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Access to early childhood services is widely considered to be an important means of supporting vulnerable children and families. Yet the evidence that access to such services automatically makes a difference for vulnerable families is mixed at best. The growing presence of for-profit early childhood services may have an impact on the sector's capacity to provide the enhanced education and care to those most likely to benefit. What are the current and future possibilities for early childhood services to benefit vulnerable children and families? What resources are required to build the capacity of early childhood settings in supporting vulnerable families, and are these likely to differ between for-profit and not-for-profit settings? This paper will explore these questions using a Benevolent Society project, Partnerships in Early Childhood, funded through the Commonwealth's Stronger Families and Communities Strategy, Invest to Grow, as an illustrative case study. Researchers from the Social Policy Research Centre evaluated the first three years of the project, which involves a number of not-for-profit early education and care providers. The paper describes the implementation of PIEC as an attempt to improve the quality of early education and care services to vulnerable children, and lessons that can be drawn for the future of similar interventions. We conclude that time, support for staff and partnerships between different organisations appear to be critical for the success of these interventions, and that the capacity of for-profit services to provide these resources deserves attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's poverty has long been a central concern for policy makers and policy researchers. The body of extant research conducted and the range of programmatic interventions undertaken by successive governments in this and other countries is extraordinary. Nevertheless, children remain in poverty. Clearly there are many reasons for this, not least of which is the maintenance and intensification of market capitalism with its attendant blatant inequalities. Even so, the moral, political, social and economic imperatives for developing workable responses to children's poverty remain. This paper argues that we, in Australia, should adopt an approach increasingly taken in the UK. Drawing on, among other things, the new sociology of childhood, this approach begins not with the expertise of adult researchers and policy makers, but with that of children. In doing so, the case is made for why children's perceptions and experiences of poverty are key concerns for policy. The paper outlines in theoretical terms why children's voices matter. Invoking the new sociology of childhood and the sociology of identity, a conceptual framework for understanding why policy scholars and makers should carefully attend to the voices of their subjects is sketched - in this case, the subjects are children. Finally, some methodological implications of this for undertaking policy research informed by this approach are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores issues arising from the welfare reform process in the United States and Australia. The involvement of faith-based organisations in both countries has evolved in different historical, social, political and cultural contexts. The paper will explore three main themes. First, it examines the relevance of the term 'faith-based' to describe the nature of the relationship between charities and churches in the mixed economy of welfare in the Australian context. Second, it provides a critical analysis of the reform processes, suggesting implications for the future of church-based organisations. Third, it maps directions for cross-comparative research of church-based social services provision in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a social policy experiment that explores current and potential links between trends in Australian public policy. The central example is provided by the implementation of a wired community set up in a low-income public housing estate by an entrepreneurial not-for-profit internet service provider, InfoXchange. 'Reach for the Clouds', the wired community being established at Atherton Gardens in Fitzroy, Melbourne, is attractive to policy-makers and funding bodies, combining community-building, public-private partnerships, self-help and place-based management. However, although the project is promoted as an exercise in community-building through technology, many of the key assumptions are untested. It seems self-evident that low-income people who are socially and economically excluded would benefit from greater 'connectedness' with one another. However, it is not clear that such exchanges, online or off-line, will build 'community'. The paper attempts to establish some distinctions between online communities of interest and place based communities, untangling the relationship between social connectedness and models of social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deinstitutionalisation is represented as a major step toward social inclusion through the resettlement of disabled people residing in segregated large-scale institutions into community-based homes. By promoting the right to live in ordinary community residential settings, deinstitutionalisation fundamentally changes both the support services and housing arrangements of former institutional residents. In Australia, as in many western countries, debates on community care have tended to focus on the location and nature of non-housing supports for people leaving dependent care. This focus, however, overlooks the fact that deinstitutionalisation involves a radical rehousing of people in care. This paper explores the character and implications of deinstitutionalisation in Australia as a rehousing process. It is based on a recent national research project that has examined the housing futures of people with intellectual disabilities who have been, or will be, deinstitutionalised. The paper considers the increasingly divergent socio-political perspectives that have emerged in recent discussions about social inclusion, institutional reform and independent living and their implications for housing and community care policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changes in the terms of citizen-state relations that are coded in Australia's current program of welfare reform. It argues that welfare reform entails a shift from welfare as a limited social right of citizenship to welfare as a form of support conditional upon completing specified obligations, and from the provision