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This paper presents findings from an investigation of nature-based practices, from the perspectives of 10 academics/educators from six nations. Participants engaged in a focus group exploring the prevalence and inclusion of nature in social work practice and education. While the study focused on individual members' experiences and perspectives, the findings highlight important context-specific factors for including nature within social work to reconnect humans with nature for health, well-being, healing, and justice. An Integrative Environmental Model for social work is proposed to assist future practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students’ increasing use of text messaging language has prompted concern that textisms (e.g., 2 for to, dont for don’t, ☺) will intrude into their formal written work. Eighty-six Australian and 150 Canadian undergraduates were asked to rate the appropriateness of textism use in various situations. Students distinguished between the appropriateness of using textisms in different writing modalities and to different recipients, rating textism use as inappropriate in formal exams and assignments, but appropriate in text messages, online chat and emails with friends and siblings. In a second study, we checked the examination papers of a separate sample of 153 Australian undergraduates for the presence of textisms. Only a negligible number were found. We conclude that, overall, university students recognise the different requirements of different recipients and modalities when considering textism use and that students are able to avoid textism use in exams despite media reports to the contrary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The financial sustainability of publicly funded health care systems is a challenge to policymakers in many countries as health care absorbs an ever increasing share of both national wealth and government spending. New technology, aging populations and increasing public expectations of the health care system are often cited as reasons why health care systems need ever increasing funding as well as reasons why universal and comprehensive public systems are unsustainable. However, increases in health care spending are not usually linked to corresponding increases in need for care within populations. Attempts to promote financial sustainability of systems such as limiting the range of services is covered or the groups of population covered may compromise their political sustainability as some groups are left to seek private cover for some or all services. In this paper, an alternative view of financial sustainability is presented which identifies the failure of planning and management of health care to reflect needs for care in populations and to integrate planning and management functions for health care expenditure, health care services and the health care workforce. We present a Health Care Sustainability Framework based on disaggregating the health care expenditure into separate planning components. Unlike other approaches to planning health care expenditure, this framework explicitly incorporates population health needs as a determinant of health care requirements, and provides a diagnostic tool for understanding the sources of expenditure increase. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper will consider and compare the federal spending power in three 'mature' federations, Australia, Canada and the United States. One of the issues to be considered will be whether the federal spending power, as interpreted by the relevant courts, is sufficiently broad to deal with the obligations of a central government in current circumstances. In doing so, recurring important issues in fiscal federalism, including the allocation of responsibilities within federal systems and vertical fiscal imbalance, will be noted. The constitutional context in which this issue arises, including the fact that the constitution of each of the countries studied was conceived in times very different from those we face today, and the fact that the role and size of government has similarly radically changed since those times, is important. It is argued that a broad interpretation of the federal government's spending power is needed to provide the necessary constitutional flexibility that would otherwise be forbidden by the formal rigidity of the constitutions and the difficulty in making amendments, particularly in Australia and Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing policy has declined in importance relative to other areas of state policy-making in many Western countries. This paper seeks to understand why this has happened at a time when there has been a decline in the level of housing affordability and supply of affordable rental housing. It presents an argument that a way of understanding this policy retrenchment, through a comparative analysis of Australian and Canadian housing systems, is to consider the way in which housing policy problems are defined, how policy-making capacity is institutionalised in state agencies and the form and extent of civil society mobilisation on housing issues. It is not sufficient to ascribe the declining salience of housing policy to the ascendancy of neo-liberal ideas in policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]