Managing the challenges of combining mobilities of care and commuting: an Australian perspective

Women face particular travel challenges when combining commuting with broader caring responsibilities. This policy note considers the issues associated with meeting the transport needs of working women as they navigate their daily ‘mobilities of care’. We extend the concept of ‘mobilities of care’ by combining an intersectional understanding of the transport task with the principles embodied in the child-friendly cities agenda. These are discussed with respect to the provision of public transport services and infrastructure in Australia to illuminate the ways that such an approach could deliver transport benefits to those commuting with young children in their care, most often mothers. We also argue that transport policy, planning and provision must make an explicit connection between intersectional factors such as disability, class, as well as gender, and the substantive impact they can have on women and children’s mobilities and modal choices.     

Rationality is anti-entropic

The article explores the fruitfulness of assuming all economic behavior to be non-rational unless special factors intervene to make it rational. The definition of rationality applied is that of intentional or calculative rationality. This is deemed to be a variable, not a trait of a species. The association of rationality with three kinds of investment is indicated. Prior research on information costs, learning curves, habit and impulse buying are shown to be compatible with the article's core thesis. So is the evidence about rational behavior being ‘cool’.     

Non-attendance for health care: When rational beliefs collide

Some patients choose not to attend for health care despite health concerns or an opportunity for improved health. Social norms that privilege professional expertise, and good health, deem this choice irrational. However, this paper explores how a particular version of rational choice theory suggests ‘positive choices’ for such non‐attendance. These are cognitive and subjectively rational decisions, which are made freely with potentially positive consequences and are not social problems if respect for personal autonomy trumps obligations to others. Specifically, Boudon's ‘cognitivist theory of action’ is used to conceptualise non‐attendance as both a rational and irrational choice, from different perspectives. Because the perspective of non‐attendees has been marginalised, the paper also suggests a typology of instrumental and non‐instrumental ‘strong reasons’ for rational non‐attendance. This may help groups such as professionals to understand and accept that non‐attendance can be subjectively rational, without relinquishing their own perspective that it is irrational. Acceptance of the defensibility, if not the rightness, of the perspective of non‐attendees is needed to show respect for non‐attendees' moral agency and to begin to repair relationships with these individuals, who may seek help from health professionals in the future.     

‘If I was a different ethnicity,would she treat me the same?’: Latino parents’ experiences obtaining autism services

This article reports on an ethnographic study with 12 Latino families of children on the autism spectrum related to obtaining autism services in Los Angeles County. Using critical discourse analysis of interviews, observations, and records, we consider the experiences of the Latino families in relation to: a discursively constructed ‘autism parent’ subject position that mandates ‘fighting’ service systems to ‘win’ autism services for children, originating from White middle-class parents’ socioeconomic resources and social capital; a neoliberal social services climate that assumes scarcity of available resources and prioritizes austerity in their authorization; and a media and institutional ‘cultural deficit’ discourse that attributes disparities in autism services for Latino children to their parents’ presumed culturally-based ‘passivity.’ We argue that parental discourse about fighting, or not fighting, for autism services is engendered by a tension between a parental logic of care, and the logic of competition of the economic market.     

The contribution of a cultural perspective in understanding and evaluating client satisfaction

Increasing attention is being given to including measures of client satisfaction as a component in the evaluation of health care services. An understanding of cultural factors that may influence attitudes and behaviors in the health care situation can contribute to the theory and measurement of client satisfaction. Through an examination of some of the cross-cultural literature, this paper delineates dimensions of the health care situation in which clients have been shown to have distinctive preferences, behavioral patterns, attitudes, and treatment expectations. A knowledge of the beliefs and attitudes concerning health and illness that are espoused by a particular cultural group can be a valuable asset in understanding how members of that group will evaluate the delivery of health care services. The examination of how cultural and ethnic differences may affect client satisfaction outcomes points to the necessity of avoiding a global measure of client satisfaction without first examining those particular aspects of health care delivery and of the measurement context that may have a predictable influence on client satisfaction ratings.     

