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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]

Social housing is today a highly residualised sector due to a combination of declining public investment and intensified targeting of stock to the neediest households. We argue that residualisation has opened up a distinct 'problem space' wherein policy making and debate are organised around a distinct set of questions and imperatives. Drawing on research into the management of social housing waitlists in Australia, we show how this problem space is characterised by a preoccupation with finding ever more fine-grained ways of targeting social housing to the neediest households in the context of growing scarcity of housing stock. Defining and operationalising 'neediness' becomes the focal point for policy making and struggles thereover, overshadowing questions of supply and broader debates about the role of social housing in addressing the housing crisis. The problem space of neediness is thus characterised by a tendency to reify social housing scarcity, transforming it into a natural and inevitable constraint that policy makers must simply manage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic led to widespread social and economic policy experimentation as governments sought to protect household finances while locking down economies. Cash transfers emerged as one of the most popular policy measures, leading many to reflect on new possibilities for enacting universal basic income through temporary or emergency interventions. We take Australia's pandemic response, and particularly its Coronavirus Supplement, as an example of this broader experimentation. We analyse the Supplement through the lens of an emergency basic income, arguing the measure reflected existing institutional structures and norms, forms of national and international policy learning, and vulnerabilities in Australia's liberalized housing and labour markets. While temporary, we consider how its apparent success might suggest ongoing policy relevance, either as a form of capitalist "crisis management" or as an alternative pathway for implementing forms of basic income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, the Australian Government proposed a new model of higher education funding that purported to incentivise study in national priority areas. However, despite shortages of social workers, the initial proposal doubled the student fee contribution for a social work degree. The Save Social Work Australia campaign was established by the Australian Council of Heads of Schools of Social Work to redress errant assumptions underpinning the funding of social work education and to lobby for social work to be funded at the same level as other allied health programs. A successful social media campaign resulted in the reclassification of social work prior to promulgation of the legislation as one of only two academic disciplines to achieve this outcome. This article demonstrates that social media can be an effective tool for social workers engaged in political lobbying. Social work academics successfully lobbied the Federal Government to improve the funding of social work education in Australia. Social media can be an effective tool for social workers engaged in political lobbying. [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]

Increasingly unaffordable housing means that family homelessness represents an urgent issue for social policy and practice. Targeting families at risk of homelessness, Supportive Housing for Families (SHF) subsidizes leases and offers support aimed at sustaining tenancies and family unity. We explore how short-term funding cycles in an advanced welfare system impacts experiences with service delivery. Building on housing scholarship employing an ontological security lens, we interrogate the temporal dimensions of SHF, and how these are intertwined with understandings of home in spatial terms. The analyses are based on research conducted to examine a 12-month SHF pilot in Southeast Queensland, Australia. We analyse qualitative interviews conducted with families (n=17), statutory child protection officers (n=7), and SHF support workers (n=10) involved in this pilot. Findings indicate that fixed-term funding impacts every aspect of service delivery, resulting in the collective production of ontological insecurity, as families continue to long for a forever home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Welfare conditionality, where income support payments are tied to prescribed activities or alternatively good behaviour, has intensified in recent years. The toughest form of conditional welfare is arguably compulsory income management (IM), which involves the quarantining of between 50 and 90 per cent of a participant's benefit payment for spending on food, rent, and other essential items in order to reduce substance abuse, and enhance socially responsible behaviour particularly around the care of children. This qualitative study examines the views of IM participants and community stakeholders in the BasicsCard sites of Greater Shepparton and Playford. Findings are presented regarding practical experiences of IM, including financial management; the socio-emotional impacts of IM; and whether IM has addressed key program objectives. It is concluded that the social harms of IM outweigh any perceived benefits and may particularly disadvantage already vulnerable groups such as women and Indigenous Australians. IMPLICATIONS Compulsory IM contains significant hidden harms, including social stigma and shame, and does not seem to be an effective means of addressing chronic social problems. A voluntary targeted IM scheme may have more utility, particularly if allied with a suite of complementary holistic support services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article employs narrative policy analysis to examine how community playgroups are constructed in the ECEC policy framework, in order to understand what might exclude families, and how more families can be included in community playgroups. Playgroups are a widespread and important component of early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision in Australia, where parents and carers meet weekly with their babies, toddlers and preschool children. They are sites of social support for parents, together with play‐based learning and socialisation activities for the children. Through the lens of intersectionality theory, four narratives are constructed through analysis of interviews with policy elite informants. The classic narrative draws