Social Policy and Individualised Rights

Transcription

1 Social Policy and Individualised Rights A CASR symposium exploring the different forms and implications of individualisation as it relates to core areas of social policy Date: Friday December Time: 9.00 am to 4.30 pm (Registration opens 8.30 am) Location: Rydges on Swanston, Swanston Room, 701 Swanston St, Melbourne Contact: CASR@rmit.edu.au Event website: Image: Jorge Láscar Princes Bridge

2 Program 8.30 am Registration 9.00 am Welcome and Introduction 9.15 am Care work and aged care Professor Gabrielle Meagher Macquarie University Challenging choice: interrogating a key organising concept in contemporary social services Choice has become a central and apparently unassailable concept in social service discourse and practice in recent years. This presentation will explore the concept and discuss its relationship to individualisation, with a focus on care for older people. Professor Sara Charlesworth Rethinking minimum employment standards for paid care workers: Challenges and opportunities The presentation will outline recent Australian policy shifts to cash for care funding models, the ramifications of these shifts for paid care workers and canvass innovative regulatory proposals emerging out of international scholarship on domestic work am Morning Tea am Disability services and homelessness Associate Professor Paul Ramcharan Can choice be individualised? Reflections on choice in an NDIS era pm Lunch Drawn from a study of choice-making funded to support implementation of the NDIS, this paper will examine some of the prior theoretical assumptions relating to three empirically generated forms of choice, everyday, lifestyle and pervasive. Dr Guy Johnson Dr Heather Holst Launch Housing Presentation TBA 1.10 pm Children and families Dr Michelle Brady University of Queensland Experiences of Childcare Inflexibility in the Context of Individualisation Australian families with young children increasingly have two earners. Furthermore, one or both of these earners are more likely than ever to work rotating shifts or nonstandard hours. However our understanding of the priorities of and constraints facing families, providers and policy makers, and how these align or conflict, is currently very limited (P.C., 2014). Drawing on interpretive policy theory (Yanow, 2000), this presentation begins the work of identifying where synchronies (Hajer, 2003) and tensions exist between the experiences and framings of childcare flexibility across families, providers and government. Dr Kay Cook Financial responsibility for children following parental separation: welfare-to-work and child support policy winners and losers 2.30 pm Afternoon Tea 2.45 pm Welfare policy and service delivery Professor Greg Marston Queensland University of Technology Individualisation or individualism?: A critical refection on agency and identity in contemporary social policy reforms This paper will examine tensions and contradictions in constructions of citizens and professionals in major social policy reforms, such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme and Compulsory Income Management programs Dr Sonia Martin The moralisation of welfare recipients in the 21st century: A critical examination of welfare arrangements post-howard This paper examines the continuities and discontinuities in Australian welfare provision since the years of the Howard-led coalition government ( ). In particular, it will explore how the framing of welfare has moved from a social issue to an individual issue that is more to do with the behaviour and morals of recipients than the provision of an adequate social safety net. 3:55 pm Symposium Closing Messages To be followed by post-symposium drinks

3 Presenters Dr Michelle Brady University of Queensland Michelle received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Alberta in November, Her research focuses on developing new interpretive frameworks for understanding the impacts of social policies on people s experiences and decisions. Since completing her PhD, which focused on welfare to work, she has examined new parents experiences of paternal leave following the birth of a child, and the problem of childcare flexibility/inflexibility. Professor Sara Charlesworth Sara Charlesworth works in the School of Management at and is a member of the Centre for Sustainability, Organisation and Work. Her research centres on gender (in)equality in paid work and, in particular, the impact of employment and anti-discrimination regulation at the labour market, industry and workplace levels. Sara has published and presented widely in a wide range of academic, policy and community and has been involved in a number of Australian and international equality and employment regulatory reviews. She was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in 2012, which explores the prospects for decent work in frontline care work, focusing on the Australian case in international perspective. Sara is also currently an international collaborator on two Canadian SSHRC cross-national projects focused on gender, migration and the work of care, and on changes under austerity in the non-profit social services sector. Dr Kay Cook Kay is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Family Studies and a Vice Chancellor s Senior Research Fellow at. Kay s work explores how new and developing social policies such as welfare-to-work, child support and child care policies, transform relationships between the state, individuals and families. Given that these policies have a profound impact on the everyday experiences of their targets, Kay s work makes the personal impact of these policies explicit. Kay s ARC-funded research on single parents welfare to work transition, family daycare workforce reform, and in particular the problematic nature of child support for low-income single parents, have been taken up at a national level, including by the Australian Law Reform Commission into Family Violence and most recently in the form of six recommendations made as a result of the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Child Support Program. Dr Heather Holst Deputy CEO, Launch Housing Heather Holst is Deputy CEO of Launch Housing and has worked in the housing sector since Launch Housing is the merge of HomeGround and Hanover that took effect in July 2015 up to which point Heather was CEO at HomeGround. Heather has a History Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne. She has published scholarly articles and a book, Making a Home: A History of Castlemaine. She lectured in history for several years, including in the Clemente program for people who have been homeless. Heather s housing experience spans homelessness service delivery, tenant advice, policy, program development, research and service coordination in both the non-profit sector and government since Heather has contributed to key Victorian housing and homelessness innovations, including as co-author of Opening Doors and designer of HomeGround Real Estate.