Who should do the talking? The proliferation of dialogue as governmental technology

This paper investigates the recent proliferation of appeals to ‘dialogue’ as a solution to problems in a broad spectrum of different organisational settings Instead of top‐down management and expert‐driven public services, we are told we need ‘dialogue‐based’ management, health treatment, elder care, social counselling, and so forth. Dialogue is often presented as a tool that will reverse the stifling dominance of authoritative expertise and leadership, liberating the energy of employees, clients and patients. However, by viewing the dialogue as a ‘governmental technology’, we emphasise that it is not simply a tool that can be used by some to liberate or govern others, or to dominate nature. A technology is rather a structuring of actions that implies that also ‘the governors’ inevitably exercise power over themselves. The paper demonstrates how dialogue technology re‐structures organisational domains of speech and hereby contributes to reconfiguring inter‐relations and self‐relations within key institutions of modern society.     

Ownership claims,valuation practices,and the unpacking of energy-landscape conflicts

There is now a substantive body of academic literature which focuses on protests against local infrastructural developments. This literature is often characterised by the key words ‘NIMBY’ or (facility-) ‘siting controversies’. The rapid development of renewable energy technologies – which are largely sited in rural areas – has created a new version of this controversy; energy-landscape conflicts. In many countries, large infrastructural developments are regulated through spatial planning legislation, often causing various tensions between new technologies, an evolving policy agenda, and a legislative framework which was largely conceived in a different era and which is slow to adapt. Alternatively, and in line with neo-liberal thinking, the logic of development can be subjected to cost-benefit analysis, whereby the value of the wind farm can be compared with the value of the ‘unspoiled’ landscape. This paper takes a more holistic approach to energy-landscape conflicts, by examining claims of ownership and notions and measures of value inherent in different claims and value systems which (seek to) influence decision-making. We examine both the logic of monetary valuation and the implicit value statements in various policy intervention options to point at the need for a more heterogeneous and multidisciplinary approach to policy evaluation. We then look at notions of ownership, rights and duties in relation to landscape and to our energy future, and we highlight the potential for using an analytical property rights framework which cuts across various levels of claims and value statements, from the national and ideological to the personal and practice-based.     

NO ROOM FOR ABUSE

In Canada, media reports on health care tend to focus on the high costs of the health care system; reporting privileges the economic aspects of this social service. In the Canadian system, long-term care or chronic care is a type of service that is situated within the health care system. Long-term care institutions typically house older individuals who have lost a significant amount of autonomy and require constant care. Until recently, the services dispensed within these institutions were unseen by the media, and thus the public did not reflect much on these services. The publication of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Future on Health Care in Canada in 2002 has fostered a growing public awareness of the vulnerability of older individuals and those with chronic illnesses, and their relationship with their care-givers. Although it may be the case that the typical care for such persons in these situations is now emerging from a zone of invisibility, it is uncertain that the media coverage accurately portrays the realities of institutionalized care-giving. This essay examines the care practices in long-term care institutions in order to understand the processes at work in an environment in which care is commodified. The ‘area’ in which this caring labour is located is an area where constant moral compromise can create a climate where abuse can become endemic. This paper considers these environments and the potential for abuse in them in relation to the concept of ‘grey zone’, first formulated by Primo Levi and later adapted by Giorgio Agamben and Claudia Card, as well as in relation to the related concept ‘bare life’, also formulated by Agamben. The author argues that the ‘greyness’ produced by care practices that are bound to a cost-effective and task-oriented framework create an environment that is not conducive to proper moral behaviour.     