of support as a cash payment to support coupling cash with personal services. Together, these shifts have the scope transform the relation between citizen and state fundamentally. This is no less than a shift from social policy citizenship in which claimants are presumed to act on their own behalf to paternalistic support and care directed to reforming character and values as well as to meeting need. The paper argues that this shift violates the fundamental equality essential to social policy citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper[1] argues that the JET Scheme, a jobs, education and training scheme for sole parent pensioners, is limited and insufficient to its tasks of preparing sole parents for entry into the workforce and minimising the state's financial burden. It argues that JET training programmes ascribe and regulate female identity and maintain the gendered subjugation of sole mothers, confirming rather than decreasing their dependence on welfare. The representation and language used to promote JET position sole mothers within a functionalist discourse of motherhood and the nuclear family. The paper explores the ramifications of such positioning for the women's prospects for entry into full time employment. It concludes that JET does not meet its goal of lessening the long term welfare burden of the state. Equally, policy which promotes low paid part time work, combined with partial pension, may serve to entrench the very cycle of dependence it seeks to dismantle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bryson and Mowbray wrote about the uncritical use of the term community by governments in 1981 and ways in which 'evidence-based policy' in relation to communities became little more than a 'catchphrase' in 2005. Both articles appeared in the Australian Journal of Social Issues. This paper reports research that utilised qualitative methods to gather data on subjective, practical meanings of community in one local government area of South Australia to assess the goodness of fit with the language of community contained in social policy. It is argued that in 2009, community, as it is applied by social policy makers, has little resonance with the large body of research around this topic or the current situation of individuals and families and this results in a poor match between the intentions and outcomes of social policies aimed at communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School sexuality education has been a component of Australia's successful and internationally recognized HIV/AIDS strategy since the 1980s and has been well accepted in the community. However South Australia is experiencing a re-emergence of opposition to school sexuality education orchestrated by groups associated with the United States-based Christian Right. In this paper I will outline sex education policy developments in Australia and the United States as a framework for discussing the controversy generated around the Sexual Health and Relationships Education (SHARE) program in South Australia in 2003. In doing so I give attention to the similarities between the strategies deployed by the opponents of SHARE and those used to install abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education as national policy in the United States. I will argue that, rather than a phenomenon indigenous to South Australia, these debates are part of an international movement to progress the political goals of the Christian Right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three decades, thousands of young families have moved from large cities to non-metropolitan areas of Australia. Various policies, particularly housing policies, have played a significant role in this trend. Despite the various impetuses towards relocation, little is known about how young families fare once they have relocated to non-metropolitan areas. In this paper we draw on a study about families relocating to three distinct non-metropolitan areas. From our qualitative analysis of the observations of service providers in education, health, and community support services, we present a model of how relocation to non-metropolitan areas can contribute to the increased vulnerability of some young families to social exclusion. We discuss some ways in which policy makers can intervene to reduce this risk for young families at each phase of the relocation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between gender and health inequalities is potentially complicated, raising questions for health and social research, practice and policy. In this paper, I use two population health case studies - obesity and smoking - to explore the interplay between gender and socioeconomic position. The cases show that, on its own, neither dimension of inequality affords a comprehensive picture of these significant risks to public health. Furthermore, historical change in the socioeconomic and gendered distribution of these health risks suggests that gender is best considered as a dynamic and layered form of differentiation, rather than as a simple or stable dichotomy. A more nuanced approach to the analysis of gender and health has the potential to generate both more fruitful research and more effective health and social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1980s Australian public policy has undergone the most major transformation since Federation. This transformation has been underwritten by two key principles: liberalism - the view that citizens are autonomous individual actors whose interests are best served when they are free from coercive government interventions into individual action; and marketisation - the belief that free markets are arenas which best enable individual autonomy and produce efficient economic outcomes. These principles define ‘neoliberalism’ or ‘hard liberalism’. After summarising the major policy changes identified with neoliberalism in Australia, the paper introduces a new research project that examines its impact on socioeconomic inequality, gender inequality and politics and culture. Inspection of relevant data indicates that there are important trends in inequality, public opinion and political behaviour that warrant this investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper relates to the Australian government's community awareness campaign, as part of the Action Plan to Eradicate Trafficking in Persons, which was announced in October 2003 in response to evidence of human trafficking in Australia. The authors explore the challenges that are likely to be encountered during the implementation of the campaign using empirical data from two Victorian studies, the first