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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]

This article focuses on attempts by settler colonial states to deport Indigenous non-citizens. The concept of "Indigenous anti/deportation" is introduced to capture both the inseparability of deportation from its contestation, as well as the unique stakes involved in contesting the imminent deportation of members of Indigenous communities. Comparing cases in Canada and Australia, Indigenous anti/deportation highlights fundamentally divergent claims of sovereignty, the assertion of Indigenous citizenship orders, and a transformation of how belonging is understood in contexts of settler colonial occupation. This article concludes by considering the implications of cases of Indigenous anti/deportation for future struggles for Indigenous sovereignty and for solidarity-building between migrants and Indigenous peoples. [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]

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]

Aim: This article aims to explore how policymakers conceptualise a person suitable for disability income support (DIS) and how this compares across two settings – Australia and Canada. Methods: A constructivist grounded theory approach was used; 45 policymakers in Australia and Canada were interviewed between March 2012 and September 2013. All policymakers are or were influential in the design or assessment of DIS. Results: Results found that the policymakers in both jurisdictions define a suitable person as having as an 'ideal type' of disability with five features – visibility, diagnostic proof, permanency, recognition as a medical illness and perceived as externally caused. Many of the policymakers described how mental illnesses are not an 'ideal type' of disability for DIS by juxtaposing the features of mental illnesses against physical illnesses. As such, mental illnesses were labelled imperfect disabilities and physical illnesses as 'ideal type' for DIS. Conclusions: The rise of DIS recipients has divided the once protected 'deserving' category of the disabled into more ('ideal type' of disability) and less deserving (imperfect disability). Such conceptualisations are important because these categories can influence the allocation of welfare resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The concept of throughcare as a means to prevent recidivism continues to attract considerable attention in Australia over the last couple of years. This is particularly the case for Indigenous peoples, as the transition to life after imprisonment proves to be particularly challenging for them, resulting in high rates of recidivism and ongoing overrepresentation in Australian prisons. In this contribution, we report on research we conducted in two Australian jurisdictions. After identifying the problems in developing effective throughcare strategies for Indigenous peoples leaving prison, we turn to Canada for examples of good practice. Canada was chosen for comparison as it is also a settler colonial state, experiencing similar problems of overrepresentation of their Indigenous population in the prison. After a critical analysis of these practices, we conclude that the reasons for a problematic re-integration of Indigenous peoples are related to a tendency to impose solutions and strategies developed in the white mainstream onto Indigenous communities without acknowledging traditional cultures and structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In high-income countries welfare states play a crucial role in defining - and re-defining - what is offered as publicly provided care, and as a result shape the role of families, markets and the voluntary sector in care provision. Fiscal policies of cost containment, coupled with neoliberal policies stressing individual responsibility and reliance on market forces in recent decades, have resulted in the contraction of state provided care services in a range of sectors and states. There has also been widespread retrenchment in public health sectors across many countries resulting in policies of deinstitionalisation and early discharge from hospital that are predicated on the assumption that the family or voluntary sector will pick up the slack in the care chain. At the same time that this loosening of medicalized control has occurred, services to families with young children have become increasingly targeted on 'at risk' mothers through widespread population surveillance. To date, analyses of the implications of these important changes in care provision have primarily focused on health services and outcomes for birthing women and their newborns. In this paper, we make the case that post-birth care is a form of social care shaped not only by welfare state policies but also by cultural norms, and we suggest an analytic framework for examining some of the recent changes in the provision of postpartum care. We use examples from three developed welfare states - the Netherlands, Australia and Canada - to illustrate how variations in welfare state policy and cultural norms and ideals shape the provision of home and community based postnatal services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on events and changes related to the judicial system of several countries including Australia, Canada and Great Britain. It states that Victoria and New South Wales released publications that recommend changes to the complex trial system of Australia on criminal cases. It adds that the Law Society published reports regarding evidence presentation in England and the European Union (EU). Moreover, it offers information on the Coroners and Justice Act of 2009 of Great Britain.