Equal or individual treatment: contesting storylines in needs assessment conversations within Swedish eldercare

This article examines the role of care managers and their work in putting policy into practice in micro-interactions with older people in Swedish eldercare. The care managers assess the individual needs of older people, and decide what type of social care and services will be given. Dilemmas in care management are often related to the gap between needs and resources. The aim was to study the positioning of care managers within different storylines advanced in needs assessment conversations. Positioning theory was applied to study discursive practices and discursive strategies within Swedish eldercare. Audio-recorded needs assessment conversations among care managers, older people and their relatives at care planning meetings in connection with hospital discharge were analyzed. Two overall positions were identified for care managers—as ‘professional experts’ and as ‘organizational representatives’—allowing the care managers to maneuver within two contesting storylines: ‘distribution of scarce eldercare resources based on the principles of eligibility and equal treatment’ and ‘older people entitled to eldercare according to their own perceived individual needs’. For social work, the results showed the importance of discussing how care managers might move towards exercising greater professional autonomy, becoming less dependent on their position in the organization.     

Emergency department social work in the UK and Sweden: evaluation by older frequent emergency department attenders Kuratorsarbete på akutmottagning i förenade kungadömet Storbritannien och Sverige: en utvärdering utifrån brukarperspektivet hos äldre mångbesökare på akutmottagningen

Social work based in hospital emergency departments (EDs) in Sweden and the UK reflects a wider European social/health care policy trend. A key focus is on diverting older frequent ED attenders from ‘inappropriate’ hospital re-attendance or emergency admission, because of social care problems. However, previously there has been no evaluation of the significance of ED social work for health and well-being, from the standpoint of older frequent ED attenders themselves. In a preliminary way, our paper provides this through drawing on a small scale Swedish/UK study. Its comparative account of service user feedback underscores the importance of ED social work as a facet of European social work. It indicates that ED social work contributes to the quality of care within emergency departments, acts as a key access point to social services, and can promote both short and longer-term health. At the same time, some serious shortcomings emerge. These include under-developed referral systems, and limitations to community based services following ED social work assessment, which reflect the under-resourcing of social care provision in both countries. Moreover, service users’ experience in both Sweden and the UK reveals the risk of ED social work with older frequent ED attenders being used as a substitute for follow-up medical/nursing care when that is also required.     

The care manager’s dilemma: balancing human rights with risk management under the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act 2003

In New Zealand, the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act 2003 provides diversion for persons with an intellectual disability who have been charged with, or convicted of, a criminal offence. This unique Act moves the responsibility for such ‘care recipients’ from the criminal justice system to a disability sector that values a social model of disability and philosophies of autonomy, choice and normalisation. This research identified dilemmas faced by care managers legally responsible for care recipients. Care managers experienced: tension between imperatives of risk management, rehabilitation and human rights; role ambiguity between ‘custodian’ or ‘therapist’; philosophical incongruity within their services; and ethical dilemmas over decisions to lengthen care orders. The changing care recipient population has intensified these dilemmas: services must now adapt to the needs of young, street-wise people with alcohol and drug problems and histories of criminal behaviour. The article makes recommendations about how these dilemmas can be addressed.     

A model of social work classification in health care

Abstract

The introduction of casemix funding for Australian acute health care services has challenged Social Work to demonstrate clear reporting mechanisms, demonstrate effective practice and to justify interventions provided. The term ‘casemix’ is used to describe the mix and type of patients treated by a hospital or other health care services. There is wide acknowledgement that the procedure-based system of Diagnosis Related Groupings (DRGs) is grounded in a medical/illness perspective and is unsatisfactory in describing and predicting the activity of Social Work and other allied health professions in health care service delivery. The National Allied Health Casemix Committee was established in 1991 as the peak body to represent allied health professions in matters related to casemix classification. This Committee has pioneered a nationally consistent, patient-centred information system for allied health. This paper describes the classification systems and codes developed for Social Work, which includes a minimum data set, a classification hierarchy, the set of activity (input) codes and ‘indicator for intervention’ codes. The advantages and limitations of the system are also discussed.     

