The Quiet Crisis: Challenges, changes and co-production to hear the voices of healthcare staff

In complex healthcare systems, staff voice is vital for ensuring healthcare professionals and service providers uphold safe, ethical and high-quality care. When staff are unable to voice concerns about patient safety or their own wellbeing, mistakes and misconduct are more likely to go unaddressed, allowing scandals to happen or last longer. Organisations such as the National Health Service (NHS) have been long aware of these risks and currently use “speaking up” policies to combat the silencing or neglect of staff concerns. After 9 years of speaking up policy many NHS staff still find themselves unheard or silenced. Now, the U.K. government’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), which oversees the NHS, proposes new plans to remove these existing policies and introduce new staff voice policy under the NHS Fit for the Future strategy (NHS England, 2025). In this blog post Sukhwinder Essie Kaur unpacks the failings of Speaking Up and explores how co-production research may be a key player in designing new policies and mechanism that better support NHS staff to voice their concerns.

Is more mental health awareness really what we need?  

The boom in mental health awareness can be seen all around us – from branded ad campaigns (think Maybelline’s “Brave Together”) to celebrities and movies addressing mental health issues (think Prince Harry; Joker) – it’s hard to avoid content urging us to be knowledgeable of what mental health struggles are like, and to be unafraid to come forward and talk about them. However, alongside this wave of heightened awareness has been an enormous rise in rates of mental health diagnosis. Anxiety, depression, ADHD and autism rates have all risen substantially for UK youth in the last 20 years, according to one study by Cybulski et al. (2021), and many other studies report similar findings from around the world. So, in this post, Shayna Weisz asks ‘what is going on?’

Issues, Lived experience, AdvocacyPower to Persuade16 July 2025mental health

No Wrong Door: Why Every Family Deserves a Wendy in the First 1,000 Days

Bernadette Black AM, CEO and Founder of SEED Futures, shares her deeply personal journey from teenage motherhood to national systems change advocate. Reflecting on the transformative impact of one woman’s care and belief in her, she makes a powerful case for reimagining the way Australia supports families in their earliest, most vulnerable days. With warmth and urgency, Black argues that kindness must not depend on chance—it must be built into the system. Through SEED Futures and the Incremental Reform Catalogue, she offers a clear, practical path to make that vision real.

How food insecurity is biting: Australians are going hungry

@Anti-Poverty Week is an event held every October to raise awareness and understanding of the causes and consequences of poverty in Australia, and to encourage action to end it. In today’s blog, Life Course Centre (@lifecourseAust) Research Fellow Dr Chandana Maitra from the University of Sydney (@Sydney_Uni) highlights food insecurity which is a hidden and overlooked socio-economic problem in Australia.

IssuesLife Course Centre22 October 2024Poverty, Lived/consumer experience, economy

HECS-HELP: A policy that has always struggled with fairness

Issues, EducationPower to Persuade16 August 2024HECS, universities, education

What can health professionals do about climate change?

By focussing on the health impacts of climate change, health professionals can play a vital role in framing the need for climate actions in a way that is more personally meaningful and less controversial for the public and policy makers. Today’s post by VicHealth postdoctoral research fellow Rongbin Xu (@RongbinXu) of Monash University (@MonashUni) explains how, and why this is important. This piece originally appeared in the Medical Journal of Australia’s Insight+ online magazine; you can read it in its original form here.

Advocacy, IssuesPower to Persuade24 July 2024climate change, health, Population health

Food marketing targets parents to influence children’s diets

Food marketing is a tried and tested strategy used to influence children’s diets, most commonly promoting unhealthy food and sugary drinks. In today’s post, VicHealth (@VicHealth) Research Fellow Alexandra Chung (@Chung_Alexandra) from Monash University (@Monash_FMNHS) explains some of the ways in which food industry marketing targets parents to influence young children’s diets.

