Sue Olney
Deb Tsorbaris (@DebTsorbaris), CEO of The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare (@CFECFW), discusses the recently launched national wellbeing framework, Measuring What Matters, and contends that if we're serious about enhancing the wellbeing of Australians, the first place to start is with our children and young people.
Read MoreAboriginal academic Dr Sharynne Hamilton describes how her research co-partnership with Elders in the Perth Aboriginal community has lead to a clear path of action to achieve justice in child protection grounded in respect, and commnunity control.
Read MoreNew research shows households with young children are feeling the highest level of stress as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is highest for families in communities that experience moderate levels of poverty. Professor Abigail Payne from the University of Melbourne discusses what needs to happen to ensure families are not left behind as we look ahead to the COVID-19 economic recovery.
Read MoreDespite being most notable for its ungenerous policies, Australia’s Paid Parental Leave has increasingly incorporated changes to encourage fathers or secondary carers to take leave. But is it working? In today’s analysis, Deborah Widiss (@DeborahWidiss) of Indiana University (@IUMaurerLaw) compares Australia’s policies to the US, where uptake by fathers or secondary carers is much greater. This analysis is drawn from a recently-published article that can be found here.
Read MoreKids’ TV shows can play a number of roles – to entertain, to educate, to challenge and to reassure. Today’s post, written by Dr Briony Lipton (@briony_lipton), examines how the beloved ABC Kids series Bluey, about irrepressible Blue Heeler puppy Bluey and her family, portrays gender and work. Using a scene from the show as its springboard, this piece sheds light on the complex negotiations around work and family roles that are central to contemporary Australian family life.
Read MoreMarketing managers and academics have been studying how families plan ahead and make decisions about family care and family consumption for a long time. But what happens when planning ahead is not possible? A new study says that when consumers can’t plan ahead...they dance.
Read MoreIs there a gendered component to leisure time? Who organises and facilitates it in heterosexual couples? While the reinstatement of the Time use Survey is an important step in understanding how Australians use their time, in today’s analysis Julia Cook (@julia_anne_cook) of University of Newcastle (@Uni_Newcastle) and Dan Woodman (@DrDanWoodman) of University of Melbourne (@unimelbsoc) share the findings from their recently-published paper which utilises an in-depth approach to not only time use but also how time is coordinated and how women and men feel about task-sharing.
Read MoreWe spend a lot of time as a local, national and global community considering the wellbeing of children and what is in ‘the best interest of the child’ when they are at risk of abuse and neglect. We spend much less time considering the rights and responsibilities of parents and other family members who have children in the care of child protection services. It is time for a Charter of Rights for Parents and Families, argues Sharynne Hamilton from the Telethon Kids Institute at the University of Western Australia.
Read MoreTuesday’s budget lock-up for the Victorian State budget revealed significant investment not only for direct family violence services but also for the inter-related services which work together to make women and children safer. In today’s blog, Tanya Corrie, of Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand, breaks down the numbers. Tanya is the Research & Policy Specialist for Financial Security and the acting Head of the Women’s Research, Advocacy & Policy (WRAP) Centre.
Read MoreOn March 1st, the first of Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand’s Good Conversations[i] was held to discuss child support policies with an expert panel. Today’s policy piece provides a summary of the 7 primary questions on child support that were raised and why they are critical policy areas that need urgent addressing. Collectively, single mothers experience poverty at an alarming rate, and Australia’s child support system is partly to blame. This summary has been co-authored by Kathy Landvogt (Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand), Terese Edwards (National Council for Single Mothers and their Children - NCSMC), and Kay Cook (Swinburne University).
Read MoreA recent professional symposium held in Melