Search

A common theme in the literature on care-giving is the issue of "hidden" carers, that is, people who undertake caring roles and responsibilities, yet do not identify themselves as carers. One reason people do not recognise themselves as carers relates to the nature of the caring relationship. When providing care for a family member, intra-familial bonds of love and reciprocity do not encourage parties to view the relationship as anything other than a "normal" familial relationship. The lack of self-identification amongst young carers is complicated further by societal norms surrounding care-giving. Whereas adults are expected to provide care to other adults and children, young people are not expected to be care-givers but rather care recipients. As a result, many young carers remain "hidden" and beyond the reach of services and supports designed to help them in their caring role. This paper draws on qualitative research with young carers and service providers to explore the issue of self-identification amongst young carers. The paper concludes with recommendations for identifying and supporting hidden young carers. (Contains 6 notes.)

Bettina Cass, with Deborah Brennan, Ilan Katz, Catherine Thomson and Deborah Mitchell, and 10 Partner Organisations in NSW and South Australia, are undertaking a three-year ARC Linkage Grant project on "Young Carers: Social Policy impacts of the caring responsibilities of children and young people". Located at the Social Policy Research Centre (UNSW), the investigators are exploring the interplay between the socioeconomic and sociocultural circumstances in which young people take up caring responsibilities; the policy settings that affect the level and types of care which they provide; and the impacts of care-giving on their participation in education, employment and friendship/social networks. The project will map the gaps in service provision which young carers, their care recipients and service providers identify. (Contains 1 table.)

Mainstream literature on paid care for children, frail elderly people and people with chronic illness or disability, and unpaid care provided usually by family members within households and kin networks tends to establish dichotomies: formal/informal, commodified/non-commodified. Recent feminist literature rejects these dichotomies, developing models of social care in which the interconnections of paid and unpaid care are mapped within policy frameworks. This paper uses theoretical frameworks of 'social care': care as labour; care as a relationship embedded in obligation; care incurring a range of costs; to explore two case-studies: young carers aged up to 24 years who are most often caring for a co-resident parent; and grandparents who are the primary carers of their grandchildren. The latter may occur under the aegis of child protection authorities, or Family Court orders, or in informal arrangements, not licensed by state authorities. This analysis of the international literature and Australian research data affirms the power of the social care framework, and also shows the influence of social policy settings on informal care provision. Keywords: Social Care, Young caters, Grandparent carers, Introduction The mainstream research literature on paid (commodified) care and unpaid care (delivered outside of commodified care arrangements, usually by family members within households and kin networks) tends to establish [...]

This special issue of the Australian Journal of Social Issues has its origins in a Workshop on Mutual Obligation and Welfare States in Transition co-sponsored by the Academy of the [...]

Young people who provide unpaid care for a relative with chronic illness or disability are a growing focus of public policy and research in Australia and internationally. Support services for these young carers have emerged, but not enough is known about their effectiveness. This article develops an analytical framework that categorizes young carer support services according to their goals and the types of intervention provided. The analytical framework is based on Australian data. It is applied to young carer support services available in Australia but may be applicable to other countries. The aim of the framework is to provide a structure for assessing the effectiveness of current services in supporting young carers by clarifying service goals and identifying gaps in existing service provision. The framework contributes to conceptual discussions about young carer supports, and it can be used to guide future policy development. The article draws on Australian and international literature as well as findings from a recent Australian study on young carers. The proposed framework groups young carer support services according to three overarching goals: assisting young people who provide care; mitigating the care-giving responsibility; and preventing the entrenchment of a young person's caring role. The framework is applied to an audit of Australian support services for young carers, illustrating how it can be used to assess existing supports for young carers and inform future policy development. The findings suggest that most services in Australia fall into the categories of assistance and mitigation, while few contain preventative elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common theme in the literature on care-giving is the issue of 'hidden' carers, that is, people who undertake caring roles and responsibilities, yet do not identify themselves as carers. One reason people do not recognise themselves as carers relates to the nature of the caring relationship. When providing care for a family member, intra-familial bonds of love and reciprocity do not encourage parties to view the relationship as anything other than a 'normal' familial relationship. The lack of self-identification amongst young carers is complicated further by societal norms surrounding care-giving. Whereas adults are expected to provide care to other adults and children, young people are not expected to be care-givers but rather care recipients. As a result, many young carers remain 'hidden' and beyond the reach of services and supports designed to help them in their caring role. This paper draws on qualitative research with young carers and service providers to explore the issue of self-identification amongst young carers. The paper concludes with recommendations for identifying and supporting hidden young carers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian literature on the politics of taxation is almost totally silent on the gender of taxpayers. This silence reflects a broader division in social science analysis between economic and social policy. While gender equity debates are central to the discussion of social policy (particularly the income transfer and welfare systems), taxation is often represented as operating within a distinct realm of economic policy in which gender considerations are extraneous. This paper explores the changes to family-based tax and transfer policies in the post-war period, with a particular emphasis on policy shifts introduced by the Coalition Government since 1996. We argue that the shift to policies based on (apparently) contrasting family types -- couple families with a stay -at-home parent and families in which both parents are participate in paid work -- represents a substantial and regressive move away from the principles of equity which underpinned policy from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s. We argue that current arrangements are inimical to the fundamental principles of horizontal, vertical and gender equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on employment issues in Australia. Unemployment and the provision of income support for the unemployed remain central issues for social security and labor market policies for reasons such as the mismatch of the skills and experience of people seeking jobs with the skills in demand by employers. A list of objectives seen as crucial in reformulating social security programmes for people of workforce age and capacity facing a period of unemployment include the protection from poverty in the periods of job search, training and retraining, and improved incentives to undertake training and retraining and to seek full-time, part-time or casual work.

The formulation of housing policies which will provide adequate, secure and affordable accommodation for women and their dependents must be based on an understanding of women's position in the income distribution and in the labour market. The objectives of this paper are to outline the changes in women's receipt of income in the period 1968–69 to 1981–82; the trends in the incidence of poverty for women-headed families and the trends in the housing situation of women-headed households over the same period. The housing needs of single women and of sole parents with children as revealed in recent surveys of the housing market and government housing policies are discussed, in order to draw out the implications for women-centred housing policy debate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]