileges for or prejudices against students' access to education; 2. beliefs systems allow or deny access to learning opportunities and environments; and 3. student--teacher relationship can interrupt prejudice.

Basil Bernstein wrote extensively about official educational knowledge, pedagogic recontextualisation and pedagogic identities. However, his theoretical oeuvre tended to focus on the textual rather than the affective aspects of policy recontextualisation. In addition, his work on the realisation of official pedagogic identity positions at the level of schooling institutions remained in an embryonic form, not fully developed. In this paper, I elaborate on the affective dimensions of policy recontextualisation by exploring institutional defences, namely teacher anxieties, produced by data-driven performativity. I draw on data from two research partnership projects undertaken with schools servicing vulnerable, high poverty communities in Australia to develop my ideas. Firstly, I explore how institutions develop defensive structures to deal with the anxieties of staff working with young children living in poverty. Secondly, I explore the affective dimensions of dealing with data-driven performativity policies by a school leadership team over the period of two research projects (2009-2016). I examine the professional anxieties induced by data performativity in the early days, and then explore how a research intervention re-circulated affects and enabled the staff to develop more ambivalent relations to data.

This paper is motivated by a shared concern over the apparent lack of inclusion of socially critical research in educational policy intended to address inequitable outcomes from schooling. We recognise that while this is partly (perhaps mainly) a political problem, an effective response by socially critical scholars must also take into account the mechanics of research/policy relationships. We need to understand who else is operating in the contest for ideas, how and why they use research, and how their practices promote and reinforce some types of knowledge and some messages while others are excluded. One example is the work of think tanks. To gain insight into these issues, we construct and consider "activity profiles" of two think tanks operating to influence policy around socio-economic inequalities and education. These suggest some points of interest for researchers working in that same area: points about the differences between different think tanks and about their strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis the policy process, compared with those of academics. In response, we argue that researchers need to develop a pedagogical not just a critical disposition, and propose a number of potential strategies they could adopt. In order to have an impact, academics must find ways of communicating beyond their scholar peers, in forms that are accessible and digestible, while maintaining the hall marks of robust, peer-reviewed and deeply evidence-based knowledge.

The enduring nature of the problem of inequality in education suggests that new ways of understanding and ameliorating it are needed. Non-representational ontology is yielding new insights in other fields but is yet to gain traction in education. The requisite ontological shift would attend to inequality as a specific material effect of practices of knowing, rather than a social, natural, or discursive reality requiring representation. In this paper, we investigate the potential of such a shift to advance our fundamental commitment to social change through equity and justice. Drawing mainly upon the work of Karen Barad, we offer a reconceptualistion of educational inequality as a doing, not a thing, which becomes meaningful as it is defined by the circumstances required to measure it. We re-examine data collected during a recently completed longitudinal study of schools in the northern-rustbelt-suburbs of Adelaide, specifically the phenomenon of teaching literacy in the classrooms of two teachers in one school in our completed study.

This paper builds on feminist elaborations of Bernstein's code theory to engage in a series of thought experiments with interview data produced during a co-inquiry design-based research intervention project. It presents three accounts of thinking/writing with data. Our purpose in presenting three different accounts of interview data is to demonstrate the relation between theory and empirical data. In the first two accounts, interview data are interpreted and performed through the lens of theory. By contrast, in the third account attention is paid to the ways in which care is practised not only in terms of policy enactment, but also research enactment. Empirical data are not moulded to fit generalisable theoretical frameworks. Rather, empirical data push back on theoretical concepts in a collaborative thought experiment.

Higher education is understood as essential to enabling social mobility. Research and policy have centred on access to university, but recently attention has turned to the journey of social mobility itself--and its costs. Long-distance or "extreme" social mobility journeys particularly require analysis. This paper examines journeys of first-in-family university students in the especially high-status degree of medicine, through interviews with 21 students at an Australian medical school. Three themes are discussed: (1) the roots of participants' social mobility journeys; (2) how sociocultural difference is experienced and negotiated within medical school; and (3) how participants think about their professional identities and futures. Students described getting to medical school "the hard way", and emphasised the different backgrounds and attitudes of themselves and their wealthier peers. Many felt like "imposters", using self-deprecating language to highlight their lack of "fit" in the privileged world of medicine. However, such language also reflected resistance to middle-class norms and served to create solidarity with community of origin, and, importantly, patients. Rather than narratives of loss, students' stories reflect a tactical refinement of self and "incorporation" of certain middle-class attributes, alongside an appreciation of the worth their "difference" brings to their new destination, the medical profession.

