Australia's disabling income support system: tracing the history of the disability pension from 1908 to today

This article is based on a historical‐comparative policy and discourse analysis of the principles underpinning the Australian disability income support system. It determines that these principles rely on a conception of disability that sustains a system of coercion and paternalism that perpetuates disability; this is referred to as disablism. The article examines the construction of disability in Australian income support across four major historical epochs spanning the period 1908–2007. Contextualisation of the policy trajectory and discourses of the contemporary disability pension regime for the time period 2008–now is also provided. The system was found to have perpetuated disablism through the generation of disability categories on the basis of normalcy and ableness as a condition of citizenship. Two major themes were found to have interacted with the ideology of disablism. The first theme – Commonwealth authority – set the tone for legitimising the regulation of disabled citizens. The second theme – conservative sanctioned paternalism and coercion – reflected the tensions between the paternalistic concern for income support provision while attempting to prevent idleness and welfare dependency. This article argues that a non‐disabling provision based on social citizenship, rather than responsible or productive citizenship, counters the tendency for authoritarian and paternal approaches.     

An exploratory study of basic income fidelity index

There is growing interest in adopting basic income as a new social protection policy in many countries. South Korea is no exception. There have been heated discussions on the benefits and costs of adopting basic income as a universal income support program among policy makers and academics in South Korea. However, one of the problems in the discourse of basic income discussion in South Korea has been a lack of clear definition of basic income. In this study, we develop a basic income fidelity index (BIFI) that can be applied to basic income programs to show how fully a program fits to the basic income concept. Such an index can be useful in making the terminologies and concepts of basic income clearer. We test feasibility of BIFI by applying it to four different case examples of basic income; Alaska Permanent Fund, UK Child Trust Fund, Switzerland’s Basic Income Plan, and Finland’s Basic Income Experiment. We show BIFI can be a useful tool to differentiate various types of basic income. It can be also used to identify strengths and weaknesses of a basic income scheme.     

Tensions and contradictions in Australian social policy reform: compulsory Income Management and the National Disability Insurance Scheme

This paper explores contemporary contradictions and tensions in Australian social policy principles and governmental practices that are being used to drive behavioural change, such as compulsory income management. By means of compulsory income management the Australian Government determines how certain categories of income support recipients can spend their payments through the practice of quarantining a proportion of that payment. In this process some groups in the community, particularly young unemployed people and Indigenous Australians, are being portrayed as requiring a paternalistic push in order to make responsible choices. The poverty experienced by some groups of income support recipients appears to be seen as a consequence of poor spending patterns rather than economic and social inequalities. By contrast, Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has been constructed as a person centred system of support that recognises the importance of both human agency and structural investment to expand personal choices and control. Here we look at the rationale guiding these developments to explore the tensions and contradictions in social policy more broadly, identifying what would be required if governments sought to promote greater autonomy, dignity and respect for people receiving income support payments in Australia.     

The impact of the hope growing account program on participants’ economic well‐being in South Korea

In 2010, the Korean government introduced the Hope Growing Account (Hope) program. The Hope program combines elements of a social assistance scheme (monthly income grants) with matched funds for savings to encourage the working poor to increase income and build assets. This longitudinal study estimated changes in household economic well‐being among 895 low‐income households who participated in Hope between 2010 and 2012. Economic well‐being was measured by changes in household monthly income and income‐to‐needs ratio. The adjusted difference‐in‐differences estimation revealed that the impact of Hope varied over household income distributions: lower income households were more likely to increase their monthly earned income and income‐to‐needs ratio compared to demographically similar non‐participants, while higher income households were less likely to increase their income and income‐to‐needs ratio. We describe how future research is needed to better understand how the Hope program impacts household assets and behavioral changes in the long run.     

Shaping attitudes to disability employment with a national disability insurance scheme

Approximately twenty per cent of the world's population has some form of disability, but workforce participation of people with disability has been intractably low. In an effort to improve the economic and social participation of people with disability, the Australian Government introduced legislation in 2013 designed to provide individualised support and encourage communities and employers to be more receptive to people with disability. The authors surveyed 1,230 workforce members and 715 employer decision‐makers at three points in time (2010, 2012, and 2014) to examine how attitudes to people with disability and employer hiring behaviour are changing in response to the legislation. The evidence demonstrated that both groups are experiencing greater contact with people with disability, reporting more positive interactions with people with disability, and endorsing more reasons for employers hiring people with disability. However, these positive attitudes have not been accompanied by improvements in hiring: there was a decline in decision‐makers' hiring of people with disability from 2012 to 2014.     

