This post by Lisa Bortolotti is a re-post in a series of posts on a project on agency and youth mental health funded by the Medical Research Council and led by Rose McCabe at City University, UK. Lisa is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, affiliated with the Department of Philosophy and the Institute for Mental Health. In this post she answers four questions about her work on agency in youth mental health.
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The evidence has been well publicised: young people who have spent their formative years in public care are less likely than their peers to be in gainful employment, and more likely to become homeless, to become involved in crime or prostitution or to become long-term dependent on the state. A closer inspection of the data tends to reveal a much more nuanced picture: a small group of care leavers are ‘movers on’ who achieve educational, employment and wellbeing outcomes that are similar to those of their peers in the general population. A much larger group are survivors: they enter care significantly behind their peers in key areas of development and although, given the right support, they make progress, it takes time to narrow the gap, and their achievements, occurring relatively late in life, often go unrecognised. Only a relatively small group of care leavers fit the stereotype and struggle with very poor outcomes.
Nevertheless, we need to understand why, despite more evidence of success than is often acknowledged, the transition to adulthood from care can be problematic for too many young people who have been the responsibility of the state. In this blog, Harriet Ward and Mike Stein explore the transitions from care to adulthood through exploring historical narratives.
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Australia’s child protection systems have long failed the families and children it was designed to protect. The structural injustices of the child protection system can be tackled by building institutional justice capital. This must include parental rights, non-violence, respectful relationships and public debate argue Dr Sharynne Hamilton and Dr Sarah Maslen.
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In today’s post, originally published in The Conversation, Professor Helen Dickinson (@drhdickinson) outlines concerns about the introduction of independent assessments into Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme, and explains why an independent evaluation of the proposed changes, designed in consultation with people with disability and their families, is needed before they are introduced.
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PRIMARY CARE NETWORKS (PCNs) were introduced across England in July 2019, bringing together groups of general practices, along with community providers, to develop new services for patients. These networks respond to a need for better integration of health and social care services and issues of sustainability in primary care.
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The Covid-19 pandemic is presenting governments, social work leaders, managers and frontline practitioners with unique challenges. In this blog, Harry Ferguson, Sarah Pink and Laura Kelly discuss their Economic and Social Research Council-funded research, which explores its impact on children, families and child protection social work.
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We know that the NDIS is a lot of administrative work for scheme participants, but the administrative burden isn’t just borne by people with disability. Today’s post comes from Ellie Malbon (Centre for Social Impact), Gemma Carey (CSI), Helen Dickinson (Public Service Research Group), Megan Weier (CSI), and Gordon Duff (National Disability Services), who have done some research on the administrative burden of the NDIS for service providers.
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The pandemic has exposed the multitude of dangers in trusting private entities with public data, demonstrating the need for carefully thought out regulation argue Jenna Harb and Kate Henne from the Justice and Technoscience (JusTech) Lab at the ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance.
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Violence and aggression perpetrated against frontline public servants is a serious issue, argues Steve Munns, psychologist, public servant and PhD scholar at the ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance.
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The Productivity Commission’s 2018 report on the community sector reported that productivity failings within the sector were failing people experiencing hardship. In today’s post, David Tennant of Family Care suggests that this conclusion should be revisited in light of the policy changes instituted in response to COVID-19.
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Women who have been to prison should be a priority group for violence prevention.
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Since lockdown measures were introduced on 23rd March 2020 in the UK, while a minority of vulnerable children attend school, and school staff have worked hard to stay connected, social workers and family support workers have been some of the few safeguarding professionals visiting families in their homes and often the only ones to do so regularly. I this blog post, Professor Harry Ferguson asks - How, then, are social workers and families managing the risks from COVID-19 that home visits carry?
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Jeff Thompson, a disability employment specialist from a community organization in Canberra, reflects on the changing landscape of disability services, and wonders who the current policies are serving. Are faith-based and for-profit organizations able to deliver the ‘choice and control’ promised by the National Disability Insurance scheme (NDIS)?
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Australians with disability represent some of the most excluded of all Australians in relation to the impacts of coronavirus. At the same time, many people with disability are particularly at risk from COVID-19, because of barriers that exist to their inclusion, and their need for ongoing support. People with Disability Australia asked people with disability to tell them about their experiences over the last two months, and have released a report on those findings today.
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One in ten Australians provide care for a loved one, sustaining families and saving governments huge sums on care services. Associate Professor Myra Hamilton explains why COVID-19 has increased the pressure for Australia’s many unpaid carers and the impact this is having.
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Historically, epidemics have brought a double threat: first to Indigenous health, then to Indigenous self-determination. Here Aileen Marwung Walsh and Laura Rademaker explain why Indigenous self-determination is vital to beat COVID-19.
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Prior research has shown that health inequities worsen during pandemics. In this blog piece Professor Helen Dickinson and Professor Anne Kavanagh highlight the health inequities already faced by people with disability and how the Covid-19 pandemic could make these worse. They outline steps the Government urgently needs to implement to protect people with disability as the pandemic progresses.
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Covid19 is creating massive employment upheavals with significant implications for peoples’ mental health. In today’s blog Post Aurora Elmes discusses the role social enterprises can play in providing flexible and supportive workplaces for vulnerable people and the need for government to consider how they can support these businesses to help cushion some of the economic and social fallout from Covid-19.
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COVID-19 is rapidly changing the world around us, and disability peak organisations in Australia have called on government to move quickly to guarantee continuity of essential services, support and information for people with disability, and to curb the risk of infection for people with disability and their support workers. People with disability are rightly worried about the particular risks this health crisis poses for them. This message from the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, Children and Young People with Disability, Disability Advocacy Network Australia, First People Disability Network, Inclusion Australia, National Ethnic Disability Alliance, People with Disability Australia and Women with Disabilities Australia explains what needs to be done.
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