At the present, human capital theory (HCT) and neuroscience reasoning are dominant frameworks in early childhood education and care (ECEC) worldwide. Popular since the 1960s, HCT has provided an economic understanding of human beings and offered strategies to manage the population with the promise of bringing improvements to nations. Neuroscience arguments added new ways to regulate human beings, and thus another "hopeful ethos" and investment into the future. In this paper, we examine different positive, life-improving, and hopeful takes on early childhood as forms of biopolitical government, which are closely related to the enhancement of individual capacities and the shifting problems of the neoliberal state. Curiously, this process, grounded on biological fatalism and naturalizing arguments, has led to new class categorizations and ways of social discrimination. We hence argue that even though a "hopeful ethos" is offered through the (bio)politicization of neurosciences, it has led to eugenic arguments by re-inscribing social and economic differences into differences in brain architecture. Finally, we aim to demonstrate that ECEC policy offers an example of how current policies govern through scientific evidence and softer forms of "government by example", at the same time moving the government of population into the home, and with that privatizing and personalizing self-investment.

In Australia, numerous reviews and inquiries have documented concerns about inadequate access to, and the quality of, aged care. Despite those concerns, research is yet to appraise fully how care needs are assessed, prioritised, and met or left unmet. This paper asks two interrelated questions: (1) How should we conceptualise and measure unmet care need and care inequalities among older people? (2) What are the policy parameters for assessing needs, prioritising access to support and monitoring quality in aged care in Australia? Key insights from academic literature are used to critically review Australian policy documents describing rights, assessments, prioritisation, quality standards and performance indicators for the aged care sector. Using the concepts of care inequalities and care poverty, the paper develops a framework for understanding and measuring needs and unmet needs in aged care, and for encompassing fundamental and valued aspects of life for older people, their carers and their care network. The paper argues that the concept of care poverty opens the space to discuss what level of unmet need and inequality in access to aged care in any society may be considered intolerable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across national contexts, in the attempt to develop and buttress "knowledge economies", increasing pressure is placed on the need for flexible lifelong learners capable of constant knowledge and skills renewal. In this paper, I explore the impact of this broader sociopolitical context on the policy approach to poverty and, in particular, homelessness in Australia. Examining the ways in which education and learning for adults are increasingly at the centre of public policies, I trace the uses of education and learning in homelessness policy. Contextualising this within a consideration of recent shift towards a "skills agenda" in the adult education sector, I argue that the purported power of education in homelessness policy must be understood in light of structural inequalities in the labour market and in the society more broadly.

Engaging students in effective technology use and literacy learning is an ongoing challenge, particularly for students who are impacted by poverty. Exemplary teaching and teachers' pedagogical choices play a critical role in addressing this challenge. This paper illustrates the practices of teachers, identified to be exemplary in engaging students in low socio-economic status (SES) locations, with a focus on their use of technology and associated literacy practices. The data is drawn from a large-scale study of the practices of 28 exemplary teachers in low SES primary and secondary schools in New South Wales, Australia. Using the Fair Go student engagement framework, we illustrate the ways these teachers used high cognitive, high affective and high operative strategies with technology to build students' discipline and literacy knowledge, to scaffold their learning and to create a nurturing environment for literacy learning. Technology-literacy markers are presented as a pedagogical guide that draws on exemplary practice by teachers in a range of low SES settings. The analysis presented also provides forward-thinking input to governments and policymakers for re-conceptualizing educational technology for students in these contexts.

