Talking it up! Project report : Aboriginal voices in the formulation of health policy that works : short report

Initially, there were three separate strands to the work of the project: a series of forums involving group interviews/discussions with community members; a policy analysis that reviewed policies relating to Aboriginal health at federal and state level; and a literature review. The results of these three separate strands of analysis were then brought together in a fourth strand to the work, a process involving community members to discuss and agree the overall recommendations contained in this report.

Through this structure, the project employed a participatory methodology as the basis for individual and collective empowerment in relation to health outcomes. As mentioned above, the need for the project was identified by Aboriginal people, through their own processes of healing. The need was presented by appropriate figures within their communities, namely community elders. They invited other Aboriginal people to take part through their own communication channels, thus ensuring that responsibility for engagement in the project, and in formulating action for improvement, remained with Aboriginal people and their families. However, the project design also recognised that Aboriginal people exist within broader structural and policy constraints which impact on their ability to manage their own lives successfully or otherwise. Thus the project sought to combine indigenous and non-indigenous knowledge through bringing together the three strands of work in the way described.

A Community Reference Group guided the work of the project at all stages, endorsed the findings and drafted the recommendations. The two elders who had identified the need for the project formed the core of the group, and worked on the project from start to finish. At different times during the project, other community members joined the group to assist in its work, including training Aboriginal researchers, letting others know about the forums, discussing findings and drafting recommendations.

Talking it up! Project report : Aboriginal voices in the formulation of health policy that works : full report

Initially, there were three separate strands to the work of the project: a series of forums involving group interviews/discussions with community members; a policy analysis that reviewed policies relating to Aboriginal health at federal and state level; and a literature review. The results of these three separate strands of analysis were then brought together in a fourth strand to the work, a process involving community members to discuss and agree the overall recommendations contained in this report.

Through this structure, the project employed a participatory methodology as the basis for individual and collective empowerment in relation to health outcomes. As mentioned above, the need for the project was identified by Aboriginal people, through their own processes of healing. The need was presented by appropriate figures within their communities, namely community elders. They invited other Aboriginal people to take part through their own communication channels, thus ensuring that responsibility for engagement in the project, and in formulating action for improvement, remained with Aboriginal people and their families. However, the project design also recognised that Aboriginal people exist within broader structural and policy constraints which impact on their ability to manage their own lives successfully or otherwise. Thus the project sought to combine indigenous and non-indigenous knowledge through bringing together the three strands of work in the way described.

A Community Reference Group guided the work of the project at all stages, endorsed the findings and drafted the recommendations. The two elders who had identified the need for the project formed the core of the group, and worked on the project from start to finish. At different times during the project, other community members joined the group to assist in its work, including training Aboriginal researchers, letting others know about the forums, discussing findings and drafting recommendations.
Initially, there were three separate strands to the work of the project: a series of forums involving group interviews/discussions with community members; a policy analysis that reviewed policies relating to Aboriginal health at federal and state level; and a literature review. The results of these three separate strands of analysis were then brought together in a fourth strand to the work, a process involving community members to discuss and agree the overall recommendations contained in this report.

Through this structure, the project employed a participatory methodology as the basis for individual and collective empowerment in relation to health outcomes. As mentioned above, the need for the project was identified by Aboriginal people, through their own processes of healing. The need was presented by appropriate figures within their communities, namely community elders. They invited other Aboriginal people to take part through their own communication channels, thus ensuring that responsibility for engagement in the project, and in formulating action for improvement, remained with Aboriginal people and their families. However, the project design also recognised that Aboriginal people exist within broader structural and policy constraints which impact on their ability to manage their own lives successfully or otherwise. Thus the project sought to combine indigenous and non-indigenous knowledge through bringing together the three strands of work in the way described.

What can Arendt's theorising add to critical social workers empowerment practice?

