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The article focuses on the accomplishment of Cheryl and Nikki Bart, mother and daughter, of scaling the summit of Mt. Everest, which became a topic at the "Australia 2020 Summit." It provides the author's narrative and personal story of attending and participating in the said summit. It explores the way in which women were included in and excluded from the processes, content and discussions of the event, in the hope that the analysis may assist in formulating ways to enhance effective strategic thinking, policy development and service delivery which specifically addresses the needs of and opportunities for women in Australia over the next decade and beyond. Related issues are further duscussed.

People with innate variations of sex characteristics (also known as intersex traits or disorders or differences of sex development) have any of a wide range of innate physical traits that differ from medical and social norms for female and male bodies. Responses to these physical differences create experiences and risks of stigmatisation, discrimination, violence, and harmful medical practices intended to promote social and familial integration and conformity with gender stereotypes. As is evident globally, the Australian policy response to the existence and needs of people with innate variations of sex characteristics has been largely incoherent, variously framing the population as having disordered sex development in need of "fixing", and a third sex/gender identity group in need of recognition, with only recent engagement by intersex community-controlled civil society organisations. This paper presents an overview of the context and goals of the intersex human rights movement in Australia. Australian intersex community organisations have sought to apply human rights norms and develop new infrastructure to address key health and human rights issues, and necessitating new ways of resolving policy incoherence. Together with human rights, mental health, and public health institutions, they have called for significant changes to medical models of care and reform to research and classification systems. Intersex community organising and resourcing have made a tangible difference. The Australian Capital Territory is the first jurisdiction in the country to move ahead with reforms to clinical practice, including a legislative prohibition of certain practices without personal informed consent, oversight of clinical decision-making, and investment in psychosocial support. A national community-controlled psychosocial support service has also commenced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of a local newspaper in shaping a community's collective memory of child sexual abuse by documenting changing representations of a former rural orphanage and its custodians where such horrific crimes took place. The paper conducts an across-time analysis of news coverage (1944–1954 and 2010–2020) to map these changing representations in their media, policy and social contexts. It extends scholarship around collective memory and temporal reflexivity as a provocation for journalists to acknowledge and engage with their news outlet's own mediated past (no matter how uncomfortable) when reporting on and interpreting events such as Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue addresses the use of linked data for research purposes and to carry out government functions such as child protection, allocation of resources, and debt recovery. Government investment in big data has the potential to change citizens' experience of the welfare state in a broad range of areas in both positive and negative ways. It is therefore important that the Australian social policy community understands and engages with the potential benefits and risks involved in the linkage and analysis of government datasets. Papers in this Special Issue discuss the technical challenges and institutional barriers involved in the construction and governance of linked government data assets and showcase the promise of big data for generating policy relevant insights. This Special Issue also features papers critically interrogating the potential for big data to produce social harms. We contextualise this collection of papers with a brief history of recent policy developments in regards to access to government held data. We also discuss ways of improving public trust and social licence for the use of big data and argue that the voices of First Nations and disadvantaged Australians must be given greater weight in discussions of how their data will be used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using a life course approach, this article seeks to discuss and analyse the impact on a carer when their older loved one experiences cognitive changes such as dementia, and the specific implications for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In Western contexts such as Australia, dementia is often understood through a biomedical lens and deficit-based frameworks. These dominant understandings can maintain ageist attitudes that construct older people and those with dementia as a social policy burden. This is further amplified for people from non-dominant cultures. This paper examines the marketisation of aged care in Australia and phenomena of ambiguous loss in identifying a range of issues for carers, including the specific experiences and challenges for culturally and linguistically diverse people. Finally, it discusses implications for critical social work practice and argues for radical change at structural and organisational levels. It proposes that a reframing of dementia as a shared social experience along with strengths-based and relational practice are key to creating more meaningful counter narratives that foster a sense of agency and empowerment for carers and people with dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Case management is promoted as a trademark of community service practice with young people funded by neoliberal social policy. In spite of this, case management practice and case managers have largely escaped the attention of youth scholars. In this paper, we examine the funding parameters of two youth case management services in Australia to reveal the governing effects on young people, case managers and NGOs. We develop an analytical framework that exposes the compounding effect of interacting governable spaces that facilitates a critical analysis of case management revealing the problems of governance within this seemingly generic practice method. Shifting focus from the young person as the object of governance to include the case manager and case management as separate but interacting governable spaces, provides new insights into the problematisations underpinning case management practice with young people. We argue compounding governable spaces provides insight into the infantilisation of young people that is amplified and