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This paper discusses experiences of everyday racism as narrated by South Sudanese refugee-background informants living in Australia. The paper draws on accounts of verbal and physical attacks reported during a sociolinguistic interview about the refugee experience and adaptation to the Australian lifestyle. The study contributes to the exploration of features of refugee narratives, using the socio-interactional approach to narrative analysis. Selected stories about racism are explored using positioning theory, paying attention to the discursive strategies narrators use to position themselves in the interactional world of the interview setting as well as the story-world. Their narratives demonstrate that despite the harsh experiences of everyday racism, they position themselves as resilient and strong individuals. They do this by drawing on their refugee history and making references to harder times. However, the stories also reveal their mitigation strategies to soften the accounts and either downplay or deny racism. However, by sharing their stories and making explicit evaluative statements about social injustice, they mobilise their agency to make their story heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant educational disruption globally. When the pandemic forced schools to switch to emergency home-schooling, parental engagement in education became more critical. Some parents found home-schooling as an opportunity to form stronger relationships with their children. Others acquired an enhanced insight into their children's schoolwork. However, the emerging literature shows that, as not all parents were equally positioned to support their children's learning at home, emergency home-schooling has resulted in a significant learning loss. Guided by the concept of capital interaction, this article reports on a qualitative case study that investigated the experiences of 20 migrant parents in Victoria, Australia. A thematic analysis of the data reveals challenges associated with parental self-efficacy, financial hardship, language and technological barriers, time constraints, and disengagement and exhaustion. Remote learning may return in the future, and we must prepare for such disruption by improving equitable access to education delivered online and at home. To this end, the paper outlines some policy ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the logistic planning, the important focus of international student mobility programmes in social work is on the field supervision process and measuring its outcome. Without a social work council in India for setting uniform standards in field education, this paper proposes a framework for field supervision to support inbound mobility students in India. The study predominantly explores the qualitative experiences of field supervisors from India, Israel, and Australia on fieldwork supervision. The themes evolved from the study are focused on the supervision process, strategies followed, challenges faced, and outcome measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Families of choice is an important framework used to think about non-heterosexual people's attachments. This means the family of origin has received limited attention when theorising their relationships. This group has often been considered in relation to coming out, which centralises the importance of sexuality for understanding kinship ties. This paper extends the limited, but growing scholarship on non-heterosexual people, and their families of origin. It does this by drawing on a larger project on the lives of gay men of South Asian descent, in Australia. Results demonstrate that attachment through blood, shared history, emotions, and obligations, firmly embed gay South Asian men in their families of origin, even when there is disapproval of their sexuality. More broadly, the study resists framing the respondents and findings in culturally essentialist terms, premised on an 'East' versus 'West' binary. It argues that by resisting such orientalism we can see similarities pertaining to families of origin across different contexts, and in doing so, produce queer scholarship able to speak across divides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A stand-alone strangulation offence was introduced in Queensland, Australia in 2016. One of the elements of the Queensland strangulation offence is that the victim did not consent to the strangulation. This paper reviews the harms and dangers associated with strangulation before overviewing the debates about the use of strangulation during sex. Drawing on focus group discussions conducted with domestic violence support workers and men's behaviour change workers, we discuss four overlapping themes identified in the discussions. These were perceptions that: strangulation during sex is normalised; consent is not informed; it happens in the context of coercive control; and the requirement of consent opens a loophole in the strangulation offence. Considering the issues raised, and the clear risks and harms, we suggest that consideration should be given to whether it is ever possible to consent to strangulation and we consider possible reforms such as following the two-tiered approaches to consent used in the England and Wales law and elsewhere in Australia. We also conclude that law reforms such as these are partial solutions and there is significant need for more community education about the risks and harms of strangulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe and exemplify a theoretical perspective for the analysis of music as symbolic action in critical studies of discourse. We use deployments of music by legislatures in Australia, the UK, and the USA as exemplar cases to develop foundations for a critical, non-semiotic perspective that sees music work as gestalt complexes of physical and cultural forces that move people towards or away from specific actions and attitudes. In presenting our perspective we critique some semiotic assertions about music that are commonplaces in discourse studies and elsewhere. Our cases draw on news reports and scholarly discourse about the use of music as a means of torture in warfare and as a means of purifying urban public spaces by keeping youth and homeless people out of them at night. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Hospital in the Home models are rapidly expanding in response to increasing bed pressures. This study examined patient and multidisciplinary health professional perceptions of a new geriatric evaluation and management and rehabilitation hospital in the home service in Australia. The service was unique, as adults of all ages with a variety of rehabilitation or geriatric evaluation and management needs were within scope. Methods: A qualitative descriptive approach was used with a consumer co-researcher and a consumer advisor being integral to decision-making. Patient feedback was collected via a paper-based patient satisfaction survey between August 2020 and February 2022. Additionally, interviews with current and past staff were conducted from July to November 2021. Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted for qualitative data and descriptive statistics used for quantitative data. Results: Patient surveys were analysed (n = 199, 42.2% response rate) with 60.8% of participants aged 75 years or over and 26.6% speaking a language other than English. High satisfaction was expressed. Feelings of comfort, familiarity, convenience, and reassurance were voiced. A person-centred approach enhanced involvement in care. Challenges included carer burden and clear communication. Sixteen staff (33% response rate) were interviewed. In general, staff said the service was inclusive and responsive, and the home environment beneficial, particularly for patients from culturally diverse backgrounds. A strong hospital partnership and comprehensive multidisciplinary approach were vital. Challenges included fragmentation due to part-time roles and combining with a pre-existing acute hospital in the home service. Conclusions: This qualitative exploration of staff and patients' perceptions of a geriatrician-led, multidisciplinary geriatric evaluation and management and rehabilitation hospital in the home service demonstrated that it was person-centred and optimised patients' control and ownership of care. The inclusive service parameters ensured responsiveness to diverse needs whilst allowing earlier return home from hospital, both of which are vital for quality patient care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic low back pain is characterised by multiple and overlapping biological, psychological, social and broader dimensions, affecting individuals' lives. Multidisciplinary pain services have been considered optimal settings to account for the multidimensionality of chronic low back pain but have largely focused on cognitive and behavioural aspects of individuals' pain. Social dimensions are usually underexplored, considered outside or beyond healthcare professionals' scope of practice. Employing Actor Network Theorist Mol's concept multiplicity, our aim in this paper is to explore how a pain service's practices bring to the fore the social dimensions of individuals living with low back pain. Drawing on 32 ethnographic observations and four group exchanges with the service's clinicians, findings suggest that practices produced multiple enactments of an individual with low back pain. Although individuals' social context was present and manifested during consultations at the pain service (first enactment: 'the person'), it was often disconnected from care and overlooked in 'treatment/management' (second enactment: 'the patient'). In contrast, certain practices at the pain service not only provided acknowledgement of, but actions towards enhancing, individuals' social contexts by adapting rules and habits, providing assistance outside the service and shifting power relations during consultations (third enactment: 'the patient-person'). We therefore argue that different practices enact different versions of an individual with low back pain in pain services, and that engagement with individuals' social contexts can be part of a service's agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]