Addressing childcare flexibility. This project aims to identify how best to achieve flexible childcare for the large number of Australian shift-work, professional or casual employees who work outside or beyond standard work hours. Consecutive governments have attempted to intervene in what is now regarded as a childcare flexibility crisis, but their attempts have failed due to fundamental misunderstandings of family needs for affordable, quality care and service providers' business requirements. ....Addressing childcare flexibility. This project aims to identify how best to achieve flexible childcare for the large number of Australian shift-work, professional or casual employees who work outside or beyond standard work hours. Consecutive governments have attempted to intervene in what is now regarded as a childcare flexibility crisis, but their attempts have failed due to fundamental misunderstandings of family needs for affordable, quality care and service providers' business requirements. This project seeks to reconcile family and provider experiences with government cost and quality concerns. It aims to deliver new knowledge on the alignments between stakeholders’ interests so as to offer a way forward in the creation of an affordable, flexible, quality care system.Read moreRead less
Optimising the roles of online communities in rural resilience . This research will use data from online communities to identify roles they do, and could play, in rural resilience. It uses social media analytics and spatial methodology to taxonomise and map service topics and social resilience from online communities. Governments call for rural service innovation. To date, robust evidence about online versus local services needed, is lacking. This is partly due to lack of data about diverse cons ....Optimising the roles of online communities in rural resilience . This research will use data from online communities to identify roles they do, and could play, in rural resilience. It uses social media analytics and spatial methodology to taxonomise and map service topics and social resilience from online communities. Governments call for rural service innovation. To date, robust evidence about online versus local services needed, is lacking. This is partly due to lack of data about diverse consumers' priorities and gaps. Social media could offer latent insights, but ethical methodology producing useful de-identified policy insights has been lacking. This study exemplifies applying social media data analytics at scale to address policy problems and will produce up-to-date co-designed data use guidelines.Read moreRead less
The individual, the family and the state: expectations, intergenerational obligations and constraints in providing for old age. Intergenerational equity is a principle underpinning policy debates around financing retirement and care in older age. Enhanced understanding of this cohort's expectations and obligations will assist in policy development around financing retirement and paying for care that takes account of this cohort's expectations and obligations. Further, exploring the expectations ....The individual, the family and the state: expectations, intergenerational obligations and constraints in providing for old age. Intergenerational equity is a principle underpinning policy debates around financing retirement and care in older age. Enhanced understanding of this cohort's expectations and obligations will assist in policy development around financing retirement and paying for care that takes account of this cohort's expectations and obligations. Further, exploring the expectations underpinning intergenerational exchanges from this cohort's perspective will assist in understanding the dynamics around these exchanges and lay the ground work for future research into factors that facilitate cross-generation family functioning.Read moreRead less
The production, use and effect of social work research. This project aims to reform social work research to improve the quality and effectiveness of human services. The human services industry is vital to many people’s quality of life, but lacks innovation and struggles to demonstrate its effectiveness. Crucially for social work, research expands thinking about how to respond to social disadvantage. This project intends to examine the scope and quality of Australian social work research in child ....The production, use and effect of social work research. This project aims to reform social work research to improve the quality and effectiveness of human services. The human services industry is vital to many people’s quality of life, but lacks innovation and struggles to demonstrate its effectiveness. Crucially for social work, research expands thinking about how to respond to social disadvantage. This project intends to examine the scope and quality of Australian social work research in child protection, disability services, and aged care; assess the use of this research to the human services sector and its effect on generating innovation; and develop strategies to advance the production, uptake, and effect of social work research.Read moreRead less
Challenges, Possibilities and Future Directions: A National Assessment of Australia's Children's Courts. Children's Courts occupy a unique position in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems in responding to often marginalized delinquent youth and vulnerable children and families. Philosophical and structural shifts in Australia and overseas suggest community and legal system responses are often ineffective and contribute to longer-term problems, creating social challenges for governments ....Challenges, Possibilities and Future Directions: A National Assessment of Australia's Children's Courts. Children's Courts occupy a unique position in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems in responding to often marginalized delinquent youth and vulnerable children and families. Philosophical and structural shifts in Australia and overseas suggest community and legal system responses are often ineffective and contribute to longer-term problems, creating social challenges for governments and communities alike. This national study will examine how key stakeholders, including, significantly, judicial officers, view the Children's Court's contemporary responses and challenges, their preferred alternatives responses and the viability of suggested reforms, thus offering a unique contribution to informing legal and social policy change.Read moreRead less
Conditional welfare: A comparative case study of income management policies. Using an innovative methodology that incorporates a cross-national comparison of policy design and practice, this project aims to explore the effects of income management policies. The research will provide new insights into compulsory income management in Australia, and its more recent introduction in New Zealand. The expected outcomes will provide benefits, such as a richer understanding of human agency, autonomy and ....Conditional welfare: A comparative case study of income management policies. Using an innovative methodology that incorporates a cross-national comparison of policy design and practice, this project aims to explore the effects of income management policies. The research will provide new insights into compulsory income management in Australia, and its more recent introduction in New Zealand. The expected outcomes will provide benefits, such as a richer understanding of human agency, autonomy and social identity in the context of social policy.Read moreRead less
Technologies of performance, technologies of governance: the bane, benefits, ethics and future of performance measurement in government. This study examines governments' increasing use of performance management and the complex ways this is transforming schools, universities, health and welfare services. It aims to improve service performance by identifying problems areas and engaging wider public perspectives.