reinforced within and between case managers, and case management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments of highly developed western nations with colonised Indigenous populations such as Australia, Canada and South Africa are increasingly turning to social procurement policies in an attempt to solve social inequities between Indigenous people and other citizens. They seek to use policies and funds attached to infrastructure development and construction to encourage private sector companies to provide training, employment and business opportunities for Indigenous people in the communities in which construction occurs. This paper outlines the rise of these policies and their origins, and critiques their connection to Indigenous people's human rights, impact measurement, evaluation and accountability mechanisms. In doing so this paper also explores benefits and potential of social procurement policies, as well as risks. Drawing on insights from an Aboriginal-developed evaluation framework, Ngaa-bi-nya, and Indigenous Standpoint Theory, this paper highlights Indigenous peoples' definitions of value and outlines their relevance to social procurement. Introducing the notion of cultural counterfactuals into social impact measurement research, it also offers a new conceptual framework to enable policymakers and practitioners to more accurately account for social procurement value and impact, including Indigenous people's notions of social value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017 paediatrician Dr Peter Jones called for a policy debate on the need for some people in Australia to have fewer children. His call came in response to unacceptably high numbers of children and young people in out-of-home care in Australia and resulting adverse outcomes for these children and young people. This paper challenges this call from a critique of neoliberal society which is characterised by increasing socio-economic disadvantage and rising inequality. It uses Standing's notion of a social construction of a precariat grouping to understand what is happening in many vulnerable families where children's safety and well-being needs are compromised. The argument posed in this critique is that societally we need to promote policies that tackle poverty, inter-generational disadvantage and associated social ills in an attempt to address the causes of these unacceptably high statistics on children in the statutory care system. The paper examines the responsibilities of a critically informed social work approach to posit an alternative social policy approach. Such an approach is based in particular philosophical beliefs about the need for social change to benefit vulnerable citizens. The author concludes that we need to do more to challenge dominant negative discourses about those families. Only when all has been done in the active provision of support should we be having discussions about policy restrictions on family choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction industry is the primary focus for social procurement policies in many countries. However, there has been little research into the drivers of social procurement policy adoption in this industry. To help address this gap in research, this paper reports the results of semi-structured interviews with fifteen social procurement professionals who are implementing social procurement into the Australian construction industry. Results reveal interesting historical parallels with the implementation of environmental sustainability initiatives. However, social procurement has yet to become normalized. There appears to be a high level of homogeneity in industry practice and while there is considerable scope for innovation, this is constrained by the prescriptive and 'top-down' nature of social procurement policies in Australia which make it difficult for organizations to respond 'bottom-up' to actual community needs. It is concluded that the considerable untapped potential of social procurement policies to create social value currently depends on the intrapreneurial efforts of a small number of emerging social procurement professionals who are individually challenging the many institutional norms and practices which undermine the implementation of these policies into the construction industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to be an important part of education governance. It is already being built into everything from business intelligence platforms to real-time online testing. In this paper, we aim to understand how AI becomes, and forms, a legitimate part of authority in contemporary education governance in what we call the automated education governance assemblage, that incorporates technology companies and AI-supported products used in education. We focus on EduTech Australia – an education technology trade show in Sydney – as a way to look at: (i) how the different aspects of automated governance are connected at EduTech, including the relations between different participants, companies and products; and (ii) how the automated governance assemblage works to legitimise and constitute EduTech as a policy space and site of new authorities in education governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the relationship between regional Australia, its audiences, and radio research in the 20th and 21st centuries by examining the methods by which regional Australia has been incorporated and acknowledged within radio histories, surveys, and research into broadcasting policy. This paper argues that this research has embraced a wider discourse and narrative focused on 'saving' the regions--a sentiment that has been the overwhelming narrative in Australia's social and economic history. It concludes that regional Australia needs to be better understood and integrated into research that has implications for broadcasting policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has a long history of realising value from data assets supported by our strong governance and analytical capability. Recent changes to technology, government policy and the complexity and volume of our data holdings have put increasing pressure on our existing processes for data collation, analysis and sharing/release. While the AIHW has already put in place a number of initiatives to respond to the changing demands on data, some slow response times have resulted from new developments required to meet some of the complex challenges posed by Multi‐source Enduring Linked Data Assets (MELDAs) such as the National Integrated Health Services Initiative (NIHSI). The learnings we are taking forward will provide smoother pathways for newer MELDAs such as the National Disability Data Asset. This paper outlines the new challenges faced with appropriately managing MELDAs, and the learnings of the AIHW have taken forward in realising value from this new type of data asset along with how MELDAs, such as the NIHSI, can be applied to