on the enduring model of community playgroups from the 1970s, and the vulnerability narrative centres the supported playgroup model. The belonging narrative and the intercultural narrative indicate possibilities for future policy approaches to community playgroups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing services in Australia have a foundation of a system developed by English Invaders and, as a result, have limited governing documentation and recommended practice, particularly in Queensland, to operate in a culturally sensitive manner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional owners. This article focuses on a social housing service and the analysis of legislation and social policy, policies and procedures, staff approaches and client perceptions to examine indirect discrimination towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians involved with housing services. Reflective analysis featuring a critical theory lens indicated a disconnect between legislation and social policy with experiences of clients and organisational approaches resulting in shame, feelings of unworthiness and disengagement from these services. Although Queensland housing legislation provides some governing principles protecting the cultural rights of consumers, organisational practice may not always meet this expectation due to ambiguity from industry leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Researchers and policymakers are increasingly concerned that personalisation schemes in social and health care might be worsening social and health inequities. This has been found internationally, where better outcomes from such schemes have been found amongst those who have higher education and more household income.Method: This study looks at one of the world's largest personalisation schemes, the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme. Using publicly available data we examine the allocation and utilisation of NDIS funds according to social gradient.Results: We find that the rate at which people with disability 'spend' or effectively use their disability care funds follows a social gradient. That is, those in areas of higher socioeconomic disadvantage are not spending as much of their allocated budgets on care services across the year compared to people in areas of higher socioeconomic advantage. This represents a clear issue of equity in the use of public money to people with disability in Australia.Conclusion: We argue that this points to the need to provide targeted supports for the use of disability care funds in areas of higher socioeconomic disadvantage. Without effective supports for fund use, the NDIS and other personalisation schemes may be positioned to worsen existing social inequalities. [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]

The Disability Support Pension (DSP) is the major Australian government financial benefit program for people of working age with medical conditions and disabilities that restrict work capacity. Between 2012 and 2018 a series of policy reforms sought to restrict the growth in DSP payments and encourage more people with some work capacity to seek employment. We characterise changes in three markers of access to disability financial support over the reform period (1) DSP recipient rates (2) DSP grant (approval) rates and (3) the rate of unemployment benefit receipt in people with impaired work capacity. Results demonstrate a significant reduction in DSP receipt and grant rates, and significant increase in the rate of unemployment benefit receipt in working-age Australians with work disabling medical conditions and disability. These changes were not distributed uniformly. People whose primary medical condition was a musculoskeletal or circulatory system disorder demonstrated greater declines in DSP receipt and grant rates, while there was a more rapid increase in unemployment benefit receipt among people with primary mental health conditions. Some trend changes occur in periods during which new disability assessment and pension eligibility policies were introduced, though our ability to attribute changes to specific policy changes is limited. [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 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]

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]

Children with disabilities are known to have high rates of contact with child protection services. However, little is known about child protection contacts for a broader group of children with special healthcare needs (SHCN; i.e., special needs or other impairments of concern that affect learning). This study examined the characteristics of contact with child protection services (prior to the age of 6 years) for children with SHCN identified at school entry using the 2009 Australian Early Development Census, using administrative data from more than 65,000 children in the New South Wales Child Development Study. Child protection contacts prior to age 6 years were more prevalent among children with SHCN compared with those without; in particular, children with SHCN had higher odds of a history of exposure to neglect and physical abuse, and higher odds of being placed in out‐of‐home care, compared with their typically developing peers. Understanding the characteristics of child protection contacts among children with SHCN, with consideration of factors that may influence their patterns of contact with these and other human services agencies, will inform the development of appropriate social policy initiatives to fulfil Australia's obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surveillance and governance of the poor have been key foci for the critical social policy literature for some time, although scholarship regarding the role of big data in social policy – and how this might differ from previous forms of surveillance – is continuing to emerge. This article contributes to this literature by exploring the use of big data under Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand's social investment approaches. Both seek to replace social policy spending with "investment" expected to produce future fiscal returns; in the words of a former Aotearoa/New Zealand Prime Minister, they aim to do "more with less". We argue that big data often provides a poor evidence base for social investment and can, instead, be better understood as part of a panoptic toolkit for poverty governance, mediating continuous surveillance, examination and normalisation of the body politic by enabling the discursive (re)construction of people's identities and