Does art have the power to persuade? You bet! In a slightly left-of-field blog entry for P2P, today’s post features a piece by Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University that originally appeared in the Conversation. In it, Sasha reviews an exhibition of work by prolific Australian artist Ben Quilty that invites important questions about the role of art in bringing compassion to the front of national debate.
Read MoreAfter a string of data breaches in 2018, privacy and protecting people’s information became a hot issue which shows no signs of abating. Digital privacy made a global 2019 top ten list of technology trends and GDPR was the data privacy acronym of the year.
In the second of a four-part series, The Mandarin explores the online privacy landscape and how building and maintaining trust means empowering consumers and citizens.
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December being a difficult month for many people who feel under pressure to socialise and be merry whilst feeling lonely, was an apt time to launch UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) cross-disciplinary Loneliness and Social Isolation Mental Health Network, of which the University of Birmingham is a part. Dr Sarah Carr explores the theme of loneliness and living with mental health problems in a re-posted blog originally hosted on the Institute for Mental Health website.
Read MoreInstagram is to ban graphic self-harm images following the suicide of UK teen Molly Russell. In this piece re-published from the Conversation, and picked up by UK news company The Sun, Dr Anna Lavis and Dr Rachel Winter discuss the complex relationship between self-harm and social media, and how a knee-jerk ban on content could actually harm young people.
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Imagine getting turned away for not having a broken-enough leg. There would be complete outrage, but yet for people with eating disorders this is happening on a day to day basis. People are turned away for not being “sick” enough. We know a healthy BMI is 18.5 or above but yet some places in the UK are turning people away if their BMI is about 14! In this post, Hope Virgo (the Author of Stand Tall Little Girl and Mental Health Campaigner) shares her experience and talks about her #DumpTheScales campaign.
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There has been a growing focus on mental health and wellbeing in the workplace in the UK. The role of employers in relation to mental health and wellbeing is becoming increasingly pronounced and the business sector is responding to shifts in both policy and public opinion. As 2019 gets underway, employers may be deciding to scale up their business model, or be making plans to remain agile in difficult and unpredictable markets. In this re-post from employee benefits, Dr Sarah-Jane Fenton and Professor Fiona Carmichael suggest that central to those strategic objectives, and not as an afterthought, needs to be a serious consideration about how to support employees’ mental health and social wellbeing.
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In the lead-up to International Women’s Day on March 8th, today’s post explores how both the rates and the impacts of family violence are unequally experienced due to the overlap of multiple oppressive structures, including race, immigration status, socio-economic status, experience of a disability, and homophobia/transphobia. Sophie Yates (@MsSophieRae) of the Public Service Research Group (@PSResearchG) at UNSW Canberra provides an overview of intersecting structures can have profound impacts on how violence is experienced, perpetrated, and responded to, and argues that such experiences must be acknowledged and understood by policymakers and support services in order to right these inequities.
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Earlier this month, the Senate Inquiry into ParentsNext, including its trial and subsequent national rollout published its first round of submissions. This follows months of public scrutiny after the program’s national rollout in July 2018. Monique Hurley (@monique_hurley) and Adrianne Walters (@AdrianneHRLC) summarise the joint submission of SNAICC – National Voice for our Children (@SNAICC), the National Family Violence Prevention Legal Services Forum (@NationalFVPLS) and the Human Rights Law Centre (@rightsagenda), to the Inquiry, which recommends that the program be scrapped. The full joint submission can be viewed here, while submissions made to the Senate Inquiry by other organisations can be viewed here.
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Effective climate change action needs a lot of money. However, in the Pacific it is not just about delivering dollars. Kirsty Anantharajah gives us three key problems with global climate financing approaches, and offers three possible pathways out.
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The NDIS has failed to live up to expectations in many areas, none more so than disability employment. In a blunt and honest piece, long-term disability employment advocate Jeff Thompson from LEAD tell us why jobs are so important, and three things that would lead to an employment friendly NDIS.
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Childcare policy is always fraught, because so many people want it to be better, but everyone has their own ideas about what is needed. Yarrow Andrew, who worked for 15 years in long day childcare as an educator, before beginning a research career investigating early childhood education gives us some ideas about how to reform the sector.
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With the recent release of the jobactive inquiry report and the current inquiry into ParentsNext, today’s policy analysis could not be more timely. Natalie Jovanovski provides a summary[i] of research she conducted with Policy Whisperer Kay Cook into how current Welfare to Work policies inform single mothers’ food provisioning practices, and the consequent impacts on mental and physical health for both the mothers and their children.
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Research on marginalised communities has a history of being weaponised against those very communities, marginalising them even further. This weaponisation, and the fear of it, can silence discussion on important social issues. Here, Sandra Elhelw Wright reflects on how this plays out in the context of research on domestic violence in Australian Muslim communities.
Read MoreSensationalising youth crimes for political gain has been a mantra for politicians. Case in point, the recently conducted elections in Victoria where politicians of all stripes ensured gang violence was an election issue. But given that it is an election year for New South Wales, the lack of political and media voice surrounding law and order is deafening. Today’s blog contributor Dr. Elaine Fishwick (@elbowlass) tackles this issue (or lack thereof) locating it in larger worldwide trends and unravelling the present ‘policy moment’ we find ourselves in. Elaine is an academic scholar researching issues relating to human rights, social justice, access to justice, criminology, youth justice and public policy.
Read MoreAs the 2019 New South Wales State election is fast approaching (March 23, 2019), a policy think tank on financial inclusion has proposed an election platform paper with specific state level concerns and possibilities. Jenni Beetson-Mortimer (@BeetsonJenni) who heads up this coalition – NSW Financial Inclusion Network, is our blog contributor today. Jenni is the CEO of Northern Rivers Community Gateway, a registered not-for-profit which provides welfare and community capacity building programs for disadvantaged individuals and communities across NSW and extending to the Far North Coast, New England and Mid North Coast of the state. Located at the forefront of service provision, Jenni bring her experiences, knowledges and collaborative scholarship to persuade NSW policy makers to act on the issue of financial inclusion.
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Workers in the gig economy, whether it is their primary income source or supplemental, are in a grey area when it comes to legal protections. Because the majority of part-time workers are women, it is particularly critical for women that the conversations are thoughtful and evidence-informed. Recently Abigail Hunt (@AbiHunt) and Emma Samman of the Overseas Development Institute co-wrote a global report on the impacts of the gig economy on women. In today’s blog, Abigail shares four key take-away messages for protecting the most vulnerable workers, which are highly relevant for Australian policy-makers. This policy analysis originally appeared on the ODI website.
Read MoreThe release of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry earlier this month has not had the intended effect of allaying mistrust in the financial services sector in Australia. Despite the enormity of the report, nearly 1,000 pages with 24 entities and companies referred to civil and criminal proceedings, there is a consensus that the major financial corporations involved in the misconduct remain unscathed. In today’s post, Dr. Jonathon Louth examines the silences in this report, especially as it impacts the lives of Indigenous peoples living in rural and remote Australia. Based on his recent research with Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory, he recommends expanding community and cultural literacies in the financial sector as one of the counter measures to tackle systematic dispossession and marginalisation of vulnerable populations. This piece was originally published in The Conversation on 6 February 2019
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The recent release of the Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services 2019 indicates that within the “community services” budget, federal spending on youth justice will be $842.4 million while the child protection services budget will reach $5.8 billion this year. What appears to be missing is significant funding on positive, community-based developmental programs for youth. In today’s post, social worker and professional dancer Anjelika Thwaites reports on the findings of her Honours thesis for Victoria University (and co-supervised by Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand) into the many benefits of investing in arts-based programs for young people.
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This week the Senate Inquiry into ParentsNext, including its trial and subsequent broader rollout published its first round of submissions. This follows months of public scrutiny after the program’s national rollout in July 2018. Sarah Squire (@SquireSarah) and Policy Whisperer Susan Maury (@SusanMaury) summarise Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand’s (@GoodAdvocacy)’ submission to the inquiry and suggest an alternative approach.
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We have previously posted analyses of how Australia’s child support system is detrimental to women’s financial security and wellbeing, and how the welfare system meets the definitional criteria for economic abuse. In today’s post, Kris Natalier (@KrisNatalier) shares findings from her recent research, which indicates that the Australian child support system perpetuates power inequalities and ongoing economic abuse.
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