‘Pushing buttons‘: an evaluation of the effect of Aboriginal income management on commercial gambling expenditure

The Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 was a radical intervention into the lives of Aboriginal residents of the Northern Territory, Australia. One of the intervention's key measures was income management – a scheme designed to limit the range of goods and services that may be purchased with social security payments. The aim of income management was to curb 'anti‐social behaviours' such as excessive gambling and alcohol consumption. In this paper, we specifically test the efficacy of income management in reducing the amount spent on commercial gambling. To achieve this we conduct an interrupted time series analysis with deflated monthly electronic gaming machine (EGM) expenditure data from July 2002 to July 2010 for hotels and clubs in the towns of Alice Springs and Katherine. We find a negative association between income management and EGM revenues for only one gambling venue in each town. However, local complexity in the form of segregated markets along temporal, spatial and racial lines, along with other policy confounders, may obscure the effects of the macro‐policy intervention. We conclude by making suggestions for locally‐based responses to problematic forms of risky consumption that may be more sensitive to local geographies.     

Blind‐sided by Basics: three perspectives on income management in an Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory

Income management was introduced into the Northern Territory in 2007. Despite much rhetoric around evidence based policy making and constant reviewing of income management, there has been little grounded research about Aboriginal responses at the community level to this new institution. In this article I report on the operations of income management from a longer term perspective, working with Kuninjku people and retail outlets in the Maningrida region in Arnhem Land. My argument is that from a local perspective income management is just one of a suite of new measures that have been introduced to alter the norms and values of people to correlate more closely with Australian mainstream norms. This view is based on participant observation rather than direct questioning. Income management is a low priority issue for the Kuninjku people in the current policy maelstrom that seeks to shift policy from ‘self determination’ back to a form of assimilation now heavily influenced by a neoliberal ideological agenda. Local responses vary from indifferent acceptance to resistance. I ponder the crucial policy question, how can we allow substantial financial resources to be squandered in unhelpful income management when they could be deployed productively to enhance wellbeing for Indigenous Australians?     

Access to justice for Aboriginal People in the Northern Territory

This article discusses research in the Northern Territory on Aboriginal civil and family law needs. It is based on focus group discussions and interviews with legal services providers and other associated organisations. The article argues that key areas of legal need involve discrimination, housing, child protection, social security, credit/debt and consumer law problems. It further argues that welfare conditionality, particularly as embodied in the NT Intervention and subsequent Stronger Futures policies, has exacerbated the need for legal assistance and advocacy for Aboriginal people.     

The normalisation of income management in Australia: analysis of the parliamentary debates of 2007 and 2009–10

Initially introduced as part of Australia's Northern Territory Intervention in 2007, Income Management (IM) explicitly targeted inhabitants of remote NT Indigenous communities. IM is a form of welfare conditionality that involves compulsorily ‘quarantining’ at least half of individuals' social security income. It has been heavily criticised for being racist, discriminatory, and a violation of individual rights. The introduction of New Income Management (NIM) in 2010 extended IM beyond Indigenous communities and introduced a new set of eligibility criteria that shifted the focus of IM from Indigenous people to working age recipients of social security income. This in depth study of the early parliamentary debates on the compulsory IM programs traces the patterns of political discourse that led to IM coming to be seen by many policy makers as a normal and legitimate technique within Australian social policy. Situating the IM programs within neoliberal concerns about welfare dependency and active citizenship, this article argues that the introduction of NIM heralded a shift from a conception of IM as part of a focused social experiment targeted at remote Indigenous communities to a potentially mainstream social policy option.     

The vexed link between social capital and social mobility for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

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

Compulsory Income Management in the Northern Territory – evaluating its impact

Australia has been experimenting with constraining the ways in which welfare recipients can spend their income support payments, limiting their ability to access cash and purchase some products. The policy objectives include to reduce spending on alcohol, gambling, pornography and tobacco in favour of meeting ‘basic’ family needs, especially for children, to limit the scope for financial harassment, encourage pro‐social behaviours, and build financial capabilities. In the logic of the programs these outcomes are expected to be manifest at the individual, family and community levels. The policy has primarily impacted on Indigenous Australians as a result of its geographic targeting, although a recent report has recommended a more stringent version of the program be introduced universally to all welfare recipients other than the aged. The largest of these experiments is ‘New Income Management’ in the Northern Territory, which has had more than 35,000 participants since its introduction in 2010. This article reports on the key findings of the major independent evaluation of New Income Management commissioned by the Australian Government.     

Ideology,Evidence and Competing Principles in Australian Indigenous Affairs: From Brough to Rudd via Pearson and the NTER

This paper tracks the recent rise of an ‘ideology vs evidence’ discourse as a way of describing good and bad Indigenous affairs policy. It suggests that a more useful way of thinking about Indigenous affairs is the analytic of three competing principles: equality, choice and guardianship. The paper suggests that dominant debates in Indigenous affairs balance these principles and move between them over time. Using a fourfold categorisation of ideological tendencies, it also suggests that different tendencies of thought about settler society and its relations with Indigenous societies occupy different positions in relation to the three competing principles. Finally, using the work of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Review Board as an example, the paper examines the role of evidence in Indigenous affairs. Evidence, it argues, always needs to be contextualised: it is always a part of arguments or debates and needs to be understood in relation to the much larger issue of balancing competing principles.     

The long and winding road to assisted dying in Australia

Public opinion polling shows that Australians have long supported legalising assisted dying, but this has not generally led to legislative success. Since 1993, Australian parliament have considered legalising assisted dying over 50 times, with only two attempts being successful: Northern Territory in 1995 and Victoria in 2017. This paper describes the Northern Territory and Victorian legislation and the processes associated with the passage of the legislation in both jurisdictions. It suggests that one of the factors that contributed to the Victorian outcome was the extensive consultation involved prior to the introduction of the legislation into parliament. Political factors – including government support – also facilitated the legislation's passage.     

Exploring strategies for re-engaging children and young people in learning while living in out-of-home care in the Northern Territory,Australia

The education of children living in out-of-home care (OOHC) has been a long-standing concern for children and their carers, policy-makers and researchers who have long highlighted the issue of low educational attainment and disengagement among children in care. This study investigates the strategies and practices used within a pilot programme based in the Northern Territory, Australia, that aims to re-engage children living in OOHC with education and training. Drawing on qualitative interviews with programme stakeholders, including educators, carers, child and family welfare workers, as well as an analysis of programme and client documentation, this study explores the programme's strategies to achieve re-engagement. The findings highlight the role of agile child-centred practice responding to the learning needs of participants, a focus on the ‘educational futures’ of students, as well as liaison and advocacy with schools and stakeholders on behalf of children in supporting re-engagement in education settings. Barriers to successful re-engagement include limited consideration of the cultural needs of children across education and OOHC systems, in particular the disruptive impact of OOHC placement changes, as well as programme discontinuity.     

Yarning about gambling in Indigenous communities: an Aboriginal and Islander Mental Health Initiative

Gambling impacts upon the health, wellbeing and finances of many people throughout Australia. This study aimed to explore the socioeconomic and cultural factors linked with gambling in urban and remote Indigenous settings in the Northern Territory to inform the development of a gambling public health strategy. The Aboriginal and Islander Mental Health Initiative developed a semi‐structured questionnaire with Aboriginal partner organisations following consultation. Indigenous consumers of substance use treatment facilities participated in focus group discussions and key informant interviews were conducted with nine service providers at two time points, a year apart. Participants described key strengths in community as family, health and culture, while key worries included substance misuse, health concerns and family disharmony. Regulated gambling and card playing were also identified as important community worries. Financial and family concerns and addictive behaviour were seen as negative consequences of gambling. There was increasing concern linked with card playing and electronic gaming machines and an increased call for awareness campaigns, support from government for change and greater regulation. The findings of this study provide the most recent insight into attitudes, behaviours and consequences linked with Indigenous gambling in the Northern Territory.     

The place of social work in sustainable development: Towards ecosocial practice

Peeters J. The place of social work in sustainable development: Towards ecosocial practice Ecological questions are seldom seen to concern the social dimension and, accordingly, to be of direct concern to mainstream social work practice. However, the current ‘social‐ecological crisis’ demands a major social transition to a sustainable society that touches all dimensions of our lives. So, social work cannot escape this process. This article argues that social work can engage in this transition starting from its social mission and tradition, provided it includes the ecological environment as an important element of practice and develops an ecosocial practice centred on empowerment, social capital formation and resilience building as both a contribution to and part of a process of social‐political change.     