subjectivities. This construction serves to exacerbate social inequalities and undermine the rights of ordinary citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings from an Australian study of veteran homelessness (Hilferty, Katz et al. 2019). The AHURI Inquiry into Homelessness Amongst Australian Veterans was funded by the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA) to estimate the number of homeless veterans and to examine veterans' pathways into homelessness, service usage patterns and ways that service responses may be improved. This article presents the prevalence findings and describes the method employed by the research team. Drawing on primary data and extrapolating results to a larger sample of veterans, the researchers estimate that approximately 5,800 contemporary veterans experience homelessness over a 12‐month period in Australia. This estimate – the first ever to be based on primary data – indicates that veteran homelessness is a much larger problem than previously estimated and deserves priority attention from policymakers and sectoral representatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise in popularity of market‐based responses to social policy challenges, the stewardship of quasi‐markets or public service markets, is a key concern for governments worldwide. Debates about how to manage quasi‐markets have focussed on high‐level decision‐making processes. However local actors, in particular street level bureaucrats, are a key part of the complex work of managing quasi‐markets. We examine how street level bureaucrats act as local market stewards in a new quasi‐market for disability care, the Australian National Disability Insurance scheme. We find that the street level bureaucrats, known as local area coordinators, act as shapers of local markets but that their contributions are informal and often restricted by formal structures and processes. For example, we found evidence that the use of key performance indicators can disrupt effective local stewardship efforts towards a procedural approach. We conclude that introducing principles of the polycentric governance approach can improve connections between local market knowledge holders and central decision‐making agencies, thereby improving market stewardship and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keeping children safe from harm is a national policy priority in Australia. Extensive inquiries and reviews have highlighted institutions' persistent failures to respond ethically and appropriately to child abuse and its life‐long impacts on survivors. Policy efforts now reflect considerable emphasis on safeguarding children, including through the development of 'child safe' organisations. The realisation of these policy aspirations requires close attention to how 'child safe' is conceptualised and operationalised in different organisational contexts. Drawing on an analysis of policy in Australia and other international jurisdictions, namely New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland, this article engages critically with the notion of 'child safe' in policy, to explore who is to be safe, from what and how, in organisational settings. The findings suggest emergent discourses of 'child safe' are bound up with particular constructions of both children and safety, reflect current social and political understandings and agendas, and have implications for organisations' approaches to safety. Ensuring the safety of children in Australia and other jurisdictions requires continuing scrutiny of policy implementation to make sure current policy efforts are not reduced to compliance‐based imperatives that protect organisations, but fail to create the cultural conditions that enhance children's wellbeing and safety. [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]

This article provides a queer theoretical reflection on the emergence of lesbian, gay, and queer (LGQ) youth as subjects of policy attention in Australia in the late twentieth century. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which specific forms of social, bureaucratic, and organizational recognition have given shape to LGQ youth as categorical policy objects. To this end, this article critically interrogates social policy related to the provision of funding for LGQ youth support during the 1980s and 1990s in two Australian states: New South Wales and Western Australia. More specifically, it focuses on some of the ways in which LGQ youth have been discursively shaped and materially supported in three different organizations, two of which continue to be strongly associated with support of LGQ youth in Australia. This study of the emergence of these organizations, resourced by three different sectors—the state, the church, and the LGQ community itself—necessarily draws on ephemeral resources, reflecting the conditions of possibility in which this work was being enacted. We conclude with an analysis of the necessity for situating policy recognitions within specific contexts to examine the implications for LGQ youth as the subjects such recognitions simultaneously seek to constitute and serve. [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 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]

Significant national reform activity is occurring that concerns the abuse of older people by trusted others. This includes an Australian Law Reform Commission report entitled Elder Abuse – A National Legal Response (2017), and the adoption in 2019 of the first ever "National plan to respond to the abuse of older Australians (elder abuse)". While service responses in this field largely exist at, and will continue to be provided at, state and territory level, this article considers current and needed reform initiatives in a field of increasing national government attention. IMPLICATIONS The adoption of the first ever national plan concerning the abuse of older people in Australia adds significant impetus and direction for reform in this key social policy area. Most service and regulatory reforms aimed at improving responses to the abuse of older people will occur at state and territory level. The breadth of likely and necessary reforms is significant, ranging from policing practices through to guardianship law reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years Australian governments have significantly refocused domestic violence policies to prioritise primary prevention strategies. The objective of such strategies is to change how Australians perceive, acknowledge, and respond to domestic violence as a gender-based problem. Recognising