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This article presents an argument for reforming Australian public policy in favor of social care, rather than family, residential, or community care, for the elderly, sick, and disabled. After noting policy assumptions that families are the focus of caring and women are the natural caregivers, the paper describes changes in Australian family structures that militate in favor of policy reform. Trends related to marriage and childbearing, women in the labor force, family incomes, the aging population, legislation, and employment practices are analyzed. The paper then considers the impact of financial cutbacks on community care. The terminology of "care" and "caring" is analyzed, and hidden assumptions and connotations of this terminology are discussed. The paper then provides estimates of the numbers of Australians with particular needs for care and offers evidence that women are the main caregivers for children, the disabled, and the elderly. Discussion then turns to the caring role, covering such topics as the caregivers' need for specialized knowledge and instrumental and emotional support; stress levels; the hierarchy of public support; and research needs. Costs of care are considered next, with an emphasis on the indirect social costs of the enormous contributions that families are required to make to care provision. Next, Australia's Home and Community Care (HACC) program, the main funding source for caregiver support, is described, and a care plan linking HACC agencies with informal sources of care is suggested. New directions for care are recommended with respect to community support for caregivers, housing, research needs, empowerment, employer roles, and new family roles. Finally, a social caring model that would ensure nationwide availability of adequate public services is outlined. (AC)

The article discusses the newly released papers about the challenges in balancing paid work and family responsibilities by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) in Australia. The paper examined the manner in which men and women balance their work and family responsibilities and provided an outline of the new approach to alleviate the existing status. Moreover, the Australian government implemented laws to protect the workers having family and caregiver responsibility in the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and the Disability Discrimination Act.

This article focuses on the Australian Institute on Family Studies' Housing Across the Life Course project. This paper set out to illustrate how the key concepts of a risk society might become manifest in contemporary Australian housing careers. This led to a consideration of whether entry to home purchase shows signs of increased differentiation and disconnectedness. Analysis reveals no evidence of increased differentiation; on the contrary, the age-related norm of entry to home ownership appears to be strengthening. That is, entry to home ownership by later cohorts is increasingly likely to have been attained within a narrower span of years than earlier cohorts. The data suggest that if individuals have not entered home ownership by their early thirties, they are increasingly unlikely to do so. With regard to disconnectedness, analysis found that entry to home ownership is becoming increasingly disconnected from other life course events. The paper has provided brief illustrations of the manifestation of risk society concepts and what they might mean for our understanding of family life.

This paper examines the availability and dynamics of family supports across a range of Australian families to determine whether distinctive patterns exist for families from non-English-speaking backgrounds. The first part of the paper provides an overview of cultural diversity in Australia, the general directions of immigration and family policies, and a summary of current research in family exchanges. The second part includes an analysis of data from the Australian Institute of Family Studies Australian Life Course Study on exchanges within a range of culturally diverse Australian families, followed by consideration of the extent to which families from non-English-speaking backgrounds reveal distinctive patterns of exchanges. Developments in two government policy areas--immigration and settlement policies, and family policies--are relevant to family exchanges of immigrant families. A policy trend in immigration and settlement services during the 1990s has been in the direction of reduced government expenditure and a more economically focused migration program. This has led to tighter management of the migration pro- gram, the introduction of cost recovery for migration services, and the elimination of services to some categories of immigrants.

The article focuses on the ninth conference of the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC). The conference began with a warm and touching welcome of the attendees by Ali Golding, an Indigenous Australian from Sydney, New South Wales, and an adopted elder of the Eora people of Sydney. The atmosphere of harmony generated by this welcome provided a challenging context for the delivery of papers that together highlighted a diverse range of problematic social issues. This year also marks the beginning of close collaboration between the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Social Policy Research Centre in the evaluation of the Australian Government's innovative "Stronger Families and Communities Strategy." This important and intensive evaluation is being led by the SPRC, with the Institute as its partner. The nature of the strategy and ways in which it will be evaluated formed the basis of papers at the SPRC. As this work progresses, it will no doubt produce informative papers linking research, policy and practice.

