Colombian transitional justice: the need for prioritizing local voices in peacebuilding.

The term ‘transitional justice’ encompasses a wide range of initiatives and mechanisms to address legacies left by human rights atrocities committed amidst situations of armed conflict or in transitions from autocratic to democratic rule.    Mechanisms like the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, The International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda or the Former Yugoslavia (ICTR/ICTY) or Timor Leste’s Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR in Portuguese) are among some of the most internationally known transitional justice processes. In this blog post Dr Louis Monroy-Santander explains the need to prioritise local voices in peacebuilding.

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A deliberate choice to keep people in poverty

In the lead up to Federal Budget, we featured a series of posts about the challenges of living on Jobseeker. Last week’s budget confirmed there would be no increase to the payment, meaning it remains below the poverty line. In today’s post, Maiy Azize, Deputy Director of ANGLICARE AUSTRALIA, outlines the long history of research and inquiry demonstrating the need to raise the rate, and calls for a backlash over the ‘deliberate choice to keep three million people in poverty’.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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