of which explored community awareness of trafficking and the second of which examined Victoria Police and local government's responses to trafficking. We conclude that there are significant barriers to both the community and authorities identifying suspicious activities and acting on reports by community. In addition, institution challenges faced by Victoria police and local government in dealing with referred information appropriately will jeopardise the success of the initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of research on transnationalism shows that diasporas with transnational orientations and connections tend to have a strong attachment to local and global identities but a weak attachment to the nation state. In addition, it is argued that territorial nation states are losing their authority in an increasingly globalised and interconnected world. Governments in western democracies have responded by tightening restrictions on citizenship and placing more emphasis on social cohesion and integration rather than multiculturalism. Using the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (2003), this paper examines attachment to cultural conceptions of national identity among the Asian Australian diaspora and examines the existing literature about the relationship between transmigrants and the nation state. Findings from the study reveal a number of social determinants behind variation in emotional attachment to cultural conceptions of national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social policy appeared to be a key battleground at the 2004 Australian Federal election. Opposition Leader Latham announced major policies on Medicare, family support and taxation, and schools funding during the election campaign. Using sample survey data from the Australian Election Study 2004, this paper analyses how these policies may have influenced voters. In brief, although a significant proportion of electors identified these issues as being extremely important to them when they were deciding about how to vote, many made up their mind abouthow to vote around the time of the announcement of the election or before. This mitigated the potential effect that these major policies could have on the election outcome. Nevertheless, these policies were important and Labor had a significant policy advantage amongst those who were late deciders about how to cast their vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainstream literature on paid care for children, frail elderly people and people with chronic illness or disability, and unpaid care provided usually by family members within households and kin networks tends to'establish dichotomies: formal/informal, commodified/non-commodified. Recent feminist literature rejects these dichotomies, developing models of social care in which the interconnections of paid and unpaid care are mapped within policy frameworks. This paper uses theoretical frameworks of ‘social care’: care as labour; care as a relationship embedded in obligation; care incurring a range of costs; to explore two case-studies: young carers aged up to 24 years who are most often caring for a co-resident parent; and grandparents who are the primary carers of their grandchildren. The latter may occur under the aegis of child protection authorities, or Family Court orders, or in informal arrangements, not licensed by state authorities. This analysis of the international literature and Australian research data affirms the power of the social care framework, and also shows the influence of social policy settings on informal care provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anna Yeatman and Joanna Penglase (August 2004) provide a useful review of the literature on ‘Looking After Children’ (LAC), a guided practice system for children living in out-of-home care. In summarising the polarised debate, the authors point to an unresolved situation in which advocates have uncritically adopted individualised care planning, as a way of improving outcomes in child welfare while critics have not offered alternatives for systemic reform. This is an area of troubled social policy and the debate cannot rest here. This paper suggests a number of pressing research questions to be addressed. The urgency of the issues and the characteristics of local service systems mean LAC needs to be evaluated in the Australian context, taking into account the local experience and participation of children, families and their social workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health policy was an integral component of the post-war welfare state, which represented a nationally based class compromise providing concessions in the form of income support and service provision outside the ambit of the market. In Australia, development of a universal health system was delayed until the introduction of Medibank, and subsequently Medicare. Since its inception, Medicare has been subjected to retrenchment pressures that have dominated welfare state developments since the mid 1970s. This paper traces developments in the Australian health system, revealing that the major trends, privatisation and the transfer of responsibility from the collective to the private sphere, represent a movement towards a more residual system that threatens the Medicare goal of equitable access to quality medical treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various research papers published within the issue, including one by Peter McDonald and Jennifer Baxter regarding the changing rates of home ownership in Australia and another by Gillian Whitehouse on the effects of parenthood on employment.

This article focuses on various social themes dealt by the "Australian Journal of Social Issues." The journal's writers have not necessarily understood each paper as situated within a tradition of concerns about issues that are inescapably part of democratic social policy, concerns about professional authority, academic representation and the encouragement or inhibition of various kinds of individual and collective agency. One of the earliest themes identified in the journal was professional representation. That is, there is much comment on the process by which social phenomena become social issues and thus enter the domains of academic commentary and of the human services professions. In a variety of ways, the journal's writers have considered how social policy could or should be an expression of the values of Australians. A third theme called citizens and social capital, the relationship between state and civil society agencies, and how they interact to construct the agency of individuals and communities.

