Disability and migration in urban Australia: The case of Liverpool

This article presents and analyses population data on the Liverpool area of Greater Western Sydney, identifying trends with significant policy implications. Liverpool city is home to one of the highest concentrations of Australia's recent arrivals, many of whom have refugee backgrounds. From those who arrived under Australia's post-Second World War resettlement programme to new arrivals, it is also home to a rich diversity of sociocultural and linguistic communities at different stages of settlement. Demographic data show significant relationships between age, country of origin, year of arrival and need for assistance variables, many of which are either qualitatively distinct or quantitatively different from other regions in Sydney, New South Wales and Australia. Building on this analysis, the article further identifies significant policy issues in relation to disability, care and support. While Western Sydney has figured prominently in national and state public-policy directives, particularly in relation to economic growth, public infrastructure and transport mobility corridors, the analysis presented here illustrates that national policy directives for socioeconomic imperatives, such as the appropriate uptake of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, are critical to facilitate social sustainability, cohesion and equity within the region.     

‘Unfit for reform or punishment’: mental disorder and discipline in Liverpool Borough Prison in the late nineteenth century

This article examines how Liverpool Borough Prison, opened in 1855 as one of the largest local prisons in England to adopt the separate system, categorized and dealt with mental distress and disorder amongst its prison population in the late nineteenth century. High prison committal rates in Liverpool, alongside high levels of recidivism, especially among female prisoners, led to severe overcrowding and encouraged a harsh disciplinary regime. Exacerbated by the poor physical and mental condition of the prisoners, this produced a challenging environment for maintaining the separate system of confinement and prisoners’ mental well-being. While official figures for the rates of mental disorder in local prisons are not readily available, Liverpool Prison’s diverse and under-exploited archives and official reports indicate that insanity caused prison officials and visiting justices great concern, and many prisoners were declared unfit for the rigours of prison discipline. Our article explores the implications of the ever more punitive, deterrent and physically taxing penal policy implemented in the late nineteenth century on the minds of prisoners. Despite the heavy toll on prisoners’ mental well-being, such cases were often retained by prison medical officers reluctant to acknowledge the failure of the prison to deter, reform and redeem.     

Office of Economic Opportunity: U.S.A.

The Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), was created at the height of Lyndon Johnson's “Great Society” anti-poverty programmes. It represented a degree of radical activism that reached its culmination in the 89th Congress (1965-66) and indeed has never been repeated: that Congress was perhaps the only genuinely left-liberal one this century (outside the New Deal era, at any rate). The OEO's social policies were tied to a particular theory of public and social administration: that a “rival” federal agency to the existing ones (Health, Education and Welfare, now Health and Human Services; Housing, and Urban Development, et al) could escape their conservative norms. Both at the federal level and in the “field” agencies it spanned to implement its programmes, the new approach to social administration was to by-pass traditional channels. This short, illustrative rather than definitive article, examines how such an approach was undermined by both the U.S. political structure and by traditional “politics as usual”. It is but a snapshot of the era. However, it hints at the general problems that such approaches to “by-passing” traditional agencies and attempting to develop a new autonomy in social reform may have in many countries, especially those with decentralized political structures. For, while decentralized politics provides opportunities as well as barriers to reformers seeking to by-pass traditional elites (which themselves tend to be decentralized, mirroring political structures), it is suggested here that the balance sheet will tend to be negative from the viewpoint of reformist social administration.     

A.I.D. and Adoption: Some Comparisons

Summary This paper is an attempt to put forward for discussion someof the similarities and differences between adoption and artificialinsemination by donor, as attempts to solve the problem of childlessness.The legal position and the view of the Church are briefly summarized.It is suggested that work already done in adoption, particularlywith reference to telling the child, has relevance for A.I.D.,and that there are implications for social workers.