address social policy questions in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing, employment and economic conditions in many nations have changed greatly over the past decades. This paper explores the ways in which changing housing markets, economic conditions and government policies have affected vulnerable individuals and households, using Australia as a case study. The paper finds a substantial number and proportion of low income Australians have been affected by housing and employment that is insecure with profound implications for vulnerability. Importantly, the paper suggests that in Australia the economic gains achieved as a consequence of mining-related growth in the early 2000s were translated as greater employment security for some on low incomes, but not all. Enhanced access to employment in this period was differentiated by gender, with women largely missing out on the growth in jobs. For the population as a whole, employment gains were offset by increased housing insecurity as accommodation costs rose. The paper finds low income lone parents were especially vulnerable because they were unable to benefit from a buoyant labour market over the decade 2000–2010. They were also adversely affected by national policy changes intended to encourage engagement with paid work. The outcomes identified for Australia are likely to have been mirrored in other nations, especially those that have embraced, or been forced to adopt, more restrictive welfare and income support regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do public health advocates and practitioners encourage policy actors to address the social determinants of health? What strategies can be used to elevate healthy social policies onto government agendas? In this paper, we examine the case of Australia's first national paid parental leave scheme, announced in 2009 after decades of policy advocacy. This scheme provides job-protected leave and government-funded pay at the minimum wage for 18 weeks for eligible primary care givers on the birth of an infant, and has been shown to reduce health inequities. Drawing on documentary sources and interviews (n  = 25) with key policy actors, this paper traces the evolution of this landmark social policy in Australia, focusing on the role of actors, institutions and policy framings in setting the policy agenda. We find that advocates strategically deployed three different framings—for economy, gender equality and health—to drive paid parental leave onto the Government's agenda. They navigated barriers linked to power, gender ideology and cost, shifting tactics along the way by adopting different frames in various institutional settings and broadening their coalitions. Health arguments varied in different institutional settings and, at times, advocates selectively argued the economic or gender equality framing over health. The case illustrates the successful use of strategic pragmatism to provoke action, and raises broader lessons for advancing action on the social determinants of health. In particular, the case highlights the importance of adopting multiple synergistic policy framings to draw support from non-traditional allies and building coalitions to secure public policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Western society the secular way of life has resulted in individuals to prioritize individualized and self-absorbed lifestyles which leads some to prioritize self-pleasure over community well-being and solidarity. This paper aims to explore the concept of altruism and the internal/external dynamics in the Hizmet Movement in Australia. The paper will exemplify the Australian Intercultural Society (AIS) and Affinity Intercultural Foundation (AIF) as a case study to show the altruism of the affiliates, that through vast activities of intercultural relations and projects have catalyzed the process of social policy dynamism for social well-being among the wider community. It examines the dynamics of the "Hizmet Movement" that aim to encourage pro-active and altruistic individuals to prioritize others' well-being over one's self in a secular context. Finally, the paper offers a conceptualization of altruism as understood in sociological theory and faith traditions which set the scope on Gülen and Hizmet Movements' understanding of altruism clearly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the ageing experiences of older Chinese immigrants in Australia. The life course perspective provides a framework to investigate the main aspects relating to a sense of home and to analyse how family, relational, and societal factors influence older Chinese immigrants' construction of a sense of home in a transnational context. This paper is based on qualitative data from 30 in‐depth interviews with older Chinese immigrants living on the Gold Coast, Australia. This study reveals that family relationships, independence, and social interactions contribute to constructing a sense of home among older Chinese immigrants. Findings elucidate the interrelations between personal adaptive actions and mindsets, Chinese organisations, and social policies in the life experiences of older Chinese immigrants in Australia. This study suggests that policymakers need to be more sensitive to the significance of culture; it also highlights the need to further support existing cultural services that contribute to developing a sense of home for older Chinese immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this viewpoint article is to consider the #BlackLivesMatter movement within the Aboriginal Australian struggle for equality, sovereignty and human rights. Indigenous sovereignty has been threatened throughout Australia's history of colonization. We provide a viewpoint and recommendations for social policy education and practice. Design/methodology/approach: We provide commentary and interpretation based upon the lived experience of Black, Indigenous and Other People of Color (BIPOC) co-authors, co-authors who are Allies, extant literature and practice wisdom as social policy educators. Findings: Universities are sources of knowledge production, transmission and consumption within society. We provide critical recommendations for what social policy education within universities can address human rights and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Originality/value: Culturally responsive inclusion for BIPOC has only just begun in Australia and globally within the context of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. This paper adds critical conversation and recommendations for what social policy programs might do better to achieve universities' teaching and learning missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many developed countries, the provision of disability services has undergone significant transformations, from institutional to community based care, and from oganisational to personalised funding. Yet delivering disability