Hospital social work in Australia: Emerging trends or more of the same?

Social work in health care has been established for more than 100 years and is one of the largest areas of practice for social workers. Over time, demographic changes and growth in the aging population, increased longevity rates, an explosion in rates of chronic illness together with rapidly increasing cost of health care have created serious challenges for acute hospitals and health social workers. This article reviews the Australian health care system and policies with particular emphasis on the public hospital system. It then examines current hospital social work roles, including the continued role in discharge planning and expanding responsibility for emerging client problems, such as patient complexity, legal, and carer issues. The article concludes with a discussion of evolving issues and challenges facing health social work to ensure that social work remain relevant within this practice context.

Case-control study of early childhood caries in Australia

The aim of this case-control study of 617 children was to investigate early childhood caries (ECC) risk indicators in a non-fluoridated region in Australia. ECC cases were recruited from childcare facilities, public hospitals and private specialist clinics to source children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Non-ECC controls were recruited from the same childcare facilities. A multinomial logistic modelling approach was used for statistical analysis. The results showed that a large percentage of children tested positive for Streptococcus mutans if their mothers also tested positive. A common risk indicator found in ECC children from childcare facilities and public hospitals was visible plaque (OR 4.1, 95% CI 1.0-15.9, and OR 8.7, 95% CI 2.3-32.9, respectively). Compared to ECC-free controls, the risk indicators specific to childcare cases were enamel hypoplasia (OR 4.2, 95% CI 1.0-18.3), difficulty in cleaning child's teeth (OR 6.6, 95% CI 2.2-19.8), presence of S. mutans (OR 4.8, 95% CI 0.7-32.6), sweetened drinks (OR 4.0, 95% CI 1.2-13.6) and maternal anxiety (OR 5.1, 95% CI 1.1-25.0). Risk indicators specific to public hospital cases were S. mutans presence in child (OR 7.7, 95% CI 1.3-44.6) or mother (OR 8.1, 95% CI 0.9-72.4), ethnicity (OR 5.6, 95% CI 1.4-22.1), and access of mother to pension or health care card (OR 20.5, 95% CI 3.5-119.9). By contrast, a history of chronic ear infections was found to be protective for ECC in childcare children (OR 0.28, 95% CI 0.09-0.82). The biological, socioeconomic and maternal risk indicators demonstrated in the present study can be employed in models of ECC that can be usefully applied for future longitudinal studies.

Changing citizen confidence: Orientations towards political and social institutions in Australia, 1983-2010 [Review]

Since the early 1980s, when confidence in institutions was first measured in an Australian academic social survey, Australia - And the world - has faced many political, social and economic changes. From corporate scandals and company collapses, to unprecedented terrorist attacks, to major ongoing international conflicts, to changes in government and all manner of political machinations, to the global financial crisis and its aftermath. One consequence of such developments has been that many major political, social and economic institutions have come under intense pressure. Using survey research data, this paper investigates how public confidence in various Australian institutions and organisations has changed over time. The results are variable and in some instances surprising. Confidence in some institutions has remained high, and in some low, over an extended period of time. In other cases, confidence has varied quite markedly at different time points. As well as looking at trends in the level of public confidence in institutions, the paper examines different dimensions of confidence together with underpinning socio-political factors. It also discusses theoretical and practical implications of the data.

Early child care in Australia : quality of care, experiences of care and developmental outcomes for Australian children

In early childhood research, one of the most debated topics is that of early child care. This thesis draws upon data from Growing Up In Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children to explore the role of early child care in Australia. It examines the quality of early child care accessed by infants, the patterns of child care use across the early years and the impact of early child care experiences on academic, social-emotional and health outcomes at 6 to 7 years of age. Results indicate child care experiences vary considerably and suggest early child care experiences may have both positive and negative impacts upon later developmental outcomes.

Social work in a hospital emergency department

This paper describes how a Hospital Social Work Department's Emergency Team has attempted to provide a crisis and out-of-hours service to its Emergency Department. Through a staffing commitment to extensive evening and weekend cover, the Emergency Team's social worker is able to provide an immediate intervention and assessment service to problems. This has resulted in early detection and treatment of the non-medical aspects of a patient's problem and appropriate referral to other agencies for longer-term follow-up.

60Sox Report Volume 1: from education to work in Australia's digital content industries. The opinions and practices of aspiring creatives in the creative industries

This report presents findings from the largest survey of aspiring creatives who work or intend to work in the digital content industries ever undertaken in Australia. Survey respondents included those with aspirations to work in the publicly-supported, less commercial end of the Creative Industries spectrum as well as those with aspirations to work in the digital content industries. The survey gathered rich data on their characteristics, skills and attributes, barriers to employment, workforce mobility, career intentions, professional development, mentors and industry supports, and participation in communities of practice. The survey sought to determine if aspiring creatives have the necessary skills and attributes to work effectively in the digital content industries. This task also involved finding out how they develop their skills and attributes, and what they need to develop them further.