Perceptions of Difference Between Aging and Disability Service Systems Consumers: Implications for Policy Initiatives to Rebalance Long-Term Care

This study explores service professionals' perceptions of how and why older adults and younger persons with disabilities are different consumers and clients within the long-term care service sector. Data are from 2004, early in the history of federal long-term care rebalancing initiatives, reflecting perceptions at that time. Findings suggest professionals working within aging, developmental disability, and physical disability service networks believe significant distinctions exist related to age of clients and nature of service required and how it is delivered. Overall need for greater professional and organizational capacity to support provision of service to both aging and disability populations is reported.     

Monitoring the Monitors: Medicaid Integration of Passive Remote Monitoring Technology

Implementation of passive remote monitoring is advancing faster than our knowledge base about appropriate and ethical use. For all the media and research attention these technologies are getting, there has been very little discussion about how they are positioned to be integrated into health plans, yet their integration is key to how they will be incorporated into social work practice. As coverage of passive remote monitoring technologies expands in Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS), new policies that support informed decision-making, consenting processes, and regulations for ethical, appropriate use are urgently needed. Research translation often trails policy, but the rapid development and implementation of technologies that passively collect and transmit new information about older adults call for a more responsive approach. In this commentary, I describe passive remote monitoring technologies, their implementation in Medicaid HCBS, and ethical issues. I conclude with specific suggestions for policy and practice to start addressing these issues.     

Differences in Well‐being among People with Disabilities in Paid Employment: Level of Restriction,Gender and Labour Market Context

This study investigates the variability in well‐being of people with disabilities in paid employment in two different labour market contexts: the beginning (1998) and end (2009) of a period of growth in non‐standard hours and work intensification. It focuses on the well‐being constraints that arise from three influences: a person's disability, a person's gender, and the labour market context. Hypotheses are developed using the social model of disability and social identity theory. Hierarchical moderator regression is employed to examine two national samples of nearly 4,000 people with disabilities in paid employment. Individuals who are most limited by their disabilities, particularly women, reported lower well‐being in 2009 than in 1998. Welfare‐to‐work policies affecting these disadvantaged groups are discussed in relation to the labour market and national regulatory environments.     

Jumping through hoops – the cost of compliance on sole parents

Australian governments along with other western countries have made significant changes to the welfare system with a focus on encouraging sole parents on social security payments to move into paid work. This paper reports on in‐depth interviews with 48 sole parents about their experiences with the welfare‐to‐work process and with a range of other services. Although parents reported some positive encounters, they also described a range of negative experiences, including how they needed to repeatedly prove their entitlement to help, leaving them feel as if they were undeserving of support. The study has demonstrated that it is often the most vulnerable parents who feel under close scrutiny and who have to work extra hard to get the help they need. These experiences can also see them disengaging from services. The findings show how the current policy environment adds to the complexity of sole parents' lives reinforcing their disadvantage.     

The Policy Roundtable Model: Encouraging Scholar–Practitioner Collaborations to Address Poverty-related Social Problems

Robust exchange between those who make and carry out social policy and those who study social conditions can improve both policy and research. This article presents a programing model, Policy Roundtables, which promotes interchange and creates greater capacity for collaboration between two disparate communities, academic researchers and local policy practitioners. Data come from a formative evaluation of the host center’s programing. We asked academic scholars and community-based practitioners about what they learned from participating in the Roundtables and how they used that knowledge. Analysis of interviews with nine respondents and surveys of 35 informants suggest that the Policy Roundtables inform participants, spread learning back to organizations, and create social capital that can be deployed in the form of collaborations between research and practice communities.     