Quality early care and education (ECE) presents an unparalleled opportunity to avert disadvantage and promote children's development. Mealtimes are essential daily routines, yet are often overlooked in research on ECE quality. This paper crystallises a composite case study of ECE mealtimes in highly disadvantaged communities by combining Departing Radically in Academic Writing (DRAW) methodology with parent surveys, scorings of educator‐child interactions (inCLASS), and field notes. Poverty is perpetuated in these centres: children do not have enough food, and educator‐dictated feeding practices restrict children's opportunities to exercise their agency and learn. Systemic policy action is needed to address poverty in ECE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early childhood education (ECE) and development is internationally recognised as important to child health and wellbeing and to enabling children to become healthy productive adults. This paper analyses Australian ECE policy current in 2019. It uses the institutional framework of ideas, actors and institutions to determine the extent to which ECE policy recognises and acts on social determinants of health and health equity. We found that the policies supported integrated approaches, intersectoral collaboration and partnerships with parents and families. Evidence was important in formulating the ideas underpinning ECE policy. ECE was widely recognised as a social determinant of health, and the impacts of other social determinants of health and health equity were acknowledged. The ECE policies tended to be future-focused and not respond to social determinants that influence children and their families in the present time. The policies lacked strategies to address social determinants, or to engage with other sectors for this purpose. While some policies focused on breaking the cycle of disadvantage, they did not explore potential policy responses to pathways from intergenerational disadvantage to reduce poverty. Despite this, Australian ECE policy has achieved significant coherence, with shared understandings of the purpose and benefits of ECE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia there is limited understanding of the scale and nature of energy hardship or poverty. Energy poverty remains a concept with no clear definition and therefore no clear objectives, targets, metrics for data collection nor institutions to monitor and report on. Europe, in the last decade, has gone from limited public recognition of, and policy action on, energy poverty, to now having sophisticated quantitative measurement and monitoring tools, and institutional governance arrangements that promote transparency and accountability. In this paper, drawing on the European experience, we focus attention upon the measures and indicators of energy poverty and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. We propose institutional options for understanding and tackling these problems in the context of Australia's energy transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a growth in Australian school-based nurses to address the inequities confronted by vulnerable students and school populations. Failure to address inequities can be evidenced in intergenerational poverty, poorer health and educational attainment and diminished life opportunities. School-based nurses are ideally located to advocate for public health policies and programs that address social determinants that detrimentally affect the health of school populations. However, school-based nurses can confront professional and speciality challenges in extending their efforts beyond individual student advocacy to effect change at the school population level. Guidance is required to redress this situation. This paper describes public health advocacy, the professional and speciality advocacy roles of school-based nurses and the barriers they confront in advocating for the health of school populations and strategies that can be used by key stakeholders to enhance school-based nursing public health advocacy efforts. School-based nurses who are competent, enabled and supported public health advocates are required if we are to achieve substantial and sustained health equity and social justice outcomes for vulnerable school populations. School-based nurses are ideally located to advocate for services and policies to address the health inequities experienced by vulnerable school populations. However, these nurses can confront barriers that limit their capacity to embed health advocacy into their practice and to meaningfully effect change. Guidance is required to redress this situation. School-based nurses who are competent and supported health advocates are required to achieve substantial and sustained health equity and social justice outcomes for vulnerable students and school populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Early reading success is predicated on language and pre‐literacy skills. Children who are behind their peers in language and pre‐literacy development before formal schooling are less likely to be proficient beginner readers, and difficulties may persist throughout primary school and beyond. We know children experiencing adversity are at greater risk of early language and pre‐literacy difficulties; we do not know the prevalence of these difficulties in an Australian adversity context. Aims: To investigate the prevalence and co‐occurrence of language and pre‐literacy difficulties in a cohort of Australian 5‐year‐old children experiencing social adversity. Methods & Procedures: Data were drawn from a large Australian community‐based trial of nurse home visiting (right@home), which aimed to support women experiencing social adversity from