Are female government leaders more likely than their male counterparts to see their gendered identities and personal lives profiled in news coverage of their ascents? Are non-novel women leaders—those who are the second in their jurisdiction to achieve the top political job—less likely to experience media personalization than did the women who preceded them in office? By analyzing newspaper coverage of 20 Australian and Canadian premiers, ten women and their immediate male predecessors, our study establishes that female premiers were more extensively personalized in news coverage than were male premiers, particularly in the Australian context. However, gender novelty and other factors proved significant. The proposition that an increased presence of women in leadership roles diminishes the salience of private lives and personal characteristics is supported by our study, suggesting that gender stereotyping of female political leaders will decrease over time as more women exercise political power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of the two world wars on welfare legislation in 16 western countries. We use Poisson regressions to test our hypothesis that war was a catalyst of welfare legislation, especially in countries that were heavily exposed to the dreadful effects of war. By welfare legislation, we mean the inaugural adoption and major reforms across four programmes (old age and disability benefits, sickness and maternity benefits, unemployment compensation and family allowances). Our findings suggest that both world wars are key factors for explaining the timing of comprehensive welfare reforms and outweigh the significance of other factors such as regime type or level of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article disaggregates high- and low-status care work across eight liberal welfare regimes: Australia, Canada, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Using Luxembourg Income Study data, descriptive and multivariate analyses provide support for a 'migrant in the market' model of employment, notwithstanding variation across countries. The data demonstrate a wage penalty in both high- and low-status care employment in several liberal welfare regimes, with the latter (service jobs in health, education and social work) more likely to be part-time and situated in the private sector. Migrant care workers are found to work disproportionately in low-status, low-wage types of care and, in some cases, to incur additional wage penalties compared to native-born care workers with equivalent human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring the power of the political left with the ‘share of social democratic cabinet seats’ is the gold standard in the literature on partisan effects. We argue that this measure of left power suffers from conceptual ambiguity and propose an alternative approach to measure the ideological orientation of governments based on their power in cabinets and data on party positions. We see several shortcomings of the traditional measure: the social democratic cabinet share neglects the fact that parties’ ideological profiles differ across countries and have significantly changed over recent decades. Also, specific policy measures of party preferences are often more appropriate to gauge the government’s position than relying on highly aggregated left/right measures. In addition, the social democratic cabinet share does not take into account the impact of coalition partners, cabinet decision making and the possibility of minority governments relying on parliamentary support outside the cabinet on the ability of parties to implement the social policies. After discussing the reasons for the conceptual ambiguity of existing indicators for the power of the left, we present alternative measures for the ideological orientation of the government based on the composition of cabinets and different information about party positions. We demonstrate how these measures can be combined to a single indicator that takes into account both the ideological position of governing parties in a particular policy domain and their power to affect cabinet decisions. We critically discuss the availability and merits of data on party positions and cabinet compositions and provide recommendations for constructing measures in welfare state research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the 1980s, many social care jobs have shifted from the public to the nonprofit sector, accompanied by funding cuts, government contracts, managerialism and performance management. Qualitative data collected in Australia, New Zealand and Canada show that agency mission and immediate supervisors remain centrally important to workers’ identity and willingness to remain employed in social care. With the exception of one study site (where targets were jointly resisted by managers and staff), outcome measures were seen by workers to detract from the quality of care and erode social justice. This article argues that agency mission and supportive supervision buffer the impact of poor wages and conditions in the sector, while outcome measures undermine workers’ identities as caring people, in effect making the ‘self’ a site of struggle and discontent. Resistance strategies that agencies, workers and unions have used to challenge the hegemony of outcome-oriented funding and management models are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has established that student outcomes are strongly associated with the socioeconomic composition of a school, also known as school socioeconomic status. Less is known, however, about the ways in which the relationship varies for different students, schools and national education systems. Here, we conduct a secondary analysis of an international dataset to examine the strength of the relationship between school socioeconomic status and achievement in math and reading for Canada and Australia. The history, economy and culture of these two countries are similar, as are many aspects of their education systems. One important difference, however, is the degree to which their education systems are marketised. Our findings show that in both countries, school socioeconomic status is strongly associated with academic achievement for all students, regardless of their individual socioeconomic status. Nevertheless, the relationship between school socioeconomic status and academic achievement is substantially stronger in Australia than in Canada. We conclude that student outcomes are more equitable in Canada than in Australia, and suggest that this may be due to differences in the ways in which the two education systems are funded and structured. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is about the transnational movement of policy discourses on childcare. It considers whether the spread of neoliberal ideas with their emphasis on marketisation, on the one hand, and a social investment discourse on the other, are leading to convergence in childcare arrangements in Nordic countries (Finland and Sweden) and liberal Anglo-Saxon countries (Australia and Canada). We find points of convergence around both themes at the level of policy discourse and continued diversity in the way these ideas are translated into actual policies. In other words, convergence is mediated by institutions and political realignments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article the author discusses various court cases in several countries including Australia, India, and Canada. She cites the sexual offences charged to a psychiatrist by his former receptionist and patients. The author mentions that the post-offence evidence is an evidence based on the defendant's action following the offence.