“撤点并校”、家庭背景与入学机会

本研究旨在探究在“撤点并校”的政策调整下,家庭背景是如何影响子女的教育获得机会的。本文利用“中国家庭追踪调查”（CFPS）2010年到2012年追踪个案的数据,通过对农村学生小学至初中毕业升学历程的回溯,建立基于Cox比例风险模型的“辍学模型”和基于Logistic模型和线性概率模型的“升学模型”,发现家庭背景始终是影响子女教育机会的重要因素。在“撤点并校”刚开始执行的年份,农村学生在义务教育阶段的辍学风险反而有所降低,家庭背景在“撤点并校”后对于子女的入学几率起到更为重要的作用。本文认为,这一政策使得农村家庭在教育上“主动投入”,而这种家庭层面对于政策的回应使政策的影响效果被削弱或者推迟,从宏观上观察到的家庭背景在教育层面上的再生产机制是每个家庭在制度驱动下做出选择的结果。     

Models of Disability, Work and Welfare in Australia

In discourse around disability there has been a shift away from a ‘medical model’, which perceives disability as an individual problem to be ‘cured’ or contained, towards a ‘social model’. The latter focuses on the relationship between people with disabilities and their social environment, locating the required interventions within the realm of social policy and institutional practice. Drawing upon a small qualitative study conducted in Melbourne, this article argues that recent plans by the Australian government to introduce mutual obligation requirements for recipients of the Disability Support Pension (DSP) sit in tension with this shift from the medical to the social models of disability. Mutual obligation is based on the assumption that income support recipients need to be taught how to be more ‘self‐reliant’, to ‘participate’ in society more fully and to become ‘active’, rather than ‘passive’, citizens. This language appears to overlap with that used to articulate a social model, which places emphasis on participation in the community and attempts a shift away from reliance on the medical profession. However, examples from interviews conducted with current and former DSP recipients demonstrate that, in practice, mutual obligation is likely to reinforce a medical model of disability, frame DSP recipients as ‘conditional’ citizens and ignore the obligations of the state and society regarding access and inclusiveness for people with disabilities.     

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?     

The limits of inequality: Public support for social policy across rich democracies

Does public opinion react to inequality, and if so, how? The social harms caused by increasing inequality should cause public opinion to ramp up demand for social welfare protections. However, the public may react to inequality differently depending on institutional context. Using ISSP and WID data (1980?2006), we tested these claims. In liberal institutional contexts (mostly English‐speaking), increasing income inequality predicted higher support for state provision of social welfare. In coordinated and universalist contexts (mostly of Europe), increasing inequality predicted less support. Historically higher income concentration predicted less public support, providing an account of the large variation in inequality within the respective liberal and coordinated contexts. The results suggest opinions in liberal societies – especially with higher historical inequality – reached the limits of inequality, reacting negatively; whereas in coordinated/universalist societies – especially with lower historical inequality – opinions moved positively, as if desiring more inequality.     

Welfare consequences of the Swedish disability service system

It has been frequently discussed whether the Swedish disability service system is efficient and whether it meets the demands of equity. The costs of the system for support and service were recently estimated to be USD 11 billion. This article describes the welfare situation for disabled people compared with the general population in Sweden. The Swedish disability service system has managed to provide disabled people with a disposable income over the subsistence minimum in Sweden, but also in the same range as for the general population. In other welfare parameters, disabled people appear to have great welfare losses compared with the general population. Evaluations of handicap technologies (such as service and support) aiming to reduce or compensate for these welfare losses have to meet the requirements of equity and efficiency of the Swedish disability service system.     

Employment programs for people with psychiatric disability: the case for change

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of disability employment policy in assisting people with psychiatric disability to find, or return to, paid work. We argue that the poor employment outcomes from current programs establish the need for a paradigmatic shift in the form of a state‐provided Job Guarantee (JG) for people with psychiatric disability. In the absence of measures to generate suitable jobs, forthcoming changes to the eligibility criteria for Disability Support Pension will create risks rather than opportunities. Under the JG, the Federal Government would maintain a ‘buffer stock’ of minimum wage, public sector jobs to provide secure paid employment for this highly disadvantaged group. The role of the state in this alternative model is two fold. First, the state must provide the quantum of JG jobs required. Second, the state must ensure the design of jobs is flexible enough to meet the heterogeneous and variable support needs of workers. This will require effective integration of the JG scheme with mental health, rehabilitation and employment support services.     