Interconnections among Homelessness,Family Separation,and Mental Health: Implications for Multi-Sectoral Social Services

This qualitative study explored the interconnections among the phenomena of homelessness, family separation, and mental health and substance abuse issues within the social services, geographic, and infrastructure context of northern Ontario. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirteen participants. Findings revealed the effects of colonization in the form of poor and overcrowded housing conditions in the northern First Nations, difficulties in obtaining affordable and suitable housing in northern towns and cities, reliance on the scarce social services for survival, and valiant attempts to cope with the cold climate of northern Ontario. All participants reported multiple and intergenerational experiences of separation from family due to involvement of child welfare system, placement in residential schools, death of family member(s), flooding, and epidemics. Participants described their lifelong struggles with mental health and substance abuse issues. All three phenomena were tied together in various configurations of causes and consequences. The implications include the need for critical examination of the historical policies and practices, early intervention for mental health and substance abuse issues, greater support for youth transitioning out of care, creation of a continuum of housing options, collaboration across multiple social services sectors, and incorporation of Indigenous worldview and practices in the mainstream services.     

Seeing people in the computer: The role of information technology in remote employment services

Information technologies have been important in the emergence of new forms of control and surveillance of welfare recipients and of those who administer labour market programmes. These technologies have often appeared at the margins of accounts of welfare reform, for example as means of increasing the efficiency or consistency of services, or as constraining frontline discretion. Henman has argued, however, that information technologies need to be analysed not just as administrative tools, but as “non-human actors,” shaping policy development and implementation in ways beyond the intentions of their human creators (Henman, Governing Electronically: E-government and the Reconfiguration of Public Administration, Policy and Power, Palgrave MacMillan). This paper explores the way that the use of government information systems has shaped employment services in remote Australia where over 80 per cent of those included are Indigenous people. The article describes how the production and use of administrative data within employment services have supported and extended the framing of Indigenous people in remote communities as non-compliant and as needing external direction.     

Widening the gap: White ignorance,race relations and the consequences for Aboriginal people in Australia

White ignorance has a critical impact on race relations and is implicated in the maintenance of Aboriginal disadvantage. Addressing this ignorance is a largely overlooked capacity-building opportunity within Australia's non-Aboriginal population. It warrants consideration as a key component of strategies targeting Aboriginal disadvantage. Despite the established links between race relations and Aboriginal well-being, Aboriginal perspectives on non-Aboriginal people rarely feature in public discourse on “Aboriginal problems.” This paper draws on data from 180 in-depth interviews with 44 Aboriginal people in Darwin on the topic of White Australian people, culture and race relations. It reports Aboriginal perceptions of White Australian ignorance across areas of great symbolic and practical significance to Aboriginal people's lives. Their experience is that most White Australians are ignorant of the history of colonisation and the complexities of its aftermath. They are ignorant of Aboriginal law, cultures and languages, and of the extent of their own ignorance. The call to address White ignorance subverts assumptions about whose ignorance and capacity must be dealt with in order to progress national goals of reconciliation, address Aboriginal disadvantage and achieve justice and equality for Aboriginal people.     

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment policy and Welfare to Work: The Community Development Programme and the need for new narratives,new alliances and new institutions

The way Australian federal governments have approached Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment and welfare policy over the last two decades has been a paradigmatic example of what not to do in policymaking. In the absence of effective engagement or consultation, a series of decisions under Coalition and Australian Labor Party governments have had a range of negative consequences for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. These changes – centred around the closure of the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme and implementation of the Community Development Programme (CDP) – have resulted in increased unemployment, inadequate support for job creation, a dramatic over‐application of income penalties to social security recipients and reduced capacity in many community organisations. This article argues that these outcomes constitute policy failure, especially given that genuine engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people could have prevented many of these consequences. It then turns to an exploration of three ways in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are responding to such policy failure: through promotion of new narratives, new alliances, and new institutions. The study concludes that while we should avoid “specious hope”, there is room for optimism in a renewed push for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sovereignty.     

Lone Parents in Northern Ireland: The Effectiveness of Work Incentives

In recent years social policy in relation to lone parents has placed heavy emphasis on increasing the participation of this group in the labour market. If anything, the newly elected Labour government appears to be more committed to this objective than its predecessor. This paper details some of the findings from a focus-groups exercise with lone mothers in Belfast conducted in 1995. The data underline the limitations of many aspects of the measures taken to encourage lone parents to work and raise questions about the appropriateness of current policy.     

Equity in sustainable development: Community responses to environmental gentrification

Sustainable development aims to address economic, social, and environmental imperatives; yet, in practice, it often embodies a neoliberal market logic that reinforces inequalities. Thus, as the social work profession grapples with its role in advancing environmental sustainability, practice models must explicitly attend to social and economic justice. For example, environmental gentrification refers to situations in which the cleanup of contaminated land or the installation of environmental amenities intentionally or unintentionally catalyzes increased housing costs, thereby contributing to the displacement of vulnerable residents. With the goal of contributing to practice knowledge, we conducted a systematic review of peer‐reviewed articles (1997?2017) to learn how community groups have responded to the threat of environmental gentrification. We found that community organizations employ a range of strategies, including blocking development, negotiating for protections, planning alternatives, and allying with gentrifiers. We conclude by exploring ethical implications and practice principles to help social workers engage in truly sustainable development. Key Practitioner Message: ? The term environmental gentrification describes situations where improvements to environmental quality increase real estate prices, contributing to the displacement of vulnerable residents; ? An environmental justice framework attending to procedural, distributional, and recognition‐based claims provides a model for social work practice; ? Opportunities exist for social workers to take an intersectional rather than siloed approach to integrate economic, social, and environmental concerns.     

Adoption from care in Northern Ireland: problems in the process

ABSTRACT This is a study of the processes for freeing children for adoption in Northern Ireland. The focus was the time taken from admission to care to adoption order. The findings confirmed that the process is dogged by delay at each stage. In total the average time from the child becoming looked after to the granting of an adoption order was 4.5 years. Most of the time taken was in the stages for which social services had lead responsibility, principally the decision to pursue adoption as the plan for a child. The children were very young when admitted to care – average age 1 year 7 months. Most were admitted to care because they were being neglected. Their parents were well known to social services and had multiple problems. Most parents unsuccessfully contested the social services’ application and this contributed much to the delay. Their former foster parents adopted almost half of the children and these children tended to be placed more quickly with their adopters than those placed with adopters who were not their foster parents prior to the adoption process.     

Decent work for sustainable development in post‐crisis Nepal: Social policy challenges and a way forward

Although the Decent Work agenda has received significant attention in the context of sustainable development, the formulation and implementation of appropriate social policies in developing countries remain an underexplored subject. This article responds to this gap and traces country‐specific Decent Work related policies and programs in Nepal—which is recovering from two major crises: a decade‐long armed conflict that ended in 2006 as well as the 2015 earthquake. Drawing on Critical Policy Analysis framework, this article examines how key tenets of the International Labour Organisation's Decent Work platform, namely creation and provision of employment, social protection, social dialogue and rights at work have manifested in Nepal. The findings indicate that while attempts have been made to embrace the Decent Work agenda into social policies and programs, structural instability of political processes means that there is a lack of strategic directions to address a capacity deficit specific to the informal sector and outbound labour migrants. The article makes broader analytical contributions towards evaluating the implementation of social policies driven by the global priority in the context of developing nations with weak governance settings. In countries like Nepal, where the majority of workers are located within the informal sector and as such the administrative reach and effectiveness of Decent Work related social policies designed for the formal sector are limited.     

The school to work transition for young people in state care: perspectives from young people,carers and professionals

Workforce participation has many positive effects on quality of life. However, as young people in care have generally below‐average levels of educational participation and attainment, they may be ill‐equipped for the transition to further education and work. A mixed‐method study conducted in Australia about career development for young people in care investigated how this population develops ideas about future work: the social and cognitive variables that influence career decision‐making; practices for preparing young people in care for the transition to work or further education; and factors that support or impede the transition. Findings from the qualitative study are reported in this paper. Interview data were obtained from the multiple perspectives of young people in care, foster carers, caseworkers and school personnel. The overall picture was one of young people in care lacking the encouragement, resources and capacity to realistically plan for the job they want. Specific interventions are required to enhance career development and employment outcomes for this population.