the value of these efforts to address oppressive cultural practices, we draw attention to limitations inherent in shifting culture as a means to prevent domestic violence. We demonstrate how governments may improve policy approaches by addressing the structural inequalities that have historically forced women into positions of subordination. This will help us move toward more effective and long-term solutions to domestic violence. IMPLICATIONS Australian domestic violence policy must include structural and systems changes prioritising women's equal rights in addition to equal opportunities. To change cultural attitudes and behaviours, we must alter the environment in which oppressions and opportunities are located. Social workers can shape the debate to ensure that changing culture to prevent domestic violence is conceptualised as part of a wider social and policy change agenda. [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 cashless debit card is Australia's recent and most punitive form of income management; a social-security focused social policy approach to behaviour change. Evidence suggests the policy is a harmful social experiment which does not reduce the social harms or dysfunction it set out to perform. This paper questions the underlying motivations of cashless debit card policy implementation via contrasting policy theory and objectives with existing and emerging evidence of policy impact. Three key issues concern the creation and implementation of cashless debit card policy in terms of the vague aims and lack of evidence of the policy's success; issues of stigmatisation in relation to power, morality, and deviance; and the influence of economic ideology and profit making in social governance. An alternative approach to policy making is suggested based on addressing lived social contexts instead of problematising dysfunction resulting from individual deficits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the prominence of 'vulnerability' as a way of making sense of disadvantage and suffering in both social policy and social science. It examines the interplay of vulnerability as a material phenomenon and cultural script by foregrounding the experiences of the most marginal benefit claimants in Australia's residual social security system. The article questions whether the everyday disruptions and challenges that unsettle yet settle-into life in poverty are intelligible within authorised idioms of vulnerability that govern access to support. By examining what people surviving on benefits are vulnerable to and how they are compelled to demonstrate their status as vulnerable, it contributes a critical account of lived experiences of vulnerability that holds both its discursive and phenomenological dimensions in view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores representations of gender and violence in Australia's National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Children. The Plan's neglect of violence in the context of LGB relationships is discussed as indicative of the Plan's implicit heteronormativity and its uncritical reliance on dominant discourses of gender and violence. In its failure to engage with the diverse complexities of gender and violence, I argue that the Plan perpetuates the exclusion of certain bodies, identities and experiences, such that rights to protection and safety are reserved for some and not others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To identify national and international research and literature focussed on policy responses to elder abuse in rural and remote communities to generate recommendations for Australian responses. Design: Scoping literature review. Setting: Australia (some international policy also included). Participants: National and international elder abuse policy documents relating to rural and remote responses were reviewed. Seventy‐two stakeholders were invited to contribute literature that may have been missed in the scoping review. Main outcome measure(s): Identification of the extent to which issues for rural and remote communities were discussed in elder abuse policy. Result: Of the 13 Australian policy documents reviewed, only four made mention of rural and remote communities, though this was generally only in regard to increase in vulnerability. No mention of these communities were identified in reviewed global policy. One document focussing on abuse in rural and remote Indigenous communities highlighted the importance of developing culturally appropriate responses hinged on community collaboration and consultation. Conclusion: Consideration of rural and remote communities in elder abuse policy is generally not meaningful. It is recommended that future policy development includes recognition of the distinct features of elder abuse in rural and remote communities, as well as how these features may impact on prevention and responses in these locations. These features include geographical isolation, lack of access to services and transportation, confidentiality and privacy issues, and the need for culturally sensitive approaches to address elder abuse for Indigenous people which take into account the impact of historical disenfranchisement. [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]

This study provides empirical evidence of the gender gap in retirement savings trajectories using a large longitudinal Australian database. The persistent trend of retirement income policy over recent decades has been to place responsibility for retirement savings accumulation with the individual employee. These plans are fundamentally linked to employment conditions and individual choices, which shape retirement savings trajectories and outcomes. Australia has a mature compulsory system and thus provides insight for countries embarking on similar paths. This study shows that the gender gap in retirement savings is observable from early on in an individual's paid working life and persists over time, providing evidence that women are disadvantaged early in their careers, with few signs of improvement. Men, in contrast, are overrepresented in the upper quartile of growth in retirement savings. This study provides important empirical evidence for policymakers concerned with gender differences in retirement outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As governments worldwide turn to personalised budgets and market‐based solutions for the distribution of care services, the care sector is challenged to adapt to new ways of working. The Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is an example of a