RE Patrick & the rights and responsibilities of sperm donor fathers in Australian family law

In the matter of Re Patrick, Guest J of the Family Court of Australia held that a sperm donor, known to the lesbian mother of the child, had a right under Australian law to regular contact with the child to the extent that this was in the child's best interests. However, his Honour also held that due to the way in which particular provisions of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) are drafted, a sperm donor cannot be regarded as the "parent" of the child, and accordingly called for legislative reform to recognise the rights of known sperm donors wanting involvement with the child. In this article, the authors will first explore the facts and decision in Re Patrick, and then outline a proposal to amend the Family Law Act 1975 so that sperm donors can apply for an order to be a 'parent' under the Act.

Three dimensions of the male gender role as correlates of alcohol and cannabis involvement in young Australian men

This study examined 3 aspects of the male gender role and their relationship to alcohol and cannabis involvement in young adult Australian men (N = 160) aged between 18 and 25 years. Higher scores on the Restrictive Emotionality scale, which assessed gender ,role conflict, were found to relate to both alcohol-related problems and cannabis use. Higher scores on the Antifemininity scale, which assessed traditional attitudes toward men, were also found to be associated with alcohol-related problems. However, lower scores on another aspect of gender role conflict, Restrictive Affectionate Behavior Between Men, and lower scores on one aspect of traditional attitudes toward men, Status Rationality, correlated with higher frequency levels of alcohol and cannabis use.

Family law in Australia: re Patrick and the matter of Child A

In Re Patrick, Guest J of the Family Court of Australia dealt with the issue of whether a gay sperm donor, known to the lesbian mother of the child, had a right under Australian law to regular contact with the child. Justice Guest held that the sperm donor was allowed contact with the child to the extent that this was in the child's best interests. His Honour did, however, find that due to the way in which particular provisions of Australia's Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) are drafted, a sperm donor cannot be regarded as the 'parent' of the child, and accordingly called for legislative reform to recognise the rights of known sperm donors wanting involvement with the child. In this article, we discuss the matter of Re Patrick, comparing it with the strikingly similar matter of Pursuer Against Defender in the Case of Child A, decided recently by Sheriff Laura Duncan in the Glasgow Sheriff Court. We will then outline a proposal to amend the Family Law Act 1975 so that sperm donors can apply for an order to be a 'parent' for the purposes of the law, and therefore have the same rights and responsibilities as any other parent. In response to the tragic ending to the matter of Re Patrick, we conclude by stressing the need for an educational programme to be established, so that lesbian women who are considering parenthood may do so in the knowledge that the sperm donor does have the status of 'father', and in some jurisdictions 'parent', rather than merely being a 'donor'.

`I like football when it doesn`t hurt`: factors influencing participation in Auskick

Auskick is the Australian Football League's (AFL) introductory program specifically designed to recruit and harness the interest of primary or elementary school-aged children between the ages of 5-12 years. As an induction program, Auskick is underpinned by a philosophy that foregrounds involvement and enjoyment as foundational to a pathway to an ongoing affiliation with Australian Rules football. Getting young people to identify with Australian Rules football from early on is a strategic aspect of growing or sustaining the game. Within its charter of mass recruitment, Auskick is more about promoting an interest in football than it is about talent identification. Indeed, only a tiny minority of the more than 110,000 children that partake in the Auskick program in 2004 will go on to compete at the highest level. Drawing on over 200 interviews conducted with parents and children attending Auskick sessions, this paper presents an overview of some of the factors that influence initial participation in Australian Rules football. Among other things the authors ask participants how they intend to negotiate the behaviours and practices required to play a body contact sport like Australian Rules football.

Not just social work academics : the involvement of others in the assessment of social work students

University regulations typically assume that the assessment of students is essentially a task for paid academic staff. However, this is a far cry from much of the current literature about assessment in social work education, of which one of the distinguishing features is the not infrequent references to stakeholders beyond the individuals who are to be assessed and the academic staff employed to teach them. This paper reviews some of the recent literature on the involvement of persons other than social work academics, including students, practice teachers and service users, in assessing students studying in social work programmes. Implications for programme providers of using non-academic assessors are explored.