support remains an ongoing challenge for governments. Specifically, the relative success of different types of disability support governance is convoluted and problematic given the diversity and complexity of disability support systems and the people they serve. To enhance the systematic analysis and evaluation of disability support governance, this paper conceptually advances four distinct models based on the locus of control and coordination of such support: uncoordinated; casework governance; dwelling-based governance; and user-coordinated. Using illustrations from case studies of individuals receiving care, the identification of these ideal types enables their relative strengths, weaknesses, and the occasions of governance failure to be articulated. No one model is universally applicable to people, nor immune to failure. Furthermore, the paper presents a novel approach to visualising actual disability support arrangements as social networks. The utility of such visualisations for analysing individual and systemwide arrangements is outlined. In the context of Australia's developing National Disability Insurance Scheme, these conceptual and analytical developments are argued to be important tools for policy and service analysis and reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by examining the social inclusion agenda that formed the centrepiece of the social policy agenda of the Australian Government between 2007 and 2013. It discusses several features of the agenda, including its objectives (as articulated by the government) and some of the administrative and bureaucratic mechanisms that were put in place to assist with its development and implementation. Although no formal assessment of the impact of the agenda is attempted, some of the ways in which such an agenda could make a difference are identified. The paper then summarises the social inclusion indicator framework developed by the Australian Social Inclusion Unit with assistance and advice from the Australian Social Inclusion Board, and compares its structure and content with the frameworks developed by two of Australia's leading social research institutes. Finally, data from two national surveys of poverty and social exclusion are used to examine recent changes in social exclusion and the association between the severity of exclusion and levels of subjective well-being. These latter results show clearly that subjective well-being is consistently lower among those who experience the greatest degree of social exclusion, suggesting that exclusion as identified and measured reflects external constraints rather than internal preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance measurement (PM) in the public sector has progressively broadened to cover the operation of professionals traditionally framed as independent and autonomous. How PM reconstitutes the role and conduct of professionals is critical for understanding contemporary dynamics of policy and governance, and service provider-service user relationships. Building on Lipsky's classic Street-level Bureaucracy, this paper examines the ways in which street-level professionals are reconfigured in their roles as evidenced by the operation of Australia's schooling PM, NAPLAN. The paper reports findings from a project examining the effects of PM in social policy. Attention is given to the ambiguous and conflicting goals arising from measuring literacy and numeracy performance and the varied ways performance numbers are used by management for teacher governance at the street-level. These considerations have implications for the effectiveness of PM in delivering service improvements, the experience of service users, and the achievement of policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overcoming the socio-economic disparity between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous Australians is a long-standing social policy objective: one largely shared by Indigenous people. Achievement will require Indigenous individuals and households to be socially mobile, a process integrally involved with social capital, existing and requisite. The lack of research on Indigenous social mobility or its attendant social capital connections is addressed in this paper through an exploratory analysis of this interaction across three dimensions: distinctive patterns of Indigenous social capital; the transferability of Indigenous social capital; and traversing the social capital divide. The implications drawn, while tentative, indicate that for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the intersection of the processes of social mobility and social capital is vexed, and contains hazards and costs not fully shared by socially mobile non-Indigenous households. The Indigenous-specific factors of a gendered professional class, the identity- social capital link, and Indigenous labour market circumstances all indicate that more research and a more nuanced understanding of Indigenous social mobility is necessary. Social policy recommendations include broadening the concept of cultural leave to include bonding social capital obligations, especially for women, and re-evaluation of how to support Indigenous career trajectories and transferable skill sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precariousness, together with its cognate terms (e.g. precarity, precarious work, precarious workers, the precariat and precarious life), has become a significant theme in employment relations research in recent years. This paper reviews important aspects of the discussion, taking its starting point from an article in Labour and Industry which introduced the concept and sketched out a proposed research agenda for examining poor job quality in Australia. The current paper identifies patchy progress in knowledge concerning the core issues. Casual employment has been one area of successful inquiry, but challenges remain in connection with analysis of precariousness in permanent employment. At the same time, understanding of precariousness has moved into new channels of inquiry that were uncharted in the 1998 article and offer great promise for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the policy environment and settlement support services provided for migrants arriving in Australia and the challenges faced by them when engaging in a complex policy environment. Using structuration theory, it aims to understand how migrants’ understanding of settlement services relates to their exercise of agency and to the institutional and social structures they draw upon to integrate in the new society. Data were collected through 14 focus group discussions (N = 164), across seven migrant communities in Greater Western Sydney, Australia. The paper highlights access to language services and literacy programmes as contributing to the obstacles affecting migrants’ ability to achieve employment and draw on available settlement services. Three main themes emerged: (i) language barrier; (ii) employment in the new country; and (iii) settlement services. Language posed as a major barrier to find suitable employment and overall settlement. While non-recognition of prior skills or education, and a lack of local employment experience, posed significant barriers for migrants looking for work, participants also found settlement services had not been able to ease this challenging process. Our findings suggest the need to consider pre-migration experiences while planning for interventions that are tailored to better integration of migrants into the Australian workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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This paper uses Australian Bureau of Statistics' fiscal incidence figures to track trends in the treatment of families with children in the Australian welfare state across the period 1984 to 2010. Our four main findings are that: sole parent families gained while couple families made no net gain; there was no growth in 'middle class welfare'; couple families are slightly better off than elderly households in terms of their final incomes, but considerably less well off in terms of their net worth; and stated differences in policy intentions by the major political parties have had little influence on trends in actual government redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic and social contribution young people make to society is increasingly important as the population ages. Yet a substantial number of young people face economic and social challenges that have an impact on their current and future well-being. Independent indicators are often used to describe what we know about how young people are faring, but these fail to show how young people are doing holistically, across their whole life. If we are to better understand and improve young people's well-being and their lives more generally, it is critical that research establishes the connections and interactions between life domains. This paper uses a well-being framework and secondary analysis of national statistics to begin to understand how young people are faring when we cross economic outcomes with other social indicators. It argues that some Australian young people fare poorly across a large number of other social indicators and thus may be walking a tightrope in regard to their well-being and well-becoming. This paper also aims to generate a dialogue about using a well-being framework for future research with and about young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last ten years, there has been growing interest in social enterprise by governments, the not-for-profit sector and philanthropy in Australia The drivers of this interest have been variously understood to be: increasing demand for innovative responses to social and environmental problems; pressure on not-for-profit organisations to diversify their income sources; and an increasing emphasis by government on the role of civil-society actors in partnering to develop and (more commonly) deliver services in response to social policy priorities. Whatever its genesis, very little is known about the scale and scope of the emerging social-enterprise sector. In order to research the scope of the sector, an important first step is to understand just what social enterprise is and how it may be operationalised. This paper presents the findings from the first stage of a national research project conducted by the authors in conjunction with a new social-enterprise development company. The purpose of the project was to provide a comprehensive snapshot of the social-enterprise sector in Australia. In this paper, we focus on the definitional debates arising from our workshop discussions, what these mean for understanding contemporary discourses of social enterprise, and their implications for research, policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine current policy reforms that situate education as a means of addressing social inclusion. Borrowing from the work of Popkewitz and Lindblad, the paper takes the form of a cross-disciplinary literature review that informs understanding of the relationship between educational governance and social inclusion/exclusion in policy research in Australia. To do so, the author examines the assumptions, omissions and contradictions in policy direction via two problematics - the engagement problematic and the early intervention and prevention problematic - to emphasise how policy discourse produces ways of thinking about inclusion/exclusion. The author argues that discourses of engagement and intervention and prevention reinscribe each other, acting as a palimpsest which produces notions of the 'proper' family and 'proper' participation. These notions of propriety ironically exclude particular types of individuals and families by situating them outside of possibilities for 'success' in social and systemic participation. Therefore, the author seeks to examine the 'systems of reason' that enable these discursively produced notions of propriety to become normalised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a number of the ways in which globalization can accentuate the uncertainties and risks borne by Australians with retirement savings in superannuation funds or who are receiving superannuation benefits. It begins by addressing the impact of globalization on job prospects as a result of off-shoring. It then turns its attention to the impact of globalization on domestic inflation. The third area addressed by this paper is the vulnerability of superannuation funds to the ‘regular’ financial crises of the world financial system. Here, particular attention is given to the way international hedge funds operate in bear markets. Finally, the paper describes the increasing prominence of sovereign wealth funds and explores the implications of their growing role for future superannuation fund earnings. A major conclusion of the paper is that the certainty of the financial uncertainties and risks associated with the occupational superannuation pillar means that Australia's retirement income system needs to be modified in order to limit the exposure of workers' retirement savings and benefits in payment to some of the consequences of a globalized financial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critiques the notion of community capacity building (CCB) and the way it is increasingly being invoked in social policy as a way of tackling disadvantage. The paper argues that CCB and a number if its derivative terms are not as straightforward as they appear. Superficially, CCB presents as a useful way of approaching school and community reform in contexts of disadvantage, but closer analysis reveals it to be pre-disposed to deployment as a cover under which to blame schools and communities, while handing over responsibility. What is posited as an alternative is a 'community organizing' approach that is more