personalised funding scheme that began full implementation in July 2016. It is presented as providing greater choice and control for people with lifelong disability in Australia. It is argued that the changes to the disability care sector that result from the NDIS will have profound impacts for the care sector and also the quality of care and well‐being of individuals with a disability. Once established, the NDIS will join similar schemes in the UK and Europe as one of the most extensive public service markets in the world in terms of numbers of clients, geographical spread, and potential for service innovation. This paper reports on a network analysis of service provider adaptation in two locations—providing early insight into the implementation challenges facing the NDIS and the reconstruction of the disability service market. It demonstrates that organisations are facing challenges in adapting to the new market context and seek advice about adaptation from a stratified set of sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the concept of vulnerability and examines its salience for selected aspects of Australian social security. It argues that vulnerability is a welcome shift from individual to relational thinking, of particular relevance to measurement of deprivation and richer transformations of delivery of welfare services (and access to social and informal support). Vulnerability is a productive analytical lens for better understanding aspects of law and policy, but remains too capacious and ill-defined to provide more than false hope in substantive reform of social security law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the international trend towards personalisation, in 2013 Australia launched a major disability scheme aiming to give participants greater choice and control over services. The scheme aims to cover a wide diversity of disabilities, services and significant geographical area – resulting in a highly complex system of local overlapping markets. At four years into implementation a range of challenges have emerged. In this paper we firstly describe the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme, then explore a range of implementation challenges it currently faces as a large-scale personalisation scheme. Based on these experiences we pose a range of questions for similar schemes internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored Australian federal level policy instruments which influence and impact on women’s reproductive choices and the consequences of those choices. A systematic policy search and mapping exercise was undertaken. Eighteen policy instruments were identified at the Federal level and were explored through a policy framework and thematic analysis. Findings indicate there are multiple layers of influence on women’s reproductive choices and the consequences of those choices, and the policy instruments interact in multiple dynamic, interconnected and contextual ways. Yet, they also lack cohesion and congruency, failing to account for women’s life circumstances while at the same time shifting the promoted position for women in each policy instrument. The policy instruments seek to regulate, control and selectively support women’s reproduction while simultaneously silencing, marginalising and reprimanding some groups of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on qualitative Australian research that was conducted with 32 workers from Job Services Australia and Emergency Relief agencies. Researchers investigated the operationalisation of assistance for unemployed people to illuminate the language, discourse and processes through which workers and unemployed people were constructed within the quasi-market culture. Findings included individualistic and behaviourist frames, paradoxical positions in relation to client choice and blame, and a metaphorical frame which reinforced position, status and difference. This study provides important evidence from the frontline of Australia’s deregulated employment services, adding to the growing body of international social work literature pertaining to neoliberal welfare reform. [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]

In Australia and internationally, the well-being of children and young people is a core focus of social policy, with a growing imperative to locate well-being within the sphere of education. However, the term ‘well-being’ remains ambiguous and the implementation of educational approaches to promote and improve it appears fragmented and ad hoc. In Australia, little is known about how well-being is understood and supported in schools, particularly from the perspective of students themselves. This article reports on key findings from an ambitious mixed-methods study funded by the Australian Research Council that investigated conceptualisations and practices around well-being in schools. Underpinned by theoretical interests linked to Childhood Studies and recognition theory, the research investigated policy, student and staff perspectives on well-being. The findings point to the key role of relationships, providing considerable scope for analysing the salience of Honneth’s modes of recognition for well-being in schools. [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]

Policies that encourage the aspirations of disabled people for mainstream employment might be an effective way to increase their workforce participation rate. This study aims to determine which people in sheltered employment aspire to a job beyond their current sheltered employment job. We asked 64 people with sheltered employment jobs about their workplace and job fit, their intentions to stay in their current job and their future job aspirations. The key finding is that perceptions of fit indirectly and adversely affect aspirations via intention to stay. Participants who felt they fitted planned to keep working at their sheltered workplace, but a stronger intention to stay made it less likely that they could identify an alternative to sheltered employment. These results were not influenced by age or the time spent in sheltered employment. Policy should therefore support people in sheltered employment to develop realistic job aspirations. Helping disabled people to identify opportunities beyond sheltered employment can avoid complacency and free up sheltered job opportunities for other disabled people. But policy changes are required to leverage sheltered employment as a first step for disabled people to develop mainstream job aspirations and facilitate transitioning beyond sheltered employment job