Mixed accountability within new public governance: The case of a personalized welfare scheme in early implementation

We explore personalized funding schemes and associated changes for accountability within new welfare governance reforms. Using the case of the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme as hybrid institution, requiring mixed accountability arrangements, we examine the implications for broader discussions of accountability in personalized welfare arrangements. Methods used were semistructured interviews with government actors and disability service providers in Australia. In describing how accountability structures emerge, we argue that the way that layers fit together during implementation are often imperfect because of the conditions under which they arise. As a result, critical gaps can emerge in layered systems, which can put end users at risk. We demonstrate that theories on accountability in new public governance welfare reforms must also be informed by context and history informed qualitative analysis of case studies.     

Programme form and service user well-being: Linking theory and evidence

Since the early 1990s, the “activation turn” has become a standard welfare orthodoxy at the heart of international welfare systems. Although policymakers talk confidently about the well-being gains of activation interventions and their employment outcomes, a growing body of research has focused instead on questions around “activation process well-being”—the potential well-being effects of participation in activation programmes themselves. The present article makes three main contributions to the theory, knowledge, and policy practice of this activation well-being literature. First, the paper develops an original conceptual framework that newly connects well-being theory, qualitative variation in programmatic form, and empirically testable well-being expectations for participating service users. Second, the paper uses multivariate statistical analyses to examine six conceptually derived hypotheses around variation in programme forms and implications for participating service users' well-being, drawing on the case study of U.K. activation policy. Noteworthy is the paper's unique distributional insights into well-being effects across different types of service users. Third, the paper offers new policy contributions around the relevance of policy form to service user well-being as well as important pointers to key programme features in this regard.     

Factors Influencing Custody Decisions in Contested Adoption Cases

In a number of recent controversial adoption cases, courts have been forced to decide if an unwed father should be granted custody of his child when the mother purposely fails to inform him of the child's birth or of her intention to place the child for adoption. The current study utilized three bi-variate independent variables from which eight vignettes were created depicting scenarios modeled on actual court cases. It was conducted as a preliminary investigation intended to examine the factors which are important to people when making custody decisions, to see if the importance of these factors varies with circumstance, and to examine their concurrence with factors utilized in judicial decisions. The results suggest that although subjects stress the importance of characteristics associated with being a good parent, the specific circumstances of each separate case and also the subject's gender have influential effects on custody decisions.     

Child-related dimensions of placement stability in treatment foster care

Research shows increasing numbers of emotionally disturbed children entering foster care nationwide. As a result, there is growing interest in a special form of foster care known as therapeutic or treatment foster care. However, little information is currently available on the kinds of children who can benefit from this form of mental health care or on interactions between child characteristics and placement outcome. This paper begins to address this deficit in the knowledge base by proposing five psychosoical dimensions of child functioning associated with placement stability and outcome in treatment foster care. Current theory and research regarding each dimension are presented along with clinical examples.     

Relationships with waitresses: Gendered social distance in restaurant hierarchies

This paper explores the use of gendered social distance mechanisms by higher status male coworkers and employers as they participate with waitresses in ongoing restaurant activities. Formal and informal gendered interactional techniques, such as degrading uniforms and terms of address, skewed ideas about skill differences, and sexual harassment, are used by men as they attempt to gain or sustain power thereby reinforcing the sexual division of labor. Sometimes they are successful, other times they are not, as when women resist or fight back.The analysis is derived from participant observation in two New Jersey restaurants. Formal and informal interviews were also conducted with fifty servers employed in a wide variety of restaurants.     

Casual sex among australian schoolies

This study of the casual sexual partnering of 570 male and 776 female Australian high school students on a “schoolies week” vacation expands on earlier research on factors that influence the sexual activity of vacationing youth. Over 60% of the men and nearly 40% of the women who engaged in sexual intercourse during schoolies week did so with a casual partner. We used logistic regression to test an expanded version of Triandis'Theory of Interpersonal Behavior (TIB) in explaining casual sexual partnering. Situational experiences (similar to what others have called situational disinhibition), prior sexual experiences and intentions (similar to what others have called spillover) influenced casual sexual partnering. Different causal pathways were demonstrated for men and women.