Older Australians : involvement in civil society in the 1990s

As Australia’s population continues to age, questions about how older individuals use their time holds increasing interest and significance for scholars and policy makers. As individuals near the end of their paid working life, and family roles and responsibilities diminish, the type of activities that will fill this time void have important implications for the health and wellbeing of older Australians and for the strength of civil society. In Australia, there have been sustained moves at all levels of government to encourage the more active engagement in community services of this group of citizens, given the size and significant amount of human capital of this cohort. However, international research suggests that this enthusiasm has not translated into increased volunteer activity for seniors, and that older citizens tend to spend their expanding discretionary time pursuing leisure activities, such as watching television or listening to the radio (Robinson & Godbey 1997; Wilson & Musick 1997; Thoits & Hewitt 2001). This study builds on a broader interest in how people choose to utilise time across the life course and how the experience of ageing shapes such decisions. This aim of this paper is twofold – first, to investigate how older Australians allocated their time in the 1990s, and how these time use patterns changed over a 5-year period, using nationally representative, longitudinal data from two waves of the Australian Time Use Survey. Second, the time use characteristics of those individuals who devote more time to social participation activities are examined, to investigate trends in volunteering across age cohorts, with a focus on those above the age of fifty.

Linking human and ecosystem health: the benefits of community involvement in conservation groups

This study explored the health, well-being, and social capital benefits gained by community members who are involved in the management of land for conservation in six rural communities across Victoria. A total of 102 people participated in the study (64 males; 38 females) comprising 51 members of a community-based land management group and 51 controls matched by age and gender. Mixed methods were employed, including the use of an adapted version of Buckner’s (1988) Community Cohesion Scale. The results indicate that involvement in the management of land for conservation may contribute to both the health and well-being of members, and to the social capital of the local community. The members of the land management groups rated their general health higher, reported visiting the doctor less often, felt safer in the local community, and utilized the skills that they have acquired in their lifetime more frequently than the control participants. Male members reported the highest level of general health, and the greatest satisfaction with daily activities. Members also reported a greater sense of belonging to the local community and a greater willingness to work toward improving their community than their control counterparts. Of equal importance is evidence that involvement in voluntary conservation work constitutes a means of building social capital in rural communities which may help reduce some of the negative aspects of rural life.

Women`s satisfaction with life following marital separation : coping resources and adjustment of lone-parent women

This questionnaire study examined the adjustment of 245 lone-parenting women following marital separation. A composite model included intrapsychic variables as intervening between demographic and contextual variables and adjustment (life satisfaction). Regression analyses showed that the demographic and contextual variables were partially mediated by the intrapsychic variables. The path model indicated that the intrapsychic variables (sense of coherence, control, depression, and grief) had a direct impact on life satisfaction and that there was an indirect path for depression through sense of coherence (SOC) and control. It was concluded that the intrapsychic variables had a more powerful relationship with women's post-separation life satisfaction than did the demographic/contextual variables. Social implications and recommendations for future policy are considered.

Stakeholder involvement in the EMS adoption process

This paper summarises the findings of the qualitative part of a large study aimed at exploring the extent of involvement of organisational stakeholders (employees and suppliers) during the environmental management system (EMS) adoption process. Interviews with nine senior/middle managers from Australian manufacturing and service organisations revealed the growing awareness of the impact of their products and processes on the ecological and social environments. Moreover, implementation of an EMS or waste management system (WMS) is accepted as a learning curve by both the organisation and its stakeholders, including its employees. Organisations at the same time are also contemplating the need for certifying their existing EMS against international standards such as ISO 14001 based on the cost-benefits resulting from the certification.

Early impact of the BEST intervention for parents stressed by adolescent substance abuse.

