Melbourne’s Indian Film Festival needs to strengthen its ties

 The Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) kicked off last night with Bollywood’s cult classic curry-western Sholay in 3D format. This year IFFM is screening 46 films from four countries in 17 languages, including Urdu, Nepalese, Himachli, Sinhala, and Sherdukpen. It’s the biggest film festival of its type in the southern hemisphere – but it’s attracted criticism from some in the Indian community in Melbourne for its failure to nurture ties between local filmmakers and the industry in India.

An exposure prevention rating method for intervention needs assessment and effectiveness evaluation

This article describes a new method for (1) systematically prioritizing needs for intervention on hazardous substance exposures in manufacturing work sites, and (2) evaluating intervention effectiveness. We developed a checklist containing six unique sets of yes/no variables organized in a 2 × 3 matrix of exposure potential versus protection (two columns) at the levels of materials, processes, and human interface (three rows). The three levels correspond to a simplified hierarchy of controls. Each of the six sets of indicator variables was reduced to a high/moderate/low rating. Ratings from the matrix were then combined to generate a single overall exposure prevention rating for each area. Reflecting the hierarchy of controls, material factors were weighted highest, followed by process, and then human interface. The checklist was filled out by an industrial hygienist while conducting a walk-through inspection (N = 131 manufacturing processes/areas in 17 large work sites). One area or process per manufacturing department was assessed and rated. Based on the resulting Exposure Prevention ratings, we concluded that exposures were well controlled in the majority of areas assessed (64% with rating of 1 or 2 on a 6-point scale), that there is some room for improvement in 26 percent of areas (rating of 3 or 4), and that roughly 10 percent of the areas assessed are urgently in need of intervention (rated as 5 or 6). A second hygienist independently assessed a subset of areas to evaluate inter-rater reliability. The reliability of the overall exposure prevention ratings was excellent (weighted kappa = 0.84). The rating scheme has good discriminatory power and reliability and shows promise as a broadly applicable and inexpensive tool for intervention needs assessment and effectiveness evaluation. Validation studies are needed as a next step. This assessment method complements quantitative exposure assessment with an upstream prevention focus.

Improving child protection services: Australian parents' and grandparents' perspectives on what needs to change

This exploratory, small-scale research aimed to understand parents’ and grandparents’ experiences and expectations of child protection investigations. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine participants. The central theme, captured as ‘a domino effect’, crystallises the participants’ views of why it is important to improve child protection services; that there were significant practical relationship repercussions in families’ lives beyond the immediate investigation. The sub-themes that emerged – support within systemic complexity, policies in practice, intervention processes and practices, and ‘it’s just a job to them’ –suggested how child protection services contributed to ‘the domino effect’ in their lives. A final sub-theme indicated participants’ awareness of the complexity and difficulty of child protection as a job, notwithstanding their expressed frustrations. We have made practical recommendations based on participants’ perspectives about ‘what needs to change?’, and suggestions for improvements to practise that centralise social work as a profession which values the professional relationship with services users. We also suggest that the professional relationship should extend beyond the interpersonal to guiding services users within the legal complexities in contemporary child protection. Being exploratory, this study and its recommendations guide future research to contribute improving child protection services.

Primary health-care costs associated with special health care needs up to age 7 years: Australian population-based study.

We studied infants and children with and without special health care needs (SHCN) during the first 8 years of life to compare the (i) types and costs to the government's Medicare system of non-hospital health-care services and prescription medication in each year and (ii) cumulative costs according to persistence of SHCN.