Doing it from your heart: the role of older women as informal volunteers

This paper explores the contributions made by older women to the community as informal volunteers. It argues that ageing policy is not gender neutral and tends to ignore the contributions made by women outside paid work. As well as being ignored in policy, women's unpaid roles have been denigrated by some feminist commentators, who suggest that these roles subordinate the position of women. The aim of the present paper is to explore the lived experiences of older women in relation to their informal volunteer roles, using role identity theory as a framework. The study utilizes data from a qualitative study using focus group methodology. Findings demonstrate that informal volunteering contributes to the women's identity and gives their lives meaning. These findings suggest that a more positive policy framework around ageing is needed to ensure that the worth of these contributions is recognised.     

Missing siblings: seeking more adequate social responses

Little is known about the experience of family and friends when a young adult goes missing, less is known about how siblings make sense of the experience. Police assistance to locate the missing person may be sought but there is little recognition of going missing or missingness as a social issue, and there is little or no adequate social response to the needs of those left behind. This paper links knowledge of siblings, loss and grief to an understanding of this phenomenon. It presents the methodology and findings of an exploratory, qualitative study into the experiences of nine adult siblings of long-term missing people in Australia and presents the themes drawn from their accounts. The themes are briefly elaborated using direct quotations from participants in the study and represented in a diagram. The paper seeks to develop greater understanding of the inter-relationship between missingness and other social issues, to give voice to the views of participants and to encourage practitioners to engage more purposefully in work with family and friends affected by this issue. Some implications for social work practice are presented.     

Rhetoric to action: a study of stakeholder perceptions of aging well in two local communities

This qualitative study of local perceptions of policy goals and action in relation to aging reports 31 stakeholder interviews within 2 Australian communities exploring (a) the meaning of aging well; and (b) preferred policy actions to achieve positive aging outcomes. Findings suggest that community perceptions of aging well are broadly consistent with the goals of national and international policy frameworks in focusing on 3 dimensions--health, social engagement, and security. Further, participants believe that achievement of positive aging outcomes requires a mix of self-help, community action, and government intervention--particularly government support and encouragement for aging well initiatives.     

Compassion Fatigue in the Treatment of Combat-Related Trauma During Wartime

This article utilizes relevant data on the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a composite case of a clinician working with combat survivors, in order to illustrate the potential for compassion fatigue in clinicians treating this cohort. Review of the literature on the effects of compassion fatigue related to combat trauma and the impact of collective shared trauma is presented. This is done in order to emphasize the complexity of the provision of war trauma treatment post 9/11 in the context of the ongoing wars. There is an urgent need for the mental health field to continue to develop interventions and educational programs that will help mitigate the deleterious effects of compassion fatigue in clinicians working with this population.     

A visual narrative analysis of children’s baby loss remembrance drawings

Children experiencing the death of baby brother or sister have reported individual, familial, and communicative challenges. Siblings also have indicated that the loss of a baby in their family enriched their lives despite their pain. The present study extends this work by focusing not only on siblings but also other children enmeshed in the family system. Additionally, we heed the call for the use of arts-based methods in family communication by performing a visual narrative analysis of children’s baby loss remembrance drawings. This analysis of 131 drawings completed by children ages zero to 18 yielded three main themes, including narration of identity, narration of life and death, and narration of growing sense-making. Two continua capture these themes, including the subject of narrativization and the mode of narrativization. In presenting these findings, we provide a unique (means of) understanding children’s experience of baby loss in the family.     

Out of the Generosity of Your Heart: Are We Creating Active Citizens through Compulsory Volunteer Programmes for Young People in Australia?

Using governmentality as a theoretical framework, we examine two Australian policy areas where young people are disciplined into becoming good, active citizens. These policies—mutual obligation through the work for the dole programme, and school‐based active citizenship programmes similar to American service learning programmes—both mirror volunteer‐type activities, in a social context where volunteers are viewed as good citizens. In this study, we present findings from a qualitative study that addresses the question of whether young people will develop active citizenship through compulsory volunteer‐type programmes. The findings show that first, young people are very conscious of the lack of choice involved in these programmes and that this weakened their sense of agency. Second, the programmes failed to develop positive community attitudes and active social behaviours. These results suggest that policies that compel individuals to contribute to society may actually weaken their citizenship identities.     

Toward the Development of a More Integrated Aged Care Assessment Process for Rural Older Australians: Practitioners’ Perspectives

There is an identified need for more effective assessment processes in rural Australia, with prior research revealing little knowledge sharing and even duplication across existing services. This article aims to explore the challenges to more closely integrated assessment processes, drawing on interview data with practitioners from three agencies located in the same rural region. Findings highlight the challenges of rural assessment, both demand-driven (more older people with complex needs, geographic isolation) and supply issues (time and distance, funding formulae, workforce shortages). The need for closer collaboration is recognized but significant systemic issues require addressing if it is to be achieved.     

Till Death Us Do Part? A Critical Analysis of Obligation and Choice for Spousal Caregivers

Research demonstrates a significant number of carers identify obligation or lack of other alternatives as the reasons they undertake informal care. By utilizing critical discourse analysis, this research explores choice for informal caregivers in contemporary Australian social policy. Analysis demonstrates increasing shifts in policy toward choice in consumer-directed care, a feature absent for those who provide care. Familial care is a central pillar of Australian social policy, as it is in many liberal and conservative welfare regimes. Analysis reveals that these core social policies are fundamentally incongruent, with significant implications for individuals and social work practice.     

Systemic requisites of communal groups

Functional analysis, which deals specifically with the systemic needs of social organizations, is utilized here to specify the structural necessities of communal groups. The adaptive and goal attainment functions of social systems are the principal foci of this research. The present research is based on a content analysis of literature dealing with the communal movement in America. A snowball sampling technique yielded 58 communes for which data on the variables of interest could be obtained. Two organizational features, financial situation at the time of a commune's formation and type of social organization, were selected as independent variables and were examined in order to ascertain their effects on the duration of communal groups, the dependent variable. Both gamma and chisquare indicate that financial situation and type of social organization significantly influence the duration of communal groups. Sufficient finances for the stabilization and maintenance of the communal organization, and a type of social organization which adequately coordinates the activities of the group, seem to be systemic problems with which communal groups must deal in order to endure for an extended length of time.