Australian public policy makers are presently confronted with significant demographic changes that will profoundly affect the formulation of rational economic and social policy over the long term. This paper seeks to outline the potential impact of this demographic change and place it in historical perspective. The challenges posed by an ageing population for fiscal policy are explored and it is stressed that policy inertia will invite severe costs in future. It is argued that an appropriate policy stance should be developed in the context of a framework for inter-temporal fiscal balance not only to focus on long-run fiscal sustainability, but also to include considerations of intergenerational equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital and community capacity have become key concepts in social policy responses to marginalised individuals and communities. Policy making has occurred in the context of heated debate about the roles of government and business institutions in strengthening community capacities. In this paper, we wilt explore theoretical positions about the role that these institutions play in building local social capital. We argue that the dominant conceptions of social capital in Australia fail to recognise the potential for non-local institutions to strengthen local community capacity. Drawing on a study of four geographically diverse communities we show that a substantial proportion of community members were disconnected from non-local government and business institutions. We conclude with some initial suggestions for extending the social capital discourse to recognise and build the role of non-local institutions in strengthening local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Care is a fundamental condition of human existence, an inherently social activity. Yet surprisingly, care has only recently begun to receive serious attention from social researchers and the public. Despite the fact that care has become a public issue over the past twenty-five years or so, current thinking in policy and advocacy for carers has developed an overtly narrow and self-limiting focus with a strong emphasis on the plight of primary or sole carers, with care being seen predominantly as a burden, From looking at Australian policy on carers, it may be concluded that care is essentially understood as a private, individual concern, a one-way activity in which the active agent, the carer, does something to the other, passive, recipient. The challenge posed in this paper is to move beyond this approach to that of a more social conception of care. Following a review of the uses of the terms 'care' and 'carers' in the current Australian policy context, a discussion of the meaning of the term 'care' is presented and an. alternative understanding of the term, with the potential of recognising and promoting care as a complex, social outcome is advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Third Way' politics of Blair's New Labour government of the United Kingdom has popularised a number of policy reforms centred on a supposedly new discourse of 'devolution', 'inclusion', 'partnerships' and 'community'. These notions reflect a re-emergence of the ideas and values of civil society, participation and localism. Key drivers of this discourse are: new conceptions of citizenship; a retreat from the social state to a politics of community; and a questioning of both 'big-state' interventionist and competitive market approaches to public policy. These trends have resonance in the Australian context. The welfare reform agenda of the Australian Commonwealth government together with community building and engagement initiatives of State governments have been sites for these policy directions. Much of the debate surrounding these policies excludes or minimises the fundamental role of an active state by focusing on an uncritical conception of community. Drawing on the notion of network governance, an alternative framework for re-conceptualising state-community relations and delivering improved community outcomes is posited. The paper concludes by suggesting possible social governance methodologies for actioning this framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews the usefulness of the concept of social exclusion for Australian social housing policy. We draw on recent theoretical and empirical research from Europe and the UK to develop a critique of the concept of social exclusion. It is argued that any assessment of social exclusion needs to distinguish between its utility as an academic explanatory concept and its political deployment to justify new forms of policy intervention. Policy targeting anti-social behaviour through increasingly more punitive means, for instance, is often justified on the basis that it ameliorates the problems of social exclusion experienced by tenants residing in public housing estates. We conclude that, in spite of the limitations of social exclusion as an analytical concept, for political and pragmatic reasons it is likely to become an important component of the emerging Australian housing policy agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present approach to welfare reform, as embodied in the Final Report of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform (2000), relies heavily on the rhetoric of 'mutual obligation' and 'welfare dependency' while placing little emphasis on original research and relevant data that might inform and support its reform agenda. In marked contrast are the research-driven policy processes aimed at the alleviation of child poverty that took place during the Hawke-Keating government in the late 1980s. In this paper we illustrate the value of research in relation to two government strategies, the Family Allowance Supplement (FAS) and the Child Support Scheme (CSS), that were instrumental in bringing a significant number of children out of poverty. We suggest that any commitment to further the reduction of child poverty requires resources for ongoing research programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problems being experienced on the roads, of continued fatalities, serious injury and infringements, are currently being evaluated through a cognitive approach which focuses on the individual. The paper outlines the main features of this approach and argues for an alternative approach which investigates driving as a culture and which offers a method of dealing with the appropriateness of the attitudes, beliefs and expectations embodied within that culture. A cultural approach involves looking at how driving as a culture is constructed and maintained. It thus represents a focus which is much more socially oriented and aimed at influencing the culture of driving rather than merely punishing the individual driver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of calls for a 'third way' which proposes the abandonment of many of the social democratic and statist commitments of the postwar era, this paper reviews both the responsibilities accepted by peak bodies such as ACOSS and those that ought to be retained by government. It is sceptical of claims that social policy debates in Australia lead to the conclusion that welfare state development here has been satisfactory. Social democratic objectives (derived from intellectual contributions in the 1940s and 1950s as well as from the comparative political economy of the 1980s and 1990s) emphasize more decommodified provision of services than can be readily admitted in Australia. If the demand for social welfare and social policy continues to increase to the extent suggested by past and present circumstances, serious implications emerge for both public and private providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift to community care for people with disabilities in Australia has given rise to some recognition and acknowledgment, in both academie research and policy development, of the importance of their carers. However, information about government policy and services for carers is fragmented and limited. Our knowledge about the prevalence of caregiving and the socio-demographic characteristics of carers and their service needs, is inadequate. Studies in relation to carer use of and satisfaction with services tend to be small scale and focussed on a specific service or carer group. Carer views on broader mainstream service provision have received little attention. This paper identifies gaps in our knowledge as well as the practical and conceptual difficulties in documenting the range of services available and the relevant social policy. These difficulties are likely to reflect barriers to broad and effective policy and service development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]