political, activist, and attuned to providing forms of analysis and leadership skills with which communities and schools can begin to tackle some of the underlying conditions producing the debilitating inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a comparative study of the growth of data and the changing governance of education in Europe. It looks at data and the 'making' of a European Education Policy Space, with a focus on 'policy brokers' in translating and mediating demands for data from the European Commission. It considers the ways in which such brokers use data production pressures from the Commission to justify policy directions in their national systems. The systems under consideration are Finland, Sweden, and England and Scotland. The paper focuses on the rise of Quality Assurance and Evaluation mechanisms and processes as providing the overarching rationale for data demands, both for accountability and performance improvement purposes. The theoretical resources that are drawn on to enable interpretation of the data are those that suggest a move from governing to governance and the use of comparison as a form of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conditionality in Australia's welfare state has sustained a significant academic critique, including the critique published in this journal. In this Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Social Issues, we contribute to the existing critical literature on welfare conditionality. This Special Issue aimed to provide empirical scrutiny into welfare reform and conditionality in Australia. The articles extend our understanding of welfare conditionality's underpinnings and its lived effects. These case studies illuminate the aspects of welfare conditionality that have not received enough attention: the role of technology, the question of mobility, the relationship with housing and the little thought given to the state's role in mutual obligation. What is clear is that the individualisation of structural problems is not just a theoretical and political misstep ripe for critique, but leads to the formulation of policies that impact marginalised people's capacity to shape life on their own terms. Through different empirical foci, all papers in this Special Issue demonstrate how welfare conditionality is put forward as a solution to address the consequences of structural disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper uses a social selection and social adaptation framework to investigate whether problematic substance use normally precedes or follows homelessness. Clarifying temporal order is important for policy and program design. The paper uses information from a large dataset (n=4,291) gathered at two services in Melbourne, supplemented by 65 indepth interviews. We found that 43% of the sample had substance abuse problems. Of these people, one-third had substance abuse problems before they became homeless and two-thirds developed these problems after they became homeless. We also found that young people were more at risk of developing substance abuse problems after becoming homeless than older people and that most people with substance abuse issues remain homeless for 12 months or longer. The paper concludes with three policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the effect of neo-liberalism upon the formation of Australian aid policy. The influence of neo-liberalism in setting objectives for the development of countries receiving Australian aid is described, citing the political leverage of commercial interests. The tendency of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and Liberal-National Coalition towards neo-liberalism is discussed. This tendency, combined with the institutional context of Australian government, effectively prevents groups who oppose neo-liberalism from participating in the formation of aid policy, according to the author. The methods by which neo-liberalism has risen to its level of dominance are discussed, as well as the potential implications of the 2008 change in Australian government.

Policy making and practice for gender equity in schools is undergoing substantial change as the focus has shifted in recent years from girls to boys. It has been argued that social policy makers need evidence from a variety of sources to make informed decisions about social policy and program implementation. There should be ways of characterising, comparing and contrasting differing perspectives from the public, the media, research and practitioners so that their similarities and differences can be laid open for inspection and therefore provide broad, deep and useful information to policy makers and practitioners. New approaches to reviewing and synthesising literature have both been claimed to have the potential to provide more useful information to social policy makers about 'what works' than traditional methods of reviewing literature. One is an 'argument catalogue' developed by the Canadian Network for Knowledge Utilisation. This paper outlines an attempt to synthesise literature from a variety of sources, including views from parent bodies, teacher unions, practitioners, the media, government departments, and research and theoretical perspectives on gender in schools. The paper offers the findings from utilising this approach as one possible way of dealing with the complexities facing research on policy and practice in this highly contested field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the UK, government is both concerned with improving the performance of public services, including higher education, and with ensuring that the public is aware of improvements in services, to convince the public of the effectiveness of the current regime. Success is both an effect of and a dynamic in the process of evaluating performance, and increasingly 'excellence' is established as a performance outcome. Drawing on a critical review of relevant theory and research, primarily from the UK, Australia and the USA, and illustrated by the author's experience of winning a National Teaching Fellowship, this paper examines teaching excellence in the context of two recent schemes: the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme and the Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. The performance culture in the public sector and the use of excellence as a success criterion are critically analysed. Assumptions about the transfer of excellent practice are explored. Questions about the interaction of competition and equalities issues are raised. The paper ends with arguing that if excellence schemes are to be an established feature of public sector systems, then we must develop strategies to enable them to be implemented equitably, transparently and fit for purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the lived experiences of parents with mental illness in Australia. It draws on in-depth interviews with parents (n=10) who have mental