Feminist Epistemology:

Challenges to men's claims to "know" the nature of women and the nature of the world have contributed to the development of the field of feminist epistemology. So also have critiques of the substantive claims of "authoritative" texts on such questions, consideration of the adequacy of traditional conceptions of knowledge, reason, rationality and the knowing subject, explorations of the causes and the persistence of defective epistemological theories, investigations of the influence of gender upon modes of cognition and analyses of the implications of particular theories of knowledge for feminist research in various academic disciplines. This essay provides a survey of these topics and the range of positions advanced by feminist scholars on these issues.     

Gendered,Invisible Work in Non‐profit Social Service Organizations: Implications for Worker Health and Safety

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) play an important role in the provision of health and social services. In Canada the nonprofit sector includes 7.5 million volunteers and employs over 1.6 million paid workers. The sector is overwhelmingly female‐dominated — women make up over 80 per cent of workers in these nonprofit services. Work performed by women has traditionally been undervalued and invisible. It has often been considered safe by researchers, employers, policymakers and sometimes even workers themselves. Although there is some indication that jobs in the restructuring social services sector can be characterized by constant demand, high stress and violence, research into the working conditions and health hazards of these types of jobs has not been a priority. Using data from a qualitative study examining work in NPOs, we trace the ways that work performed in these workplaces is both gendered and invisible. We identify three types of invisible labour. ‘Background work’ facilitates and supports more visible and recognized organizational activities. Certain organizational language obscures the full spectrum of work that takes place in the organizations and the risks it may involve. ‘Empathy work’ includes the relationship building, counselling and crisis intervention that comprise key components of social service delivery. ‘Emotional labour’ involves the management of client emotions and workers' own emotions in the process of working with clients and delivering care under conditions of scarcity and contraction. The invisibility of these activities means that much of the day‐to‐day work done in the organizations, while particularly important in the context of social service restructuring, is taken‐for‐granted and undervalued by organizational outsiders. As a result, many of the hazards present in the jobs are hidden from view and workers' health may be compromised. We argue that the invisibility and taken‐for‐grantedness of certain types of work in NPOs is reflected in, and constitutive of, particular exclusions and shortcomings of current occupational health and safety systems designed to protect the health of workers.     

The politics of the Digital Single Market: culture vs. competition vs. copyright

This paper examines the implications for European music culture of the European Union’s (EU) Digital Single Market strategy. It focuses on the regulatory framework being created for the management of copyright policy, and in particular the role played by collective management organisations (CMOs or collecting societies). One of the many new opportunities created by digitalisation has been the music streaming services. These depend on consumers being able to access music wherever they are, but such a system runs counter to the management of rights on a national basis and through collecting organisations which act as monopolies within their own territories. The result has been ‘geo-blocking’. The EU has attempted to resolve this problem in a variety of ways, most recently in a Directive designed to reform the CMOs. In this paper, we document these various efforts, showing them to be motivated by a deep-seated and persisting belief in the capacity of ‘competition’ to resolve problems that, we argue, actually lie elsewhere – in copyright policy itself. The result is that the EU’s intervention fails to address its core concern and threatens the diversity of European music culture by rewarding those who are already commercially successful.     

Challenges,Speculations, Risks: Flying With Dragons: Social Constructionism Beyond the Realm of Academia

Postmodernism has had far‐reaching effects on the field of psychology and psychotherapy, allowing us to question truths which were once thought to be infallible. Students in psychotherapy in particular are often excited by the new and dynamic possibilities for practice that arise from postmodernism. However, these new therapists often experience ‘resistance’ when, from their position as students or interns, they try to engage with traditional services, such as psychiatric facilities. This article takes the form of a conversation between a supervisor and a Clinical Psychology Masters student who is attempting to write a thesis that will reflect the spirit of postmodern thinking while at the same time be acceptable to university requirements. The student's thesis is based on her attempt to do postmodern family therapy with the family of a patient diagnosed with schizophrenia. But their dialogue keeps being interrupted by other voices, as characters from the ‘dramatic dialogue’ the student has imagined break into ‘reality’, leaving the reader to ponder what is really going on.     