pregnancy until their child turned 2 years of age. Social adversity was determined by two of more risk factors: young pregnancy, not living with another adult, no support, poorer health, current smoker, long‐term illness, anxious mood, not finishing high school, no household income and no previous employment. Children whose mothers were enrolled in the control group (receiving usual maternal and child healthcare) were included in the current study (n = 359). Language and pre‐literacy skills were measured at age 5 using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamental Preschool—Second Edition (CELF‐P2) and the School Entry Alphabetic and Phonological Awareness Readiness Test (SEAPART). Language difficulties were defined as ≥ 1.25 standard deviations (SD) below the Australian normative mean on CELF‐P2 Core Language scores. Pre‐literacy difficulties were defined as children scoring in the Beginner (versus Developing or Competent) criterion‐referenced level on the SEAPART First Sound Identification and/or Alphabet Letter Identification subtests. Co‐occurrence of language and pre‐literacy difficulties was also determined. Outcomes & Results: At the 5‐year follow‐up, 201/359 (56%) children were assessed (mean age = 5.1 years, SD = 0.1). Mean Core Language score for this cohort (91.8, SD = 15.9) was 0.54 SD below the normative mean (100, SD = 15). The proportion of children presenting with language difficulties was 24.9%. Regarding pre‐literacy skills, 43.8% of children were 'Beginner' for identifying first sounds and 58.6% for identifying alphabet letters/sounds. There was also considerable overlap whereby 76.7% of children with language difficulties also exhibited pre‐literacy difficulties. Conclusions & Implications: This is the first empirical Australian‐based study highlighting the high prevalence and co‐occurrence of language and pre‐literacy difficulties in preschool children experiencing social adversity. Clinicians should be aware of co‐morbid language and pre‐literacy difficulties in disadvantaged populations and consider both areas during assessment and intervention planning. What this paper addsWhat is already known on the subjectThe prevalence of language and literacy difficulties is substantially higher in cohorts experiencing social adversity when compared with more advantaged families. There is some evidence that adversity also contributes to pre‐literacy difficulties, but less is known here.What this paper adds to existing knowledgeThis study presents new prevalence data showing high rates of language and pre‐literacy difficulties for 5‐year‐old children experiencing adversity within an Australian context. It is the first to explore these skills in a large cohort of pre‐schoolers recruited from community settings in Australia.What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?In this cohort experiencing adversity, most children who presented with language difficulties likewise exhibited pre‐literacy difficulties. This concordance reflects how early oral language and pre‐literacy skills develop together. Clinicians should assess both skills in preschool populations—especially those working with children experiencing adversity—to ensure all children have strong foundations to become proficient beginner readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood poverty matters—not only because of the disturbingly high number of children affected, but also because of the deleterious impact on their human flourishing, both now and in the future. Effectively addressing child poverty requires clear identification of the nature and causes of the problem, as well as an understanding of how it is experienced. This paper aims to deepen understanding of child poverty, by drawing on key elements of a capability approach, rights-based approaches, and feminist standpoint theory, and empirical research. It is grounded in the findings of rights-based, participatory research with children aged between 7 and 15 years in Indonesia and in Australia, which cast new light on the dimensions of poverty that are most egregious from a child-driven standpoint. It presents a three-dimensional typology of material, opportunity, and relational poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding access to solar photovoltaics (PV) may help to reduce the incidence of energy poverty. Yet, little is known about the strength and magnitude of this relationship. This paper uses cross‐sectional survey data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to conduct a retrospective analysis of the effects of having rooftop solar PV for Australian households. As the main identification challenges are the potential for omitted variables and reverse causality, we present results for regressions controlling for potential confounders and also use an instrumental variable approach. The study finds that having solar PV is associated with a large decrease in the likelihood of experiencing energy poverty based on objective indicators that compare household incomes and energy bills. Having solar PV is also associated with a reduction in self‐reported difficulty in paying bills on time, although this effect is less robust across estimations. The findings could inform future policies for promoting residential solar PV through an improved understanding of likely impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The No Germs on Me (NGoM) Social Marketing Campaign to promote handwashing with soap to reduce high rates of infection among children living in remote Australian Aboriginal communities has been ongoing since 2007. Recently three new television commercials were developed as an extension of the NGoM program. This paper reports on the mass media component of this program, trialling an