The way we were in 1983; Le Tour de Moonee Ponds Family Health Centre (by Appointment to the Queen)

In this paper, originally presented at the Sydney Family Therapy Conference in 1983, the author satirised the state of family therapy in Australia at the time, with its awe of overseas gurus, and in so doing mirrored some of our distinctive contributions to world culture. In her epilogue, the author briefly describes subsequent life events which have made her, twenty years later, a very different person, and a very different therapist as well.     

Updating Schemes, Correlation Structure, Blocking and Parameterization for the Gibbs Sampler

In this paper many convergence issues concerning the implementation of the Gibbs sampler are investigated. Exact computable rates of convergence for Gaussian target distributions are obtained. Different random and non-random updating strategies and blocking combinations are compared using the rates. The effect of dimensionality and correlation structure on the convergence rates are studied. Some examples are considered to demonstrate the results. For a Gaussian image analysis problem several updating strategies are described and compared. For problems in Bayesian linear models several possible parameterizations are analysed in terms of their convergence rates characterizing the optimal choice.     

The ‘Feminine Advantage’: A Discursive Analysis of the Invisibility of Older Women Workers

This article discusses the overlap of gender and age identity and its implications in a specific political context — a public inquiry into the problems facing the older unemployed. Using discourse analysis, it examines how ‘older worker’ identity is socially constructed in this setting. At the beginning of the inquiry, fundamentally gendered versions of ‘older worker’ identity were initially constructed, yet by its conclusion, female versions had disappeared. The analysis shows that this ‘invisibility’ of female ‘older worker’ identity is the outcome of a central discursive struggle for recognition of older male workers as a disadvantaged group in the labour market. This ‘disadvantaged’ status is achieved by constructing a companion version of ‘feminine advantage’ in the search for employment. The article discusses the complexity of discursive processes through which this invisibility is accomplished and its implications for those targeted by female and male older worker identity.     

Presage of a paradigm shift? Beyond the social model of disability toward resistance theories of disability

Over the last decade, a growing number of scholars in Disability Studies have begun to critique the social model of disability. This paper documents the movement in these critiques, analyzing several ways paradigms and theories have been used in relation to the social model and the ways in which resistance plays a part in these paradigms. In the second part of the paper, we begin to explore the implications of resistance theory for disability theory, noting that resistance appears to exist throughout all paradigms at play in disability studies while it is rarely explicitly addressed. We conclude by describing the potential use of resistance theory for both theory and praxis.     

LESS ACCESS,WORSE QUALITY

High-quality child care is a boon for children and buffers some of the long-term negative effects of growing up in straitened circumstances. Yet, just one in seven Canadian children has access to regulated care. Within this, poor children have worse access and are over-represented in lower-quality care arrangements. Canada's policy architecture, as reviews of Winnipeg, Quebec, and Vancouver demonstrate, generates inequities of access and quality that reproduce neighborhood socioeconomic gradients of class and racialization. Poor children are systematically disadvantaged by a national approach that relies on privatized partnerships with the voluntary sector to implement public child care policy. Equalizing poor children's access to quality child care remains a pressing Canadian challenge, and will require policy and delivery redesign.