illness and provides an analysis of national mental health policies. The analysis of the parents' narratives is essential in building a picture for those involved in the issues associated with directing and developing services to support parents with mental illness. This paper also provides information for workers who are often faced with a lack of good practice programmes to address the complexities that parents with mental health issues often present. Little is known in this field about the complex needs of families who live with mental illness or recognition of the complex needs of this vulnerable group of families. In fact, there is only recently emerging evidence to indicate an awareness of children in the lives of parents with mental illness. This paper focuses upon lived experience, social process, and social policy across the troubled terrain of mental illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the implementation experience of a child and family policy with ambitious integration goals. The questions to be addressed here focus on the factors that facilitated integration, those that hindered it, and the meanings in practice of integration at the levels of service delivery, planning, and management. The policy is Families First, implemented in New South Wales, the largest state in Australia, beginning in 1998. Families First is an ambitious state-wide initiative that aims to improve the health and wellbeing of children aged from birth to eight years, by supporting parents and carers. This is to be achieved by the development of a coordinated network of prevention and early intervention services that identifies children and families who require further assistance and links them to appropriate support early, before problems become entrenched. Based on the process evaluation of Families First's implementation, this paper argues that successful implementation of Families First as an integration policy was characterized by high levels of participation from a range of actors. We found a number of factors facilitated integration: inclusive practice; building relationships; empowerment; and time and resources. These findings also, however, raise larger questions about the application of integration policies in an early childhood context, where these facilitators are known to be in short supply. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Leader of the Opposition in 1987, the current Prime Minister of Australia John Howard, stated unequivocally that he would dismantle Medicare at his first opportunity. By April 2000, the Health Minister in a Howard-led government proudly proclaimed to the Australian Parliament the Coalition was 'the best friend Medicare ever had'. Such a shift in ideology and policy position appears remarkable, overturning more than 60 years of conservative opposition to a universal, publicly funded, health care system. This paper traces the shift from the lead-up to the 1996 election until 2000, interrogating official policy texts to map how the Coalition reconfigured its own policy narrative about the Australian health care system. This paper argues that in order to understand contemporary reforms to the health care system, we must consider the way in which those reforms provide solutions to discursively, rather than objectively constructed, policy problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After nine years of socially conservative government in Australia, national domestic violence policy has shifted its focus from a `women- centred' and gender-based analytic framework to one that favours the family and reflects individualized, relational explanations of this crucial social policy issue. In exploring this issue, first this paper discusses what is meant by feminism in this context, some of the implications arising out of competing ideas amongst feminist activists in Australia and how feminism drove and influenced national policy. Second, through an examination of the current Australian government's efforts and decisions in relation to its only significant policy response to domestic violence, `Partnerships Against Domestic Violence', this paper explores the implications of the socially conservative approach of the Howard Coalition Government and why it appears anti-feminist. Through a brief analysis of a national public education campaign launched in 2004, allocation of recent funding and the government's broad political approach to women's policy practice and implementation, questions are raised about the future of a policy that ignores the relationships between domestic violence and gender relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the United Kingdom and Australia engaged in social policy transfer of anti-discrimination policy for people with disabilities in the 1990s with the adoption of new legislation whose structure and approach originated in the United States a decade earlier. This paper focuses on the extent of the convergence of disability policies between each country and the USA, and the variables that affected social policy transfer in each nation. By using a comparative approach, this paper allows for a better understanding of the processes and constraints involved in transferring social policy across nations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The COVID‐19 pandemic saw governments around the world suddenly accumulate substantially higher levels of public debt. We consider the level of debt entered into by Australia's federal, state and territory governments and compare this against three metrics for debt sustainability. Using these measures, we find that current and future public debt levels sit within what is regarded as sustainable by scholarly and practitioner opinion. However, we note that recent increases in interest rates will challenge this. We conclude by outlining a range of economic, social and policy challenges arising from the new high public debt environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on how community workers in Shepparton viewed the impact of the Place Based Income Management (PBIM) trial on the lives of their clients, their clients' families, and the broader community. The paper responds to criticism that there has been a lack of community voices in the development of PBIM or of their inclusion in the formal evaluation framework, raised in Philip Mendes's 2013 study of this trial site. A key policy goal underlying Income Management is that the tool assists low income people to become better money managers. Our study found that Shepparton community workers also used the parlance of 'tool' to describe the programmatic value of the BasicsCard in their interactions with clients. However, the BasicsCard appeared marginal to their discussions. Three clear themes emerged from the interviews: Shepparton's focus on voluntary clients, and ascertaining why participation in the local trial had dropped; that support for IM centred on the voluntary measure