The author proposes that a new definition of household, called extended family household, be added to the Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to encompass the complex familial structures of indigenous societies. The nuclear family structure, which is considered a starting point by the ABS, is not a natural outcome of aboriginal Australian kinship systems. The paper focuses on the complexity of cultural translation involved in evaluating the data from the ABS Indigenous Enumeration Strategy and uses case studies to analyze responses.

The article focuses on the Ninth Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference, titled "Families Matter," which was held in Melbourne on 9-11 February 2005. The conference was opened by the Minister for Family and Community Services, Senator the Hon. Kay Patterson. The conference concluded with a panel discussion on the topic "Family policy in the Asia Pacific region." Early childhood development, early intervention strategies and the development of effective children's services continue to be enduring themes of Institute conferences. A number of papers discussed children's well-being in childcare. A number of sessions were dedicated to exploring the interaction between family life and community life. The participation of international delegates provides an important networking opportunity for Australian researchers and policy makers attending the Institute's Conference. Feedback from delegates attending the conference was very positive. During and immediately after the conference, research presented at the conference was reported in more than 800 media items.

The article presents a discussion about how young people are coping with the complexity and uncertainty of modern life in Australia. This paper reports the progress and perspectives of 1157 young people aged 19-20 years. Nowadays, however, the period following secondary schooling is often one of prolonged financial dependence, with young people progressing to further education and training at rates unprecedented in Australia's history. Employment opportunities are changing rapidly and have become more uncertain, and it is expected that individuals will traverse multiple career paths during their working life. Some have even suggested that one should begin thinking of the years from the late teens through the middle twenties as a new stage in the life-course, calling this the "emerging adult" period of development. There is disagreement about whether young people are doing well, or finding life difficult. There is an urgent need for Australian research that can provide information about how a large and diverse group of young adults is faring over a broad range of aspects of life, both positive and problematic. The most recent wave of data collected in the Australian Temperament Project provides such an opportunity.

'Growing Up in Australia' may be the most ambitious study of children's development ever undertaken in Australia. Tracking 5,000 infants and 5,000 four-year-olds forward over at least eight years, it aims to provide a strong evidence base for policy development and service delivery on a wide range of issues relating to children's development. Many parties have played important roles in bringing this study into the world, watching over it, helping it take its first steps, and offering expert advice and assistance. In this paper the authors provide a brief description of the study's development process, using the rather appropriate analogy of a child's birth. Then they briefly describe the data that will be available to researchers from the first survey wave, and offer some pointers to the sorts of questions that can be addressed using the dataset.

It is now a truism that the Australian population is ageing, and ageing more rapidly in some groups than others. Specifically, the number of older immigrants of non-English-speaking backgrounds has been growing at five times the rate of the Australian-born aged population in recent years. It follows that the current generation of Australians looks towards old age with the most diverse cultural faces in the Australian history. While the psychology of ageing is important to all of the U.S., this paper is confined to an overview of issues related to older migrants and their families. The dynamics of a substantial long-term migration program generate two groups of overseas-born aged, those who migrated young and grew old in Australia, and those who came here when they were already comparatively older. Those who came to Australia in the post-war years as young migrants have now been in Australia for most of their adult lives, and their children were either born here or came as young children. The later groups of older migrants consist predominantly of those who came under family reunion programs, sponsored by their adult children. The two groups have different settlement experiences, but now share several similar experiences in terms of family interactions.

Research into Australian families has been given an enormous boost with the recent release of the first wave of data from the longitudinal Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia Survey. In the first survey of its type in Australia, the Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia Survey will yield valuable insights into the dynamics of family relationships, parenting, housing arrangements, income, workforce involvement, and the health, well being and attitudes of young people and adults in Australia. This article examines the potential for the new survey to contribute to research on families in Australia. It summarizes the case for yet another survey; provides brief descriptions of the survey design and sample selection; outlines issues covered by the survey; and describes data collection procedures, wave one response rates, and characteristics of the sample. The second part of the paper discusses the sorts of family issues that could be explored with these data. INSETS: ISSUES COVERED BY HILDA SURVEY;HILDA WAVE ONE.