A recent professional symposium held in Melbourne presented research findings on the often hidden toll experienced by women whose partners perpetrate online child sexual abuse. Here Zoë Goodall, a graduate of the University of Melbourne and Media Coordinator for PartnerSPEAK, urges for a policy rethink in the area of family violence and victims of crime.
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Over the weekend, thousands participated in the March for Science, both in Australia and globally. Influenced by the Women’s March, the March for Science has struggled with reflecting the highly diverse scientific community. In today’s post, sociologist Zuleyka Zevallos provides a brief history of the controversies, explains why diversity in science is important, and provides practical suggestions for moving forward on stronger footing.
Read MoreFrom the online portal to enrolment targets to workforce shortages, the implementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme has been plagued with difficulties. But A/Prof Helen Dickinson (@DrHDickinson) cautions that we don't yet have enough information to make definitive statements about success and failure. We should expect some challenges to arise as the NDIS is implemented, and this doesn’t mean that the idea is fundamentally flawed.
Read MoreGovernments wringing too many savings out of outsourced risk is threatening the commercial and political sustainability of the whole enterprise, warns one of Australia’s top government contracting experts. For the Australia and New Zealand School of Government's Prof Gary Sturgess, it’s becoming a ‘game of chicken’ where the players want out.
Read MoreWhat's a program? What's program management? Differences in how we use these words matter, argues UNSW Canberra's Dr Raymond Young - and the project management discipline needs to adapt its language use if it wants to help government deliver better results.
Read MoreCollaboration is a popular and often routine exercise for the public, private and community sectors to develop a common purpose, as well as co-design and/or co-deliver policies or services. But the costs of these interactions are often underestimated. Robyn Keast, Michael Charles and Piotr Modzelewski argue that a detailed cost-benefit analysis should be undertaken before undergoing collaboration.
Read MoreCommissioning is like a unicorn? (Are your eyes deceiving you?) Although this might sound like a bizarre analogy, Helen Dickinson, director of UNSW Canberra's Centre for Public Service Research, illustrates the surprising ties between the mystical creature and public sector commissioning in this repost from her blog.
Read MoreIs aggressive outsourcing of government services affecting service quality and trust? The Mandarin's David Donaldson spoke to contracting expert and NSW Premier's ANZSOG Chair of Public Service Delivery Gary Sturgess for his take on the matter. This post originally appeared on The Mandarin.
Read MoreIn recent years, social services recipients have had limited choice in service providers, but in New South Wales, these choices are further restricted by the state government's transfer of disability services to the non-government sector. The blog post below is NSW Council for Intellectual Disability's commentary on this development, and is a repost from the Council's website.
Read MoreFor UK based researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in the area of eating disorders 2017 marks an important milestone. This year the updated National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines will be published in the UK after a 14 year wait. This is a long awaited release as these guidelines provide momentous support to professionals on the frontline of services by helping to inform the best care and treatment modalities for the most vulnerable. The 15 year wait begs many questions - none more so than why so long? In the post below, Dr Una Foye looks at why eating disorders have not received sufficient attention in mental health contexts.
Read MorePersistent long-term growth in the world’s population has brought with it significant public health concerns. The global demographic is ageing, chronic disease is on the rise and these concerns for health and welfare systems require action in a time of economic uncertainty. Over 46 million people worldwide are currently living with dementia and this figure is set to treble in the next 35 years (Prince et al., 2015). In the post below, Dr Jennifer Lynch looks at if Assistive Technology is a human rights issue for people living with dementia.
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Tuesday April 5th is Youth Homelessness Matters Day. As detailed in an accompanying blog, youth homelessness is on the rise due to a range of policy changes. Couch surfing is the predominant manifestation of youth homelessness, although largely hidden. Shorna Moore from WEstJustice has written before about young people’s experiences of couch surfing; today she provides a look into how couch surfing specifically places young women and their children in precarious situations.
Read MoreWith the recent vote by Melbourne City Council to ban rough sleeping, homelessness has been in the public eye. In honour of this week’s Youth Homelessness Matters day, today’s blog provides a practitioner view of youth homelessness in Victoria. Megan Kennedy and Ebony Canavan, with the Youth Homelessness Service at Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand, explain how recent policy changes are impacting on their clients.
Read MoreAustralia offers an interesting analogue for England in thinking about how mental health treatment and illness prevention might develop. Inevitably there are limitations on what can be learnt and what can be transferred, but there are lessons. In the post below, Professor Paul Burstow looks at what Australia's approach to mental health can teach the English.
Read MoreWhen Labor came to power in 2007, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd put homelessness at the top of the agenda, labelling it our ''national obscenity'' and ordering his ministers to spend a night in a homeless shelter to see how many people were being turned away.
In the post below, Dr Lesley Russell looks at the failure of political leadership on housing security since. She tracks its impact, particularly on health and wellbeing, and points to international models that are showing the way.
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Over the past months we have run several blogs on single mothers and how welfare policies manage to both keep them on the brink of poverty and also create convoluted bureaucratic processes in their quest to move from welfare to work. It was heartening, therefore, to come across the research findings shared here by Haley Fisher, which reports that more generous child support both reduces poverty and increases rates of return to work for single mothers. It may seem contrary, but keeping families on the brink of poverty does not provide the right incentives for re-entering employment. This article originally appeared in The Conversation, and can be viewed in its original format here.
Read MoreAhead of his visit next week to Australia, Dr Duncan Green, senior strategic adviser for Oxfam Great Britain, considers how agencies can respond to the rising tide of nationalism and populism globally, and suggests we need to look more and differently at the moments in people’s lives when social norms are formed or reformed, and the crucibles that forge them.
Read MoreHigh profile public health academic Professor Simon Chapman says there has never been a more important time for researchers all over the world to speak up about their work, its implications and how societies and governments should act on it.
Read MoreNext week at UNSW Canberra, a range of international and domestic experts are coming together for a workshop entitled 'Public management and policy implementation for public health policy – new directions for research and practice'. But what is the history of collaboration between these respective academic disciplines? Are they, as the cliche goes, a match made in heaven? Gemma Carey discusses below in advance of the workshop next week.
Read MoreScholars of public policy often seek to explain how particular policy ideas catch on. What is it that makes some ideas fly, and others flop? For social policy advocates, this is a crucial question. In this post, ANZSOG researcher Jo Luetjens suggests that understanding the role of the policy entrepreneur, and the strategies they use to create change, can help move us toward more effective advocacy strategies.
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