The article offers information on the enhancement of offender re-entry process in the world. It emphasizes on the success of U.S. system for offenders' re-entry, and its impact on the policies of other nations including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for offenders' successful return to their communities. It discusses the establishment of evidence-based practice (EBP) which constitutes risk and need assessment, correctional interventions, and community aftercare and supervision for offenders' re-entry.

There are tensions in federal political systems over whether the central government or the states/provinces are the most suitable jurisdictions for dealing with the relationship between employers and unions. As integrated national economies developed, there are growing pressures on federal governments to intervene in industrial relations. States/provinces, however, might still maintain unique economic and social conditions that render federal legislation inappropriate. This article examines the development of federal jurisdictions in Australia, Canada and the USA up until the late 1940s. While Australia, unlike the other the two countries, had a constitution that provided for federal coverage of industrial relations, it was a limited power. Despite this, there was a gradual spread of federal coverage beyond that originally intended by the original framers of the Australian Constitution. The Canadian and US constitutions predate the rise of organized industrial relations. However, federal governments in these countries also increased their involvement in industrial relations to resolve disputes in key national industries such as railways and in response to critical events such as the Great Depression and World Wars, which challenged existing assumptions about industrial relations. While there was a trend towards the federal regulation of industrial relations, states and provinces still played a key role as innovators in both experimenting with new ways of regulating relations between employers and unions and imposing restrictions on the power of organized labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines organizational characteristics of Japanese community unions and analyses similarities and differences in the organizational forms and activities of community unionism between Japan and other industrialized countries. The article first outlines the conceptual framework of community unionism based on the literature review of studies on cases in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK, and then examines to what extent the framework is applicable to the Japanese case. Although there are some common features, one of the important differences of community unionism between Japan and other industrialized countries is the weakness of coalition-building between community unions and community-based organizations in Japan compared to other countries. The article argues that the forms of community unionism are mediated by civil societal and institutional contexts of labour movements, and that the relative underdevelopment of civil society and industrial relations institutions (liberal union recognition procedures) in Japan explains the difference in the forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guidelines for the assessment of learners with English as an Additional Language (EAL) in Great Britain maintain the importance of teacher assessment as a component in the reporting process. In the British context, the national arrangement for the assessment of EAL learners is based on a combination of National Curriculum descriptors developed for mother tongue speakers together with supplementary descriptors in A language in common and a wide range of EAL descriptors generated by local education authorities and schools. In contrast, countries such as Australia, the U.S. and Canada have developed assessment frameworks specifically for use with EAL learners, both within specialized language programs and in mainstream education. In this article the authors explore how an analysis of EAL assessment can be enriched through international perspectives embedded in policy documents. This review is based on a critical evaluation undertaken for an ongoing research project funded by the National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. The project aims to provide comparative data on assessment systems which would be informative in the British context and evaluates six assessment frameworks.

The article focuses on the changing relationship between politicians and television, emphasizing on the prime ministers of Australia, Canada and Great Britain. The author looks into the connection between politics and television, particularly in the formation of political structures and electoral strategies. He also looks into the influence of television on political processes in the three countries.

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