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.     

Young children returning home from care: the birth parents' perspective

While a wide range of literature exists on the experiences of children in foster care or adoption, much less is known about children who return home from care to their birth parents. This paper focuses on the perspectives of a small sample of birth parents of young children who returned home from care. It draws on findings from the Northern Ireland Care Pathways and Outcomes Study that has been following a population ( n  = 374) of children who were under 5 years and in care in Northern Ireland on the 31st of March 2000. As part of this study, interviews were conducted with the foster parents of 55 children, the adoptive parents of 51 children and the birth parents of nine children who had returned home from care. The paper explores the birth parents' views on how they coped while their child was in care, how they were coping after the child had returned home and how their child was faring at home. Results revealed that these parents, and their children, were experiencing multiple difficulties and struggled to cope after the children had returned home.     

The Importance of Early Childhood Poverty

Most poor children achieve less, exhibit more problem behaviors and are less healthy than children reared in more affluent families. We look beyond correlations such as these to a recent set of studies that attempt to assess the causal impact of childhood poverty on adult well-being. We pay particular attention to the potentially harmful effects of poverty early in childhood on adult labor market success (as measured by earnings), but also show results for other outcomes, including out-of-wedlock childbearing, criminal arrests and health status. Evidence suggests that early poverty has substantial detrimental effects on adult earnings and work hours, but on neither general adult health nor such behavioral outcomes as out-of-wedlock childbearing and arrests. We discuss implications for indicators tracking child well-being as well as policies designed to promote the well-being of children.     

‘We need to start building up what's called herd immunity’: Scientific dissensus and public broadcasting in the Covid-19 pandemic

This article uses content and thematic analyses to examine how UK public service broadcasting (PSB) reported on the Covid-19 pandemic prior to the first lockdown on March 23, 2020. This was a period when the British government's response to the pandemic was being heavily criticised by the World Health Organisation and other parts of the scientific community. This paper finds that in PSB these criticisms were muted and partially given. Instead, broadcasting explained in detail—and directly endorsed—government policy, including the ‘herd immunity’ approach. Most coverage of international responses focused on the United States and Europe with little attention paid to states that had successfully suppressed the virus. When such states were featured their public health measures were not explained nor compared to the UK's strategy with the consequence that PSB was unable to alert the public to measures that could have contained the virus and saved lives. These patterns in PSB coverage can be explained by the close links between key lobby journalists and the government's communication machine as well as the broader political and social contexts surrounding broadcasting at the onset of the pandemic.     

Habitat selection by an arboreal lizard in an urban parkland: not just any tree will do

The nocturnal, arboreal Marbled Gecko, Christinus marmoratus, is a common reptile in urban areas in southern Australia. This study compared the demographics and the distribution of geckos occupying different tree species in a modified urban park, the Adelaide Parklands, with those of a population occurring in Ferguson Conservation Park, a nearby native vegetation remnant surrounded by suburbia. The geckos in the modified urban and native remnant parks demonstrated different demographic characteristics. These differences were explained by tree circumference and the amount and type of bark cover on the tree trunk. In the Parkland, geckos were limited by the availability of thick exfoliating bark, its clearly preferred microhabitat as demonstrated by a laboratory choice experiment. The preference for trees with larger circumference, more cover, and thick bark were probably linked to thermoregulation, predator avoidance, and food resources. This study supports the premise that to support populations of urban animals, tree species selection needs careful consideration with regard to its microhabitat capabilities as well as food provision and other resource supports it can provide.     

A test of the characteristic function and the Harsanyi function in N-person normal form sidepayment games

This paper reports the results of a laboratory experiment investigating sidepayment games represented in normal form. Attempts to predict payoff allocations via the application of solution concepts (such as the Shapley value or the nucleolus) encounter a problem in games of this form, because the game must first be transformed into some other form. Commonly, this other form is a set function defined over coalitions, such as the von Neumann-Morgenstern characteristic function. Because there are numerous possible transformations, the question arises as to which one provides the most accurate basis for prediction of payoffs.The laboratory experiment tested three such transformations - the mixed strategy characteristic function, the pure strategy characteristic function, and the Harsanyi threat function. Payoff predictions from two solution concepts (Shapley value, nucleolus) were computed on the basis of each of these transformations, making a total of six theories under test.Results of the study show, in general, that payoff predictions based on the Harsanyi threat function and on the mixed strategy characteristic function were more accurate than those based on the pure strategy characteristic function. The most accurate theories were the Shapley value computed from the Harsanyi function, the nucleolus computed from the Harsanyi function, and the Shapley value computed from the mixed strategy characteristic function. Less accurate were the nucleolus computed from the mixed strategy characteristic function and both the nucleolus and the Shapley value computed from the pure strategy characteristic function.This research was supported by grants SOC-7726932 and SES-8319322 from the National Science Foundation. The authors express appreciation to Yat-Tuck See, Jyh-Jen Horng Shiau, and Raymond Wong for assistance in computer programming, and to Jennifer Brandt, Young C. Choi, David C. Dettman, Laurel Dettman, Stephen B. Geisheker, Irving J. Ginsberg, Mike P. Griffin, Kimberly Ihm, Todd Isaacson, Christy Kinney, Mary Kohl, Sue Pope, Tammy Schmieden, Jill Schwarze, Susan Winter, and Kenneth Yuen for assistance in data collection and analysis.     

Engaging Professionals in Sustainable Workplace Innovation: Medical Doctors and Institutional Work

This paper investigates the role of medical professionals in the success and longevity of the implementation of workplace innovation and organizational change in the Accident and Emergency (A&E) Departments of two large public hospitals, in Australia and Canada, during the introduction of process improvement using Lean Management (LM) methodologies. We ask why and how doctors resist, influence or enable LM initiatives in healthcare. Using a qualitative methodology, we contribute to institutional work theory by unpacking the complex forms of boundary and practice work undertaken by key actors who effectively use their professional status and power to enable practice changes to be embedded. Our findings lend support to the importance of the involvement and ownership of senior doctors in the design, introduction and implementation of successful workplace innovation and organizational change. Senior doctors use their professional expertise, positional and political power at the industry, organization and workplace levels to influence strategically the use of resources designated for workplace innovation to improve efficiencies, quality of patient care and maintain their dominance. The significant organizational change achieved reflected the ownership and leadership of the workplace innovation by senior doctors in ‘hybrid roles’ who captured the rhetoric and minimized adversarialism among key stakeholders.     

Spatial planning in small islands: the need to discuss the concept of ecological structure

The concepts of green infrastructure and ecological structure (ES) are current topics of discussion among the scientific community and spatial planners. ES is mandatory in Portugal in land-planning, such as municipal master plans, but no consensus has been reached on how to implement it. The concept has not yet been implemented in the Azores, a Portuguese autonomous region, even though the Region has the responsibility of adapting legislation or accomplishing the Portuguese legislature. This study presents a critical analysis of the available literature about ES and proposes a conceptual framework to define ES for small islands, which have unique characteristics, focusing on the Azorean archipelago. The conceptual framework meets the requirements of local legislation and uses an ecological function approach that is increasingly advocated in recent European recommendations. This framework is presented as a strategic and flexible way to identify both the important elements (recognized in current legislation) in a territory and the remaining potential of the territory. The framework also supports decision-making by allowing the identification of integrated solutions, decreasing trade-offs as much as possible and reconciling the needs of nature conservation and socioeconomic development. This framework could be applied to other small islands and other territories, with local adaptations.