Empowerment is one of the most frequently invoked concepts in critical social work theory and practice. Critical social work theory tends to privilege the concept of “power” as the central concept in em-power-ment. However over the last two decades postmodern and poststructural thought has discredited how power was understood in critical social work. Some leading critical social workers have re-thought the notion of “power” with Foucault’s early and middle work. One of the key problems raised by leading social workers is about how to re-think “allowance for difference” in empowerment practice (Fook 2002; Healy 2000). I argue that to re-think power in relation specifically to problems with “allowance for difference” using Foucault’s early and middle work is not possible because he is still conflating power with domination. Hence I turn to Hannah Arendt’s theorising on power. For Arendt power is understood as the capacity of people to “act in concert” and to create something new. Arendt’s concepts of “plurality”, “natality” and “publicness”, I argue can add a much to critical social work empowerment practice by re-thinking the notion of “allowance for difference” in critical empowerment social work.

Craft groups : sites of friendship, empowerment, belonging and learning for older women

This article reports on a qualitative research project conducted in Victoria, Australia, with nine older women. The purpose of the research was to explore the women's experience of involvement in craft groups, and specifically, the impact of this involvement on their sense of well-being. Traditionally the health of older people has been examined in relation to medical markers of physical well-being, and often, decline. We were interested to widen this perspective to understand the impact of social connection, belonging and ongoing learning and development on the ageing experience. While the focus of the groups was on domestic craftwork, the process of coming together as a collective appeared to have significant bearing on the holistic health of the women involved. Consistent with feminist groupwork literature, the findings indicated that the women we interviewed experienced the group setting as affirming and generative in a number of ways. These include providing an avenue for mutual aid, addressing isolation, affirming individual and collective strength and wisdom, while acquiring new skills, and normalising concerns regarding health and family.

Craft groups: sites of friendship, empowerment, belonging and learning for older women

This article reports on a qualitative research project conducted in Victoria, Australia, with nine older women. The purpose of the research was to explore the women’s experience of involvement in craft groups, and specifically, the impact of this involvement on their sense of well-being. Traditionally the health of older people has been examined in relation to medical markers of physical well-being, and often, decline. We were interested to widen this perspective to understand the impact of social connection, belonging and ongoing learning and development on the ageing experience.

While the focus of the groups was on domestic craftwork, the process of coming together as a collective appeared to have significant bearing on the holistic health of the women involved. Consistent with feminist groupwork literature, the findings indicated that the women we interviewed experienced the group setting as affirming and generative in a number of ways. These include providing an avenue for mutual aid, addressing isolation, affirming individual and collective strength and wisdom, while acquiring new skills, and normalising concerns regarding health and family.

Equal to life: empowerment through drama and research in a drama group for people with disabilities

This article draws from findings of qualitative research of a community- based drama and theatre group for adults with intellectual disabilities. The article considers constraints experienced by people with disabilities and explores the ways that experiences in drama and theatre can be particularly empowering for them. The article also reveals the ways that participants can increasingly become collaborators in the research and are empowered through the research process and through the opportunity to have their voices heard.

Rethinking empowerment: a postmodern reappraisal for emancipatory practice

This article is concerned with the implications of the postmodern challenge to critical theory for the practice of empowerment. How do we conceptualize empowerment from a postmodern perspective? It is argued that the modernist concept of power upon which empowerment rests, can have unintended disempowering effects. By conceptualizing power as a commodity, identities are forced into a powerful–powerless dualism which does not always do justice to diverse experiences. Thus we can sometimes contribute to dominance in spite of our liberatory intentions. It is argued that social workers need to become more aware of the self-disciplining and self-regulatory processes involved in professional work to address the social relations of power embedded in professional practices. Foucault's analysis of how marginalized knowledges are affected by dominant cultural practices suggests a redefining of empowerment as the insurrection of subjugated knowledge. The implications of this redefinition for practice is illustrated by reference to work with indigenous people in Australia.

Impact of an empowerment-based parent education program on the reduction of youth suicide risk factors

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of parent education groups on youth suicide risk factors. The potential for informal transmission of intervention impacts within school communities was assessed.