options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have predicted with high confidence that the risk of bushfires will increase in the future. As this risk increases, so too does the need for appropriate policy responses. In developing these responses, costs need to be weighed against benefits. To fully appreciate the benefits of bushfire risk mitigation policies and strengthen the development of social policies around such events, it is necessary to include the psychological cost of experiencing these events. In this study, we employ the 'life satisfaction approach' to place a monetary estimate on the cost of Australia's Black Saturday bushfires (Australia's worst bushfires on record). Results reveal that the bushfires significantly reduce self-reported levels of life satisfaction, with an implied willingness-to-pay of AUD 2,991 in terms of annual household income, or AUD 1,039 per capita, to reduce by one percent the extent to which an individual's immediate local area was affected by the Black Saturday bushfires. In doing so, we identify an apparent gap between current levels of expenditure on bushfire response and mitigation, and that amount which (with the inclusion of associated social benefits) would be welfare maximising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of emotions with a specific focus on discourses of compassion, in framing policy and service delivery responses to homelessness. While there has been some recent scholarly work on the emotions and homelessness, there has been little attempt to explore this in the context of social policy responses to homelessness and the resultant programmes within which services are delivered. Informing the analysis in this article is the view that the continued presence of social injustices including homelessness reflects an absence of concern for others and the forms of suffering inflicted personally and institutionally upon each other. These considerations suggest the possibility for satisfactorily addressing social inequities that have significantly been exacerbated by the promotion of policy frameworks informed by neoliberal rationalities, depending to a considerable degree on making alterations to both individual and collective value frameworks. Such transformative possibilities could be facilitated by the development of the virtue of compassion. Exploring the potential for a politics of compassion to inform policy responses to homelessness in particular has the capacity, among other things, to disrupt contemporary, taken-for-granted assumptions regarding welfare dependency and the role of government in welfare provision at a more general level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective The frequency of psychological distress amongst welfare recipient job seekers in Australia has largely been neglected by researchers and social policy experts. A link between a high level of psychological distress and reduced capacity to work has recently been identified. This is of significant concern as welfare recipients are increasingly expected to participate in programmes in exchange for their welfare payments. The objective of this project was to estimate the frequency of psychological distress amongst this population and to identify characteristics associated with an increased risk of distress. Method A sample of 519 income support job seekers aged 15-64 years was interviewed using the Kessler Psychological Distress scale. Results Forty-five per cent of the sample met the clinical criteria for psychological distress and were deemed likely to have a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 4th ed., (DSM-IV) diagnosis of depression and/or anxiety. Several risk factors for psychological distress were identified, including being aged between 40 and 54 years, being female, and being classed as long-term unemployed. Conclusions Findings from this study now provide some Australian figures on the frequency of psychological distress amongst welfare recipient job seekers. The implementation of social policy changes in intervention programmes is recommended to improve the psychological well-being of welfare recipient job seekers in Australia and ensure their capacity to meet income support obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is more than a decade since social geographer Kevin Dunn first described non-Muslim Australians’ ignorance about Islam and its adherents and outlined a series of recommendations about how Australian governments could address this as a pressing social policy issue. Recently researchers have re-assessed non-Muslim Australians’ perceptions of their knowledge of Islam and Muslims identifying while it has improved since 2003, 70% acknowledge they know little to nothing about either. Using data from Australia’s 2016 National Social Survey, this study examines the correlation between non-Muslim Australians’ perceptions of their knowledge of Islam and Muslims and their actual knowledge. We find that perception of knowledge is a reasonable indicator of actual knowledge. Further, we find that tertiary education is the single significant demographic factor impacting actual knowledge. By examining geographical patterns of knowledge, we also find that ignorance of Islam and Muslims is consistent across Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Internationally, domestic violence policy has shifted towards supporting women to stay at home with the perpetrator of violence excluded. However, the practical realities indicate that this is a complex arena in which the rhetoric of rights for 'women and children to stay in their own home' needs to be underpinned by additional support to provide safety and protection for those choosing this option. The current study examines decision making about accommodation options and the role of civil protection orders among 138 women accessing domestic violence support services in Victoria Australia. It shines a light on the intersection between justice responses and the housing needs of women and their children leaving a violent relationship. Our findings reveal that for this sample of women, staying in their own home left them more open to breaches of intervention orders than those who re-located. In spite of the frequency of breaching, a majority of women believed that they were safer with the protective order in place. We conclude that supporting women to 'stay at home' with the perpetrator removed may be a pathway to safety for only a minority of women particularly if support from police and courts is not proactive and reliable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]