‘Reasonable and necessary’ care: the challenge of operationalising the NDIS policy principle in allocating disability care in Australia

Disability reform in Australia centres on a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which aims to provide lifelong, individualised support based on the principle of ‘reasonable and necessary’ care. As a universal rights‐based scheme it represents a historical shift in allocation principles in Australia's disability policy. Nonetheless, attention will be on determining who receives what care given the diversity of personal and family contexts. The aim of this paper is to discuss the operational complexities of a principle of reasonable and necessary care with reference to the findings of a three‐year study on the experiences and perspectives of disability care of 25 adults with acquired disability, their 22 nominated family members and 18 service providers. Evidence from this study suggests enacting the principle of reasonable and necessary care and support will be problematic, in particular as it relates to personalising the level and scope of services, balancing formal and informal care, and principles of equity. The paper contributes to the literature about allocation principles in social policy and the challenges of implementation. Further, it provides an empirically informed discussion of some of the specific policy implementation challenges concerning the NDIS.     

The future of adult safeguarding in Australia

Significant reforms to Australia's adult safeguarding laws and practices are in the process of occurring in the context of increasingly market‐oriented social care provision and rising human rights consciousness. Recent safeguarding developments have included federal regulatory reforms concerning disability and aged care service provision, together with significant reform activity stemming from a national inquiry into elder abuse. Despite this national activity, adult safeguarding continues largely to be an arena of state and territory responsibility. This article examines recent reform developments and asks how safeguarding laws and practices can be reformed to take account of increased federal involvement in social care regulation and the more market‐oriented ways in which social care is being provided. The article argues that while state and territory safeguarding laws and practices are unlikely to become uniform, 10 principles ought to guide continued adult safeguarding reform. These principles seek to balance respect for the autonomy of individuals with society's obligation to support those in need.     

Economic empowerment or cash‐dependency for orphans and vulnerable children in Kenya: Evidence from an alternative to cash‐only models

Orphan and vulnerable children (OVC) often have worse educational, developmental, nutritional, and behavioral outcomes than non‐OVC. Much of these disparities come from reduced household earnings due to the loss of parental income. The present study used conditional process analysis to evaluate income and savings among OVC households, using cross‐sectional data from 1,060 OVC in a 3‐year Kenyan empowerment program that combined elements of cash transfer, psychosocial support, and small business entrepreneurship. Higher monthly earnings were significantly associated with program participation in a graded fashion. Approximately one‐third of the association was mediated by material inputs, indicating that a substantial portion may be explained by other unobserved program elements. Eighty‐five percent of increased rates of saving money in the past year were mediated by improved monthly income, cash transferred and improved food consumption. Data analysis highlights the need for multisectoral approaches and the need for more research to understand how to improve household economic stability among OVC. Key Practitioner Message: ? Orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) are at risk of greater poverty, leading to multiple developmental and health challenges; ? Current policy in Kenya to offset costs of caring for OVC utilizes monthly cash transfers to households providing care for OVC; ? The present study found that increases in monthly income in an OVC multisectoral empowerment program were largely due to factors beyond the material inputs.     

The well‐being of children of parents with a mental illness: the responsiveness of crisis mental health services in Wellington,New Zealand

Little is known about how mental health services consider the parenting role and the well‐being of children when assessing parents with acute mental illness. This paper investigated how crisis mental health services addressed child well‐being in the Wellington region, New Zealand. This mixed‐method case study included: (i) an audit of the electronic clinical records of all adults presenting to the crisis assessment team; (ii) interviews with 22 key informants; and (iii) a documentary review. We found that data about children were not systematically collected. Less than half of (49 of the 104) the records of patients who were parents included information on their child's well‐being; only six (6%) contained a specified plan for action. The focus for services was the adult patient. Key informants were unclear about their role. They identified inadequate training and institutional support, inflexible funding models and limited availability or inappropriateness of referral services as problems. They saw a need for children to become more visible, for collaborative working to improve the use of existing services and for new funding models, resources and roles. Existing national policy documents contained little guidance and no practice guidelines were in use. These were lost opportunities to improve support for the parenting role and promote child well‐being.