By Leo Fieldgrass, National Director of the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition (AYAC) and Manager of Participation and Development at the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria (YACVic)
Read MoreThe third annual Power to Persuade symposium was held in Melbourne this week. Thanks to Susan Maury, Social Policy Researcher at Good Shepherd Youth and Family Service for putting together this comprehensive Twitter account of the day. Click the Storify link below if you missed or would like to refresh your memory of the conversations the event generated, in the room and beyond.
Read MoreThe third annual Power to Persuade symposium was hosted in Melbourne this week, featuring Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) CEO Cassandra Goldie, education and marketing commentator Jane Caro, and author James Button, plus panels of experts from across the academic, community and public sectors.
Read MoreIn this post below, republished with permission, Professor Christina Boswell asks how we can tell what function research is playing in policy-making? It's a timely question ahead of tomorrow's 2014 Power to Persuade symposium.
Christina Boswell is Professor of Politics at the University of Edinburgh and writes on politics, knowledge and immigration at her blog, where this article was originally published.
Read MoreMoshe Maor is Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This article is drawn from a paper published in the Governance Journal. You can also check out his ECPR workshop on policy bubbles here.
Read MoreFew issues could be of more importance to Power to Persuade readers than the current crisis in Australia’s voluntary welfare sector. Its epicentre is Victoria in the wake of the early implementations of the Shergold report but its reach is bound to be national as other state and federal governments look to the social service marketization template being proffered in the Competition Policy Review. I offered my academic take on this development in ‘The Lady Vanishes Australia’s Disappearing Voluntary Sector’ and wont revisit that here. However the paper led to a range of engagements and discussions with people from the sector and it is that experience which I would like to share.
Read MoreSeveral weeks ago we posted a piece from former Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe, who was reflecting on his vision for the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Below, Richard Madden the former director of AIHW reflects on Brian's concerns, and what's at risk if AIHW were to lose its welfare functions.
Richard is a late addition to Power to Persuade 2014 Symposium, joining us for the afternoon session to discuss lessons on working across sectors to advance data collection and monitoring.
Read MoreThe influx of academics and researchers into social media platforms, sharing their work, their opinions and interacting with others, challenges us to reconsider the relationships between research and activism. For some, the two cannot be separated. Others are less comfortable with taking normative positions.
ResearchersJulia Olmos, Paul Benneworth and Elena Castro studied researchers’ willingness to include influences from users in the overall research process. Researchers who are more open to external (non-academic) influences in their research are able to more easily share their research with users, stakeholders and partner. You can access the full working paper here. This post was originally published on the LSE Impact Blog.
Read MoreLast year saw the establishment of the Australian Social Determinants of Health Alliance (SDOHA) (now with over sixty organisational members) and the release of the final report from the Senate Inquiry into the Social Determinants of Health. The ‘social determinants of health’ is simply another name for the type of social problems the community sector works to address every day, such as housing, income insecurity, poor access to education and disadvantage. Public health research has shown that these social issues are the primary cause of health problems like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. Socioeconomic position can predict who develops and eventually succumbs to heart disease, diabetes, respiratory disease and particular cancers. These findings have given us new allies in the fight to see policies that reduce, not expand, social inequalities.
Below, Melanie Walker, SDOHA Manager and Deputy CEO of the Public Health Association of Australia, reports on the recent activities of SDOHA (@sdohalliance), including their National Press Club Address and Research Forum progress Social Determinants of Health goals.
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If renting is to be a legitimate, appropriate and long term housing option for those who choose it, then our laws and culture should reflect this. James Bennett, Policy & Liaison Worker at the Tenants Union of Victoria, unpacks what this means in practice, and shows how rights-based advocacy for individual tenants is able to achieve policy change through impacting on legal determinations.
Read MoreThe current government’s reform agenda has been analysed from many angles. In this article Susan Maury, Social Policy Researcher from Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand, suggests using the lens of motivational psychology to design effective responses to complex social problems. Policies such as ‘work for the dole’ have not proven nearly as effective as holistic support such as Youth Connections, which had 94% of participants still engaged in employment or education six months after completing the program. There is a wealth of evidence about what motivates people to change their behaviour that does not seem to be part of the current policy debate.
Read MoreWelfare services are being reshaped again as governments pursue commissioning policies that blur the boundaries between the government, for-profit, secular nonprofit and faith-based sectors. In this article social policy consultant Wilma Gallet captures this historical movement and the inherent threat to faith-based organisations of being seduced away from their mission by government agendas.
Read MoreThe Lowy Institute published an important and attention-grabbing analysis today: Violence against women in PNG: How men are getting away with murder. Written by award-winning freelance Australian journalist, author and editor Jo Chandler, it’s not your standard form of thinktank analysis. Instead it takes the form of an essay or long piece journalism.
Read MoreAs anyone with a stake in social policy change knows well, the media can play a big role in generating the ‘power to persuade’ – making the case for change in a way that moves the public, policy makers, and politicians.
Read MoreAnna Coote, Head of Social Policy at the UK's New Economics Foundation (NEF) argues that ideology has been declared toxic but needs to be brought back into public discourse, to rehabilitate the notion that that policies can be – and usually are – grounded in systems of ideas and ideals. Thanks to the NEF for permission to republish her original post.
Read MoreThe “business as usual” lobbies are co-ordinated, cashed up and have a highly sophisticated mechanism to spring into action whenever a whiff of reform is in the air, writes Emeritus Professor Robert Douglas from the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at Australian National University in this piece from The Conversation.
Looking at "kitchen table" initiatives from the past and present, he asks whether Australia needs a new non-government structure to coordinate debate and act on a range of pressing issues in the public interest.
Read MoreProf Paul Smyth examines the similarities between the Australian Government's approach to social policy and the UK's Big Society agenda and warns that rather than emulate this unsuccessful approach to social investment we should be adopting alternatives such as Inclusive Growth.
Read MoreGraeme Innes is the former Disability Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission and is now Chair of the Attitude Foundation which works to change attitudes to people with disabilities. Graeme delivered the following Keynote Speech at the Strengthening Disability Advocacy Conference in Melbourne on 4 August 2014. In it he talks about the importance of value of advocacy at a time when the right and the capacity of individuals and organisations to advocate for themselves and others is being challenged by governments.
Read MoreThis innovative advocacy project, documented here by one of the project initiators Denis Nelthorpe of Footscray Community Legal Centre, demonstrates how strategic and collective organization of individual casework can bring about systemic change in the culture of corporate institutions and lay the groundwork for regulatory reforms.
Read MoreThe Australian Institute for Health and Welfare (AIHW) provides a critical evidence base and statistical analysis of the Australian population, helping to develop policy and strategies for the state and federal governments. In the recent budget, AIHW was ear-marked for merger into a new super agency the 'Health Productivity and Performance Commission' (along with Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, Independent Hospitals Pricing Authority, National Health Funding Body, National Health Funding Pool Administrator and National Health Performance Authority). While details are scant, the absence of 'welfare' from the title of this governing body and inclusion of 'productivity' is ominous.
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