Mapping social enterprise in Australia : conceptual debates and their operational implications

In the last ten years, there has been growing interest in social enterprise by governments, the not for profit sector and philanthropy in Australia The drivers of this interest have been variously understood to be: increasing demands for innovative responses to social and environmental problems; pressures on non-profit organisations to diversify their income sources; and increasing emphases by government on the role of civil society actors in partnering around social policy agendas. Whatever its genesis, very little is known about the scale and scope of the emerging social enterprise sector. In order to research the scope of the sector, an important first step involves understanding just what social enterprise is, and how it may be operationalised. This paper presents the findings from the first stage of a national research project conducted by the authors in conjunction with a new social enterprise development company. The purpose of the project was to provide a comprehensive snapshot of the social enterprise sector in Australia. In this paper, we focus on the definitional debates arising from our workshop discussions, what these mean for understanding contemporary discourses of social enterprise, and their implications for research, policy and practice.

Policing in Context : An Introduction to Police Work in Australia

Policing in Context is a well structured introductory text that gives students the practical information they need to grasp the diverse roles, duties, powers and problems of policing in Australia. This book approaches policing in three key sections, creating a natural flow of information. The first section sets up the basic knowledge needed for understanding the history, context and structure of policing in Australia. The second section provides a description of the core skills, tasks and operations of police work. In the final section, chapters cover and reflect on contemporary and emerging issues.

Decriminalization of Health and Safety at Work in Australia

ABOUT THE BOOK As the title Safety or Profit? suggests, health and safety at work needs to be understood in the context of the wider political economy. This book brings together contributions informed by this view from internationally recognized scholars. It reviews the governance of health and safety at work, with special reference to Australia, Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Three main aspects are discussed. The restructuring of the labor market: this is considered with respect to precarious work and to gender issues and their implications for the health and safety of workers. The neoliberal agenda: this is examined with respect to the diminished power of organized labor, decriminalization, and new governance theory, including an examination of how well the health-and-safety-at-work regimes put in place in many industrial societies about forty years ago have fared and how distinctive the recent emphasis on self-regulation in several countries really is. The role of evidence: there is a dearth of evidence-based policy. The book examines how policy on health and safety at work is formulated at both company and state levels. Cases considered include the scant regard paid to evidence by an official inquiry into future strategy in Canada; the lack of evidence-based policy and the reluctance to observe the precautionary principle with respect to work-related cancer in the United Kingdom; and the failure to learn from past mistakes in the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Intended Audience: Researchers; policymakers, trade union representatives, and officials interested in OHS; postgraduate students of OHS; OHS professionals; regulatory and socio-legal scholars.

Labour, social and health outcomes of immigrants in Australia : effects of language proficiency using the IV approach

Language has been of interest to numerous economists since the late 20th century, with the majority of the studies focusing on its effects on immigrants’ labour market outcomes; earnings in particular. However, language is an endogenous variable, which along with its susceptibility to measurement error causes biases in ordinary-least-squares estimates. The instrumental variables method overcomes the shortcomings of ordinary least squares in modelling endogenous explanatory variables. In this dissertation, age at arrival combined with country of origin form an instrument creating a difference-in-difference scenario, to address the issue of endogeneity and attenuation error in language proficiency. The first half of the study aims to investigate the extent to which English speaking ability of immigrants improves their labour market outcomes and social assimilation in Australia, with the use of the 2006 Census. The findings have provided evidence that support the earlier studies. As expected, immigrants in Australia with better language proficiency are able to earn higher income, attain higher level of education, have higher probability of completing tertiary studies, and have more hours of work per week. Language proficiency also improves social integration, leading to higher probability of marriage to a native and higher probability of obtaining citizenship. The second half of the study further investigates whether language proficiency has similar effects on a migrant’s physical and mental wellbeing, health care access and lifestyle choices, with the use of three National Health Surveys. However, only limited evidence has been found with respect to the hypothesised causal relationship between language and health for Australian immigrants.

Culturally safe practice in social work

This presentation discusses the use of field experiences in educating social work students in culturally safe practice with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities.

Assessment of socio-environmental drivers of suicide in Australia

This study examined the association between socio-environmental factors and suicide in Australia. The high risk areas were identified using advanced spatial analysis methods. Higher proportion of Indigenous population, unemployment rate and bigger temperature difference appeared to be among the main socio-environmental drivers of suicide across different places. Both temperature difference and unemployment were positively associated with suicide over time in general. Temperature difference seemed to affect suicide more in months when unemployment rates were high compared with the periods when unemployment rates were low. The findings may provide useful information for determining the socio-environmental impact on suicide and designing effective suicide control and prevention programs.

In the shadow of the welfare state : the role of payday lending in poverty survival in Australia

A defining characteristic of contemporary welfare governance in many western countries has been a reduced role for governments in direct provision of welfare, including housing, education, health and income support. One of the unintended consequences of devolutionary trends in social welfare is the development of a ‘shadow welfare state’ (Fairbanks, 2009; Gottschalk, 2000), which is a term used to describe the complex partnerships between statebased social protection, voluntarism and marketised forms of welfare. Coupled with this development, conditional workfare schemes in countries such as the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia are pushing more people into informal and semi-formal means of poverty survival (Karger, 2005). These transformations are actively reshaping welfare subjectivities and the role of the state in urban governance. Like other countries such as the US, Canada and the UK, the fringe lending sector in Australia has experienced considerable growth over the last decade. Large numbers of people on low incomes in Australia are turning to non-mainstream financial services, such as payday lenders, for the provision of credit to make ends meet. In this paper, we argue that the use of fringe lenders by people on low incomes reveals important theoretical and practical insights into the relationship between the mixed economy of welfare and the mixed economy of credit in poverty survival.