IssuesPower to Persuade23 July 2024Children, parenting, health, public health, public policy

Explaining the 2024 Net Overseas Migration surge

A recent surge in net overseas migration (NOM) has become a hot topic, with politicians and media commentators linking the surge with limited housing supply and other pressures. But what is the NOM? And do we really have unusually high volumes of migration? Alan Gamlen from the Australian National University explains. Y

Policy and governance, Politics, IssuesPower to Persuade19 June 2024migration policy, NOM, migration

How international recognition of cultural practices could be a new way to protect refugees

Camps are dynamic, culturally significant spaces. New research from the University of Newcastle proposes the significance of these cultural practices may provide an alternative pathway to protection.

Context matters: unpacking gender equality in development

The World Bank reports that nearly 2.4 billion women globally do not have the same economic rights as men. Women are more likely to be impoverished than men, and these disparities are more pronounced in countries in the Global South. Even though international policies have been developed to promote gender equality, their impact is uneven. In today’s piece, Hilda Aboagyewaa Agyekum, PhD candidate at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU, examines the influence of culture and context on the interpretation and implementation of gender policies, drawing on examples from Africa.

Gender, IssuesPower to Persuade15 November 2023Gender Inequity, international aid and development, United Nations

Traps, Assumptions and other acts of Policy Self-Sabotage – part two

Issues, Policy and governancePower to Persuade27 October 2023policy problem

Traps, Assumptions and other Policy Saboteurs – part one

Policy and governance, IssuesPower to Persuade27 October 2023policy problem

Company directorships as economic abuse are flying under the radar

Womens Policy Action Tank, Issues, Finance and economics, GenderPower to Persuade24 October 2023economic abuse, women and work, violence against women

Understanding the Feelings of Poverty: Shame, Anger, and Hope

Being poor isn't just about lacking material resources; it's also an emotional experience involving shame, anger and hope, explain Rose-Marie Stambe and Cameron Parsell from the UQ School of Social Science.

IssuesPower to Persuade29 September 2023Poverty, welfare conditionality, welfare reform

Alone Australian or collaboration for the nation we want?

Dr Millie Rooney, co-director of Australia Remade and long-time contributor here at Power to Persuade, has had some great ideas for new reality TV shows, following the success of ‘Alone Australia’. The question is - do we have contestants going it alone to survive, or a team effort to re-imagine a way for everyone to thrive?

Peer-led services: reducing barriers to healthcare for LGBTIQA+ people

LGBTIQA+ people are more likely to experience marginalisation, stigma, social exclusion, abuse, and violence than the wider community. Philippa Moss, CEO of ACT-based LGBTIQA+ peer-led health service Meridian, and Alison Barclay, researcher and social impact consultant, explain how peer-led services are helping to address this gap, and what more needs to be done.

Restorative Justice for Animal Harm

Recent animal cruelty court cases have once again shown that the traditional justice system falls well short for both victims and offenders. Felicity Tepper, senior research officer at ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance explores how restorative justice could have better outcomes for humans and animals alike.

Advocacy, Conferences, IssuesPower to Persuade5 July 2023justice, animal welfare, Research

How to end the exploitation of migrant workers

The exploitation of migrant workers continues to be a scourge across Australia, according to a new report from the Grattan Institute.

Issues, Policy and governancePower to Persuade23 June 2023migrants, mig, exploitation, visa

Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Australia must do more for Climate Affected Communities

In the Indian Sundarbans, like in many places of the world, the climate crisis is a current reality. In this ‘age of adaptation’, climate change is not a future possibility – it is a present threat. In this post, Annabel Dulhunty (@AnnabelDulhunty) from the Crawford School of Public Policy discusses how Australia needs to convert rhetoric into reality when it comes to climate change, through meaningful emission reduction and increased aid for communities most impacted.

Advocacy, Issues, Policy and governancePower to Persuade19 April 2023climate change, foreign aid

Losing the chicken for the flock: Reforming animal welfare prosecutions in Australia

March and April of this year saw a spate of stories about animal cruelty reported across Australian news media. In today’s article, Serrin Rutledge-Prior (@serrinrp) from the Crawford School of Public Policy reviews prosecutions brought under animal welfare legislation across Australia, arguing that the treatment of non-human animals under Australian law is both inconsistent and insufficient in terms of delivering justice to victims of neglect and abuse.

Advocacy, IssuesPower to Persuade17 April 2023animal welfare, social justice, social policy

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