evaluation design informed by the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB).Methods: A survey questionnaire taking an ecological approach and based on the principals and constructs of the TPB was developed. Surveys were completed in six discrete Aboriginal communities immediately before and on completion of four weeks intensive televising of the three new commercials.Results: Across the six communities access in the home to a television that worked ranged from 49 to 83 % (n = 415). Seventy-seven per cent (n = 319) of participants reported having seen one or more of the new commercials. Levels of acceptability and comprehension of the content of the commercials was high (97 % n = 308). Seventy-five per cent (n = 651) of participants reported they would buy more soap, toilet paper and facial tissues if these were not so expensive in their communities. For TPB constructs demonstrated to have good internal reliability the findings were mixed and these need to be interpreted with caution due to limitations in the study design.Conclusions: Cultural, social-economic and physical barriers in remote communities make it challenging to promote adults and children wash their hands with soap and maintain clean faces such that these behaviours become habit. Low levels of access to a television in the home illustrate the extreme level of disadvantage experienced in these communities. Highlighting that social marketing programs have the potential to increase disadvantage if expensive items such as television sets are needed to gain access to information. This trial of a theory informed evaluation design allowed for new and rich information to be obtained about community members' beliefs, attitudes and intentions towards teaching and assisting children so safe hygiene behaviours become habit. Findings will support an evidence-based approach is taken to plan future NGoM program activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Counting poverty measures have gained prominence in the analysis of multidimensional poverty in recent decades. Poverty orderings based on these measures typically depend on methodological choices regarding individual poverty functions, poverty cut-offs, and dimensional weights whose impact on poverty rankings is often not well understood. In this paper we propose new dominance conditions that allow the analyst to evaluate the robustness of poverty comparisons to those choices. These conditions provide an approach to evaluating the sensitivity of poverty orderings superior to the common approach of considering a restricted and arbitrary set of indices, cut-offs, and weights. The new criteria apply to a broad class of counting poverty measures widely used in empirical analysis of poverty in developed and developing countries including the multidimensional headcount and the adjusted headcount ratios. We illustrate these methods with an application to time-trends in poverty in Australia and cross-regional poverty in Peru. Our results highlight the potentially large sensitivity of poverty orderings based on counting measures and the importance of evaluating the robustness of results when performing poverty comparisons across time and regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonialist views of Indigenous bodies and sexualities continue to affect Indigenous peoples worldwide. For Indigenous Australians, this burden has resulted in repression and oppression of power, sex and desire. Focusing on the sexual intimacies of Indigenous Australian women, this paper provides an account of the dominant Australian historical discourses, finding that Indigenous women were viewed as exotic, erotic, something to be desired, yet simultaneously something to be feared. Our sexualities were described as savage, promiscuous and primitive and we were often viewed as prostitutes with our voices and views constrained by patriarchal and imperial regimes of power. But within this context, Indigenous women fought back through both individual and collective acts of agency. This paper demonstrates how Indigenous Australian women's agency not as a new phenomenon but rather as a position that disrupts the popular discourses of exploitation and victimhood that have been persistently perpetrated against Indigenous women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides three case studies of initiatives developed to improve educational opportunities in vulnerable urban communities. The cities in the three countries involved, Australia, the United States, and Spain, are different in many ways; however, each has persistent and entrenched inequalities between the educational opportunities and outcomes of historically marginalised students and their mainstream counterparts. Here, we focus on conceptualising and describing urban examples of poverty from three different countries, and reporting on programs and strategies aimed at enhancing the quality of teaching in schools in high-poverty areas. By providing and comparing the three cases, we aim to contribute to broader understandings of poverty in three locations and how teachers and schools in high-poverty urban settings can re-think their practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to report on the findings of a qualitative study that explored the views of 53 service providers assisting Indigenous young people (known in Australia as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth) transitioning from out-of-home care (OOHC) in Australia. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative approach was adopted involving semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 53 representatives of state and territory government departments, non-government organisation service providers and Aboriginal community-controlled organisations (ACCOs) across Australia. The project was designed to gain the perspectives of those working within the system and their views on how it interacts with Indigenous care leavers. Interview questions aimed to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of the leaving care support systems available to this cohort, as well as the key challenges facing service providers in supporting them. Finally, the study aimed to make recommendations for policy development in this area and identify potential best practice service responses. Findings: The study found that the OOHC service systems continue to fail Indigenous care leavers, their families and communities. Study findings revealed that Indigenous care-leavers face substantial challenges and that the support systems for those leaving OOHC are often culturally insensitive and ineffective. Many Indigenous OOHC leavers lacked the supports they needed to develop safe and ongoing relationships with their traditional Country, family and communities. To promote more positive transitions and outcomes, effective practice responses were identified, including culturally safe programmes and proportional funding for ACCOs to advance greater self-determination. Originality/value: This research is the first national study in Australia to examine the specific transition from care pathways and experiences of Indigenous young people. The findings add to the limited existing knowledge on Indigenous care leavers globally and should inform practice and policy innovations with this cohort in Australia and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy poverty is one of the main challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. Research on energy poverty is becoming a common focus of scholars in many areas. Bibliometrics can help researchers dig deep into the information of specific research fields from a quantitative perspective. In this study, we collected 1018 research papers in the field of energy poverty published in the period 1999-2019 from the Web of Science databases and conducted a bibliometric analysis on them. Cleaning and screening of sample papers, matrix construction, and visualization were performed using Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, and HistCite, summarizing the internal and external characteristics of the papers. With regard to external characteristics, a total of 982 research institutions in 80 regions conducted research in this field. There is extensive cooperation between the countries, and the UK, the USA, Australia, and Italy play the most active role in the cooperation network. With regard to internal characteristics, we found the two most representative citation paths: one path starts from the concerns of energy-poor groups and stops at an ethical discussion on energy poverty; the second path is based on the existing technological path, continuously developing coping policies, evaluation methods, and a conceptual framework for dealing with energy poverty. Furthermore, through coupling analysis, we discovered four focuses of energy poverty research: improvement of definition, improvement of evaluation methods, effects of coping policy, and energy justice. Through a comprehensive analysis of existing papers, this paper reveals some limitations of previous studies and recommends some promising directions for future research on energy poverty.

Academic and lay discourses around disadvantaged urban areas often draw on the language of ‘dumping grounds’ to encapsulate the poverty, marginalisation and social problems often found there. Yet the concept of a dumping ground remains insufficiently theorised. This paper addresses this issue by identifying five constituent features of the dumping ground: the perception of people as waste whose fate is to be discarded; the need to accommodate this human ‘waste’ and the logic by which places are selected for this purpose; the mechanisms through which this spatial sorting occurs as problem populations are moved to their ‘rightful’ place; the relations of power which enforce or encourage this mobility; and finally, the reactions of incumbent residents in neighbourhoods that are compelled to host unwanted social groups. In the second part of this paper, these themes are illustrated via a case study of the Australian city of Logan where residents complain that their city has been treated as a dumping ground in order to explain its poor reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over two-thirds of Australians are owner-occupiers and a majority of the population holds most of their wealth in housing. Australian taxation privileges homeowners and retirement income policy is built around the assumption that state pensions can be kept low because an overwhelming majority of older Australians are outright homeowners and therefore have a considerable asset base and low housing costs post-retirement, a situation often referred to as ‘wealthfare’. However, ageing of the population and falling housing affordability mean that the number of asset-poor older Australians unable to rely on ‘wealthfare’ – lifetime renters or those who drop out of homeownership – is likely to grow in the future. In this paper we look at housing career pathways into precarious housing in older age, its impact on older Australians’ ontological security and coping strategies as they grapple with the housing circumstances that typically accompany asset poverty. Based on 30 interviews conducted with older Australians, the paper reports qualitative findings from a mixed methods research project conducted in Melbourne in 2009–2010. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides an impact evaluation analysis of the 2009 Australian Household Stimulus Package, which was composed by three main cash payments: the Back to School Bonus, the Single Income Family Bonus and the Tax Bonus for Working Australians. Using panel data from the 2008 and 2009 HILDA surveys, the results show that these cash payments reduced the risk of poverty and stimulated consumption expenditure. Nonetheless, only the Back to School Bonus and the Single Income Family Bonus were really important in achieving these goals, while the Tax Bonus for Working Australians did not contribute to stimulate consumption and failed to reduce the risk of poverty. Thus, the analysis confirms the crucial role of governments to protect the most vulnerable groups avoiding a dramatic deterioration of social outcomes and favoring a fast economic recovery when interventions are timely and well-targeted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike other aspects of welfare (e.g. income), health has been relatively neglected when it comes to defining and measuring aspects of poverty. The aim of the paper is twofold: first we elaborate how the concept of 'health poverty' can be defined and measured, and second we apply the methodology to study health poverty in a variety of cases. The measurement of health poverty allows us to gain insights into different sorts of health deprivation in society as a whole, and in specific subgroups. We measure poverty by means of the widely adopted Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) class of indicators and apply this to three different health variables: cardiovascular risk, health status and life expectancy. Moreover, the FGT class is additively decomposable, making it possible to gauge the contribution of specific subgroups to overall poverty. We provide two applications of these methods. Firstly, we examine changes in the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the United States using two waves of the NHANES survey from 2005-06 and 2013-14 (n = 3,014 and 4,001 respectively) and use a threshold of 20% 10 year CVD risk to define health poverty. Overall our results indicate a slight decline in the proportion at high CVD risk between these periods. Secondly, we apply poverty measures to health status as measured by the SF-6D index and to empirically derived predictions of life expectancy and estimated using 24,820 individuals from the first 15 waves of the Australian HILDA survey. Trends in poverty over time are compared using several thresholds and decomposed by a variety of sub-groups. Measures of health poverty can be an important instrument for focusing the attention on those with the worst health, or highest risk, in a society and should be used more widely., (Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Like many high-income countries, in Australia there are a range of programmes in place, from social security to food banks, to help address food insecurity. So far, they have been unable to adequately alleviate and prevent this growing nutrition challenge. This paper presents an evaluation of a new type of intervention in the food security landscape, the social enterprise. The Community Grocer is a social enterprise that operates weekly fresh fruit and vegetable markets in Melbourne, Australia. The aim of the study was to examine the market's ability to increase access, use and availability of nutritious food in a socially acceptable way, for low socioeconomic status urban-dwelling individuals. The mixed-method evaluation included: comparative price audits (n = 27) at local (<1 km) stores; analysis of operational data from sample markets (n = 3); customer surveys (n = 91) and customer interviews (n = 12), collected in two phases (Autumn 2017, Summer 2018). The results found common (n = 10) fruit and vegetables cost, on average, approximately 40% less at the social enterprise, than local stores. Over twenty per cent of customers were food insecure and 80% of households were low income. Thirty-four different nationalities shopped at the market, and just over half (54%) shopped there weekly. More than 50 types of vegetables and fruit were available to purchase, varying for cultural preferences and seasonality, which supported variety and choice. Overall, this enterprise promotes food security in a localised area through low-cost, convenient, dignified and nutritious offerings., (© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

It is widely understood that households with low economic resources and poor labourmarket attachment are at considerable risk of food insecurity in Australia. However, little is knownabout variations in food insecurity by receipt of specific classes of social assistance payments thatare made through the social security system. Using newly released data from the 2016 HouseholdExpenditure Survey, this paper reports on variations in food insecurity prevalence across a range ofpayment types. We further investigated measures of financial wellbeing reported by food-insecurehouseholds in receipt of social assistance payments. Results showed that individuals in receiptof Newstart allowance (11%), Austudy/Abstudy (14%), the Disability Support Pension (12%),the Carer Payment (11%) and the Parenting Payment (9%) were at significantly higher risk of foodinsecurity compared to those in receipt of the Age Pension (<1%) or no payment at all (1.3%). Resultsfurther indicated that food-insecure households in receipt of social assistance payments enduredsignificant financial stress, with a large proportion co-currently experiencing "fuel" or "energy"poverty. Our results support calls by a range of Australian non-government organisations, politicians,and academics for a comprehensive review of the Australian social security system.

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