When they call me cripple: a group of South African adolescents with cerebral palsy attending a special needs school talk about being disabled

Central to the experience of disability are social and political forces and discourses which position people in particular ways. Little is known about the experiences of individuals with disabilities living in low-income and middle-income countries. We investigate the lived experience of a group of South African adolescents with cerebral palsy. In-depth interviews were conducted with 15 adolescents with cerebral palsy. Data were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis. The participants position themselves between the medical and social models of disability, in a liminal space between ‘normal’ and ‘disabled’, but do not identify with either group. They describe a ‘hierarchy of disability’ and position themselves in-between more serious sensory impairments and less serious emotional and learning disabilities. Being disabled is associated with being taken care of, infantilised and being powerless. Consequently they aspire to achieve independence and autonomy, and face danger, which are seen as signifiers that they are not disabled.     

The theory of change of the evaluation support program: Enhancing the role of community organizations in providing an ecology of care for neurological disorders

This paper discusses the Ontario Brain Institute’s theory of change for the Evaluation Support Program, a program designed to enhance the role of community organizations in providing care and services for people living with a brain disorder. This is done by helping community organizations build evaluation capacity and foster the use of evidence to inform their activities and services. Helping organizations to build capacities to track the ‘key ingredients’ of their successes will help ensure that successes are replicated and services can be improved to maximize the benefit that people receive from them. This paper describes the hypothesized outcomes and early impacts of the Evaluation Support Program, as well as how the program will contribute to the field of evaluation capacity building.     

Performing the limits of finance

Recent financial turmoil has put emphasis once again on the very meaning and reach of ‘finance’. In doing so, recent financial crises have also provoked questions about the very ‘ends’ of finance: Where are the borders of finance? Given the expansive reach of financial innovation over the past two decades, are there any serious limits to the kinds of practices that can be converted into financial objects? Does the culture of finance (expansive and all encompassing) encounter meaningful interruptions? This paper explores these questions by reviewing a cluster of public-art responses to the 2008 financial crisis mounted by artists critical of the expansive logic of financial abstraction. This paper pays particular attention to the work of Fergal McCarthy and Fred Forest, two public artists who have confronted finance and its rational culture with practices of gameplay, whimsy, and carnival. In doing so, these artists invoke a strategy designed to lay the all-encompassing claims of financial abstraction alongside its own impossibility; alongside performances which undermine the expansive claims of financial abstraction. These are strategies, I conclude, which can interrupt the technocratic discourses which dominate the contemporary cultures of finance; strategies which, in the words of one artist, evoke ‘plausible states of uncertainty’ about our faith in financial abstraction.     

The stranger the better: support and solidarity in the 2011 students’ protests in Chile

This paper analyses the legitimation dynamics of the student protests in Chile 2011, explaining how the support of ‘strangers’ strengthened its position and endurance. By analysing interviews with both activists and uninvolved citizens, I describe a steady pattern whereby they express the strength and legitimacy of the movement by assessing the ‘abstraction’ of the link between protesters and their supporters. The more abstract these relations – the stranger supporters are – the most relevant and meaningful is their support. Beyond establishing the worthiness of protesters’ claims, strangers provide protesters with a mandate, fostering the movement’s cohesion and thus affecting its ability to endure through the conflict. While the literature has mostly looked at adherents as only potential (or failed) constituents, I argue that support that remains external plays a crucial role in social movements’ chances of success. This support needs, however, to avoid being framed as insufficient engagement. Further analysis shows that the distinction between protesters and strangers often requires active boundary work, allowing the movement to maximize the benefits of strangers’ support while managing its risks. The relation between these boundaries, the efficiency of different contention tactics and their adaptation is analysed here. The study argues that strangeness can involve very different, even opposed phenomena, which are often confounded, namely ‘otherness’ and ‘abstraction’. Critically drawing upon Simmel, I explain how it is ‘abstraction’ in particular that helps our understanding of the role of strangers in social movements and consider how this distinction could enrich research on the symbolic aspects of contentious politics.