Youth involvement in substance abuse can be a source of considerable distress for their parents. Unilateral family interventions have been advocated as one means by which concerned family members can be supported to assist substance-abusing family members. To date there has been little research examining the impact of unilateral family interventions on the directly participating family members. In this study the early impact of an 8-week parent-group programme known as Behavioural Exchange Systems Training (BEST) was evaluated using a quasi-experimental, waiting list control design. The professionally led programme had been developed to support and assist parents in their efforts to cope with adolescent substance abuse. Subjects were 66 parents (48 families) accepted for entry into the programme between 1997 and 1998. Comparison was made between 46 parents offered immediate entry into the programme and 20 parents whose entry to the programme was delayed by an 8-week waiting list. At the first assessment 87% of parents showed elevated mental health symptoms on the General Health Questionnaire. Evidence suggested exposure to the intervention had a positive impact on parents. Compared to parents on the waiting list, parents entered immediately into the intervention demonstrated greater reductions in mental health symptoms, increased parental satisfaction, and increased use of assertive parenting behaviours.

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.

Body mass index and parent-reported self-estem in elementary school children: evidence for a causal relationship.

OBJECTIVE: To clarify relationships between body mass index (BMI) and self-esteem in young children at a population level. To assess whether low self-esteem precedes or follows development of overweight/obesity in children. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study in elementary schools throughout Victoria, Australia. Child BMI and self-esteem were measured in 1997 and 2000. SUBJECTS: Random sample of 1,157 children who were in the first 4 y of elementary school (aged 5-10 y) at baseline. MEASURES: BMI was calculated from measured height and weight, then transformed to z-scores. Children were classified as nonoverweight, overweight or obese based on international cut-points. Low child self-esteem was defined as a score below the 15th percentile on the self-esteem subscale of the parent-reported Child Health Questionnaire. RESULTS: Overweight/obese children had lower median self-esteem scores than nonoverweight children at both timepoints, especially at follow-up. After accounting for baseline self-esteem, higher baseline BMI z-score predicted poorer self-esteem at follow-up (P=0.008). After accounting for baseline BMI z-score, poorer baseline self-esteem did not predict higher BMI z-score at follow-up. While nonoverweight children with low baseline self-esteem were more likely to develop overweight/obesity (OR=2.1, 95% CI=1.2, 3.6), this accounted for only a small proportion of the incidence of overweight. CONCLUSIONS: Our data show an increasingly strong association between lower self-esteem and higher body mass across the elementary school years. Overweight/obesity precedes low self-esteem in many children, suggesting a causal relationship. This indicates that prevention and management strategies for childhood overweight/obesity need to begin early to minimise the impact on self-esteem.

Agreement between adolescent self-report and parent reports of health and well-being: results of an epidemiological study.

Objective To examine parent and adolescent agreement on physical, emotional, mental and social health and well-being in a representative population.
Methodology An epidemiological design was used to obtain parent–child/adolescent dyad data on comparable items and scales of a generic measure of health and well-being, the Child Health Questionnaire (parent/proxy report 50 item, self-report 80 item). Scale analysis included intraclass correlations (ICCs) to examine strength of parent–child associations and independent t-tests for differences between adolescents (with or without an illness). Where there were significant differences in scale scores, analysis of variance and two sample t-tests were used to examine the influence of social, demographic, health concern and school variables. Single items were examined for trends in response categories.
Results 2096 parent–adolescent dyads (adolescent mean age of 15.1 years, males 50%, maternal parent 83.2%, biological parent 93.5%). ICCs were strong. Overall, adolescents reported poorer emotional and social health, and clinically significant differences were observed for perceptions of general health (mean difference 8.1/100), frequency and amount of body pain (5.94/100), experience of mental health (5.14/100), and impact of health on family activities (12.43/100), which widen significantly for adolescents with illness. Social, health and school enjoyment and performance significantly widened parent–child differences.
Conclusions All adolescents were much less optimistic about their health and well-being than their parents, and were only in close agreement on aspects of health and well-being they rated highly. Adolescent reports are more likely to be sensitive to pain, mental health problems, health in general and the impact of their health on family activities.