Methods: Parent education groups were offered to volunteers from 14 high schools that were closely matched to 14 comparison schools. The professionally led groups aimed to empower parents to assist one another to improve communication skills and relationships with adolescents. Australian 8th-grade students (aged 14 years) responded to classroom surveys repeated at baseline and after 3 months. Logistic regression was used to test for intervention impacts on adolescent substance use, deliquency, self-harm behavior, and depression. There were no differences between the intervention (n = 305) and comparison (n = 272) samples at baseline on the measures of depression, health behavior, or family relationships.

Results: Students in the intervention schools demonstrated increased maternal care (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 1.9), reductions in conflict with parents (AOR .5), reduced substance use (AOR .5 to .6), and less delinquency (AOR .2). Parent education group participants were more likely to be sole parents and their children reported higher rates of substance use at baseline. Intervention impacts revealed a dose-response with the largest impacts associated with directly participating parents, but significant impacts were also evident for others in the intervention schools. Where best friend dyads were identified, the best friend’s positive family relationships reduced subsequent substance use among respondents. This and other social contagion processes were posited to explain the transfer of positive impacts beyond the minority of directly participating families.

Conclusions: A whole-school parent education intervention demonstrated promising impacts on a range of risk behaviors and protective factors relevant to youth self-harm and suicide.

Teaching for the `new work order`: empowerment or exploitation?

Vocational Education and Training (VET) programs addressing the needs
of workers in the ‘New Work Order’ have increasingly emphasised the development of communication, analytical, negotiation and decision- making skills over technical skills. Education for work has often been seen as a means of empowering workers to take up the opportunities available to them in the new ‘democratic’ workplaces of the last twenty years by developing the skills to contribute to workplace change through participation in collaborative decision-making processes. This paper is based on the findings of a study that explored the ways in which trainers take up and work within the current discourses of VET. Data from interviews with trainers as well as observations of them at work are analysed and presented in this paper to highlight the ways in which they inadvertently position their students as compliant and powerless workers, despite the rhetoric that learning- for-work will prepare them to become active agents of change in democratic workplaces. I argue that this contradiction is due, in part, to the ways in which the trainers’ classed identities intersect with discourses of VET in powerful and complex ways. Their understanding of work, learning- for-work and teaching- for-work is constructed and mediated through their social class positionings and is enacted through classroom practices.

E-governance-inhibitor or facilitator for democracy and citizen empowerment?

Democracies of the globalised world has been have been striving towards citizen empowerment in the recent decade where E-Governance is perceived as a facilitator. Democratic governments in general feel that being accessible online 24/7 to the average citizen not only makes them transparent, but also empowers the average citizen. In this process, citizen data privacy, information sharing across nations and uniform accessibility to electronic services delivery, emerge as pertinent issues. Through a critical discourse analysis, we take a deeper look at the perception of egovernance being a catalyst in empowering citizens in the global progress towards electronic democracies.

Effects of differential methods of compensation and employee empowerment on customer satisfaction and loyalty in service recovery

This research examined the effects of varying compensation (refund and replacement) and employee empowerment (empowered and non-empowered) in service recover situations, using a 2x2 experiment. Analysis was undertaken using mean contrasts and ANOVA's. Findings suggest that empowerment and refund independently impact on post recovery consumer loyalty and satisfaction, but there is no interaction effect.

Reducing consumer switching intentions following service failure : do empowerment and apology help?

This research explores the effectiveness of apology and empowerment as service recovery actions and their impact on consumers switching intentions within the hospitality industry. It also examines two different types of failure - process failure and outcome and whether consumer-switching intentions vary based on failure type. Results suggest that apology is effective in reducing switching intentions in both types of failure. Employee empowerment reduces switching intentions in outcome failure situations, but increases switching intentions in process settings. There is also an interaction effect of apology and empowerment in the outcome failure setting, but not in the process failure setting. Recommendations for managing service recovery are provided.