Government perspectives on housing,technology and support design within Australia's National Disability Strategy

Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is a significant disability reform and part of a 10‐year National Disability Strategy that aims to build well‐being and inclusion of Australians with disability. Housing is recognised as a key determinant of health. Transition of state‐funded supported accommodation to an NDIS, within the new Specialist Disability Accommodation framework, aims to deliver housing responses that positively influence NDIS participant outcomes. This study aimed to gather perspectives of government disability and housing representatives on current opportunities and issues for Australians with disability. The study investigated four key research questions, relating to built design; integrated technologies; the relationship between housing and support provision; and community precinct design. Nineteen government representatives from seven of the eight Australian states and territories participated in a roundtable focus group in Melbourne, Australia (March 2017). Focus group data were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. Twelve themes were identified in response to the research questions identified. Key policy and practice implications were highlighted. This research offers insights from government that can contribute to strategic housing, technology, support and community design decisions and Australia's National Disability Strategy, to deliver improved outcomes for people with disability.     

“You Can't Spend Years with Someone and Just Cast Them Aside”: Augmented Identity in Older British Widows

Widowhood forces women to reconstruct their identities. This article discusses how this reconstruction occurs. Interviews were conducted with 65 older widows exploring their experiences: Of those, 81% spoke about identity. This reconstruction can be understood in terms of continuing bonds with the deceased, loosening bonds, and personal growth. Women discussed these transitions in four ways: personal struggle, resistance to social expectations, empowerment, and using rhetoric. The reconstructed identity is not that of wife but rather that of an augmented identity of wife/widow. The tensions between how the widows see themselves, and how society sees them are explored.     

Collective survival strategies and anti-colonial practice in ecosocial work

ABSTRACT

Oppressed communities have long used strategies of caring for and protecting each other to ensure their collective survival. We argue for ecosocial workers to critically interrogate how agency, history, and culture structure environmental problems and our responses to them, by developing a resilience-based framework, collective survival strategies (CSS). CSS consider power, culture and history and build upon the strengths of oppressed communities facing global environmental changes. We challenge the dominant narrative of climate change as a “new” problem and connect it to colonization. We discuss implications by examining a social work program explicitly built on Indigenous knowledges and anti-colonial practice.     

Conceptualizing Journalistic Careers: Between Interpretive Community and Tribes of Professionalism

Professionalism is a concept that centers on specialization of labor and control of occupational practice. It has traditionally been used to describe and define individuals who are affiliated with an occupational community that has managed to secure a certain measure of autonomy and jurisdiction over an area of expertise and has a claim to a public service ethos. In this review essay, we consider the changing professional status of journalism. Whether or not journalism is “truly” a profession, it is clear that a discourse of journalistic professionalism plays a crucial role in legitimizing the journalistic occupation. Consequently, this essay explores different approaches towards the professionalization of journalism and positions this discussion within two interrelated contexts: first, it investigates the ramifications of the current crisis in western news media on journalistic professionalism. Next, the essay probes the professional standing of journalism in view of the development of new digital technologies that are re‐shaping essential aspects of journalistic work. We conclude that journalism has lost some of its cohesion and fragmented into tribes of professionalism practiced by a diverse set of actors.