4 Presenters Dr Guy Johnson Guy is the Deputy Director at the Centre of Applied Social Research at. He recently returned from the US where he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania for 12 months. He has been involved in the area of homelessness for almost three decades, initially as a practitioner and more recently as a researcher. Since completing his PhD in 2006 Guy has published extensively on homelessness and is a co-author of On the Outside: Pathways in and out of homelessness and Young People leaving state out-ofhome care: Australian policy and practice, and recently co-edited Homelessness in Australia: An Introduction. Guy is currently working on three longitudinal projects examining transitions in and out of homelessness. He is a member of the Homelessness Statistics Reference Group which was established by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to advise on methodology and to review definitions. Professor Greg Marston Queensland University of Technology Professor Marston has an extensive record in undertaking applied social policy research. He has led a number of Australian Research Council grants into long-term unemployment, disability and employment services and household debt and the fringe lending industry in Australia. Prior to entering academia Greg worked in various research and policy positions in national and state community service organisations. He started his professional career as a youth worker in the early 1990s, before working in policy and community development roles for a variety of non-profit community organisations. Greg s main research interests are the impact of various social and economic policies on ordinary Australians, comparative social policy, contemporary social theory, the organisational dimensions of human service practice and the role of social policy in transitioning to a low-carbon society. He is currently co-editing a forthcoming book on prospects for a universal basic income in Australia and New Zealand, to be published by Palgrave in Dr Sonia Martin Sonia Martin has extensive experience as a researcher and educator, having worked at the Universities of South Australia, Adelaide and Melbourne and the Brotherhood of St Laurence in the Research and Policy Centre. Sonia s work on a large three-year ARC Linkage grant at The University of Melbourne contributed to the award-winning publication of Half a Citizen. Sonia s research interests are in the fields of social work and social policy, grounded in the discipline of sociology. Her PhD was a critical analysis of social divisions in the post-welfare era and an examination of the underclass phenomenon. Other research includes quantitative analyses of poverty, inequality and social exclusion drawing on local, national and international data, extensive research into the lived experience of poverty and social exclusion, and a range of policy evaluations. Sonia is also interested in theoretical issues to do with agency, structure and choice, especially within the context of social policy and welfare reform.

5 Presenters Professor Gabrielle Meagher Macquarie University Gabrielle s interdisciplinary research explores two main themes. The first seeks to bring social (or community) services in general, and social service workers in particular, to the centre of social policy analysis. The second investigates the changing priorities of the Australian welfare state, focusing on the relationship between policy development and public attitudes to social policy, and on the evolution of social service provision. Professor Meagher seeks to further research on paid care work by active involvement in the Australian Paid Care Research Network. Professor Meagher was a Principle Investigator of the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) in 2003 and Since 2001, she has been Editor of the Australian Review of Public Affairs (ARPA), an innovative, on-line journal published within the University of Sydney. Associate Professor Paul Ramcharan Paul Ramcharan has been involved in research for and with people with disabilities for over twenty years and has maintained an ongoing interest in self advocacy over that time. Since arriving in Australia in 2006 Paul has undertaken research around the views and experiences of people with disability and family carers of restrictive practices and has subsequently developed a Roadmap for Achieving Dignity without Restraint. He was recently funded to undertake two projects supporting implementation of the NDIS one of which focused upon choice- making. Paul maintains a keen interest in disability research, human rights and inclusive research practice. Paul has occupied many key research leadership positions over the years and is presently co-chair of the Disability Research reference Panel at the Department of Human Services, Disability Division. About the Centre for Applied Social Research CASR s research is grounded in the idea that effective and equitable policy choices need to be founded upon historically and theoretically informed applied social research and public debate. We work with a range of Government and non-government organisations in three main areas: Social Policy and Practice Evidence and Evaluation Social Support and Care Within these areas, we focus on housing and homelessness, domestic violence, disability, ageing, family and child services, multiculturalism and migration, and employment relations. CASR research looks beyond policy by seeking to understand the lived, everyday experience of work, health and welfare.

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