and the extra resources available to assist clients; and pragmatically locating the program in the middle of a welfare continuum that stretched from the voluntary Centrepay at one end to the highly coercive and restrictive paternalism of State Trustees at the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper specifically addresses the behavioural focus of the income management regime, arguing that through its use of market logic and the reduction of social and political complexity, the regime is a technology of neoliberal governmentality. This paper finds that income management, whether compulsory or voluntary, blanket or Community based, regards the individual as the site of dysfunction, depoliticising and dehumanising broader socio economic historical factors in the process. Further, the focus on behavioural change creates the illusion that the market logic of income management will produce responsible citizens, which in turn obscures the possibility of redressing poverty and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disability reform in Australia centres on a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which aims to provide lifelong, individualised support based on the principle of 'reasonable and necessary' care. As a universal rights-based scheme it represents a historical shift in allocation principles in Australia's disability policy. Nonetheless, attention will be on determining who receives what care given the diversity of personal and family contexts. The aim of this paper is to discuss the operational complexities of a principle of reasonable and necessary care with reference to the findings of a three-year study on the experiences and perspectives of disability care of 25 adults with acquired disability, their 22 nominated family members and 18 service providers. Evidence from this study suggests enacting the principle of reasonable and necessary care and support will be problematic, in particular as it relates to personalising the level and scope of services, balancing formal and informal care, and principles of equity. The paper contributes to the literature about allocation principles in social policy and the challenges of implementation. Further, it provides an empirically informed discussion of some of the specific policy implementation challenges concerning the NDIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian income support system is often characterised as one of the most selective in the Western industrialised world. This paper examines the sense in which the Australian system is selective, and discusses the distinction between selectivity and targeting in income support pro-visions. Developments in social security outlays and recipient numbers over the last two decades are compared with those occurring since 1983, in order that the nature and impact of recent policies introduced to increase targeting can be identified. The analysis indicates that increases in recipient numbers have been the dominant factor underlying the past growth in social security expenditure. The distinction between selectivity and targeting of income support provisions is then explained with reference to the concepts of eligibility and entitlement. A framework is developed to illustrate how recent policies have restrained the growth in social security recipient numbers by policies which have increased income support targeting. These moves have not always produced a consistently more selective system of income support, an issue which is explored with the use of an index of the degree of selectivity of social security expenditures developed specifically for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economists typically argue population ageing generates fiscal pressures by restricting the tax base while increasing demands for social spending. Alongside other economic pressures associated with neoliberalism, this dynamic contributes to a politics of 'enduring austerity' that limits governments' fiscal discretion. The politics of population ageing reflects modelling techniques, such as generational accounting (GA), which, anticipating future deficits, create demands for policy action today to address projected intergenerational inequalities. Taking Australia as a case study, this paper explores the politics of GA in public budgetary processes. While existing critiques reject GA by arguing it relies on 'apocalyptic' or unreliable demography, we focus on a different kind of contestation, which applies the techniques and even the categories of GA to frame different problems and promote different solutions. We identify three sites of partisan contest that refocus fiscal modelling: including the tax side of the budget equation; comparing the cost of public provision to public subsidies for private programmes; and including the costs of environmental damage. At each site, the future-orientated logic of GA is mobilised to contest the policy implications of austerity. This complicates analysis that financialisation and neoliberalism necessarily 'de-politicise' policy by removing state discretion. Instead, we identify an increasingly important, if technocratic, form of political contestation that offers the possibility to promote more egalitarian responses to population ageing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The connection between choice, control and health is well established in the literature on the social determinants of health, which includes choice and control of vital health and social services. However, even in the context of universal health and social care schemes, the ability to exercise choice and control can be distributed unequally. This paper uses the case of the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) to examine these issues. The NDIS is a major policy reform based on an international trend towards personalisation in social care. It aims to increase choice and control over services and supports for people who have or acquire a permanent disability, thereby boosting citizen empowerment and improving health and social outcomes.Methods: The research is a structured review of empirical evidence on the administration and outcomes of the NDIS to identify how social factors constrain or enable the ability of individuals to exercise choice within personalised care schemes.Results: We show how social determinants of health at the individual level can collide with the complexity of policy delivery systems to entrench health inequalities.Conclusion: Many social policy reforms internationally focus on improving empowerment through enabling choice and control. However, if administrative systems do not take account of existing structural inequities, then such schemes are likely to entrench or grow social inequality. Our research indicates that more attention must be given to the design of policy delivery systems for personalisation schemes to ensure health equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]