Implications of the NDIS Amendment Bill 2024 for some of Australia’s most marginalised people

With the NDIS Amendments Bill 2024 open for submissions until the end of the week, today’s post, written by Muriel Cummins, critiques the potential impact of the Bill on some of the most marginalised NDIS recipients – people living in private supported boarding houses. Muriel raises concerns from her reading of the Bill and NDIS reform more generally, and the potential of these policy and legislative changes to further erode the rights of people living in these modern-day institutional settings.

Policy and governanceGuest User13 May 2024NDIS, social justice, housing and homelessness

We need a more humane budget - now more than ever

Antipoverty Centre, Lived experience, Policy and governancePower to Persuade10 May 2024JobSeeker, housing

"The money just simply does not stretch": living on Jobseeker as rent, energy and food costs soar

Antipoverty CentrePower to Persuade30 April 2024Lived/consumer experience, welfare conditionality, welfare reform, welfare-to-work

As a single parent, Jobseeker is brutal. Government should come up with a better 'Placesaver' to help me into my next job

Advocacy, Lived experiencePower to Persuade24 April 2024welfare conditionality, welfare reform

Time for action: The need for children and young people in climate decision-making

Children and young people are essential voices and forces for change in public health, yet they are not included in climate discussions and decision-making. In today’s post, public health researchers from Deakin University’s Institute for Health Transformation (@IHT_Deakin) Grace Arnot (@GraceArnot), Dr Hannah Pitt (@HannahLPitt) and Dr Simone McCarthy (@SimoneNicoleM) highlight the important knowledge and experience that children and young people have, and call for their greater inclusion in climate decision-making and public health governance.

AdvocacyPower to Persuade10 April 2024climate change, Children, policy problem, Policy making, human rights

Thinking differently about evidence: Collaborating with policy makers to create, share and apply knowledge for public health

Public health research generates a wealth of evidence but there are challenges when it comes to making that evidence available to audiences beyond the research sector. In today’s post, VicHealth (@VicHealth) Research Fellow Alexandra Chung (@Chung_Alexandra) of Monash University (@MonashNutrition) discusses a unique project that demonstrates the value of collaborative approaches to create and share knowledge with policymakers.

Transforming Lives: Assessing the Impact of the Together Home Program

The Together Home program's success in NSW shows how stable housing and personalised support offer a new route to improving lives and fostering wellbeing among the homeless.

AdvocacyPower to Persuade4 April 2024housing

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.

The slow wheels of reform and harmful mutual obligation

Power to Persuade11 March 2024

Transitioning out of youth involvement roles: an interview with a Youth Involvement Officer and Senior Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead

Within mental health research and service delivery, involvement of experts by experience has become increasingly common. The involvement of experts by experience allows for the design and delivery of research that is of higher quality and more rigorous.

Transitioning out of youth-focussed lived experience groups is a matter that is not well understood and, for many reasons, complex. It can be difficult to transition from the role of being a young contributor to research into a professional in the Public and Patient Involvement space. Working in lived experience roles, either as ‘lived experience practitioners’, ‘peer support workers’, ‘PPI facilitators’ or ‘involvement officers’ can be complex and the relationships you hold in these spaces vary depending on your positioning within either the group or the organisation (Carr, 2019).

In this blog we explore the experience of Beckye, a former Youth Advisory Group (YAG) member for the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Mental Health as she begins the making this transition into an employee in a Youth Involvement Officer. The blog takes the form of responses to an with Beckye (Youth Involvement Officer) and Niyah (Senior Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead). The interview offers early reflections that may be of use to organisations or individuals who may be supporting folk undertaking these transitions or in the process of negotiating the transition themselves.

How being on the Disability Support Pension has allowed me to stabilise my mental health

Advocacy, Lived experiencePower to Persuade29 February 2024Disability, welfare conditionality

To whom it "should" concern: unsuccessfully applying for the Disability Support Pension in Australia

Policy and governance, AdvocacyPower to Persuade27 February 2024Disability, welfare reform

Sex education in Australia: Dismally out of touch with young people’s needs

Every young person has a right to evidence-based education to support their sexual health and wellbeing. But Australian schools continue to skirt around the S-E-X word, preach abstinence or throw some bananas and condoms in the break room and hope for the best. As Brianna Delahunty and Linnea Burton Smith from the ERA’s Young Women’s Advisory Group argue, Australians deserve inclusive, safe and respectful education that prepares them for the real world and real relationships.

Gender, AdvocacyPower to Persuade23 February 2024education

Public inquiries and policy design

Public inquiries are a frequent response to policy and systems failures. Here A/Prof Alastair Stark and Dr Sophie Yates (@DrSophieYates) give a preview of their new Cambridge Element on public inquiries and policy design – introducing a typology of four design functions that inquiries perform, and discussing how to design for inquiry effectiveness. Public Inquiries and Policy Design is open access until 28 February 2024.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade21 February 2024Royal Commission, Policy making

Gender has always been 'shut out' from NDIS policy development

The much-anticipated NDIS review released in late 2023 failed to explicitly consider gender equality or recommend a gender strategy. In today’s post, UNSW PhD candidate Molly Saunders gives a history of gender and the NDIS, and discusses her doctoral research on whether the NDIS supports women with disability to live a life of their own choosing.

Womens Policy Action TankPower to Persuade19 February 2024Disability, NDIS, Gender Inequity

Battle Cry Of The Unbowed

AdvocacyPower to Persuade18 February 2024Disadvantage

Holiday reading from Power to Persuade

Creating using evidence, Advocacy, Policy and governancePower to Persuade19 December 2023Policy making, Poverty, gender

Workers, workers, workers

Lived experience, Policy and governancePower to Persuade3 December 2023NDIS, disability, housing

Are proprietors of supported residential services (SRS) the right people to support residents into better housing?

Advocacy, Policy and governancePower to Persuade29 November 2023Disability

Who’s lobbying whom? When it comes to alcohol, tobacco, food and gambling firms, we’re in the dark

It can be very difficult to get traction for meaningful policy change that will benefit the Australian public, particularly for marginalised communities. What can make it even harder is the influence of corporate actors, which is often hidden from public view. In today’s post, VicHealth postdoctoral research fellow Jenn Lacy-Nichols (@JLacyNichols) of University of Melbourne (@unimelbMSPGH) and Katherine Cullerton of University of Queensland (@UQmedicine) share their research findings into tracking the lobbying activities of corporations. This article first appeared in the The Conversation on 13 November 20203; you can read it in its original form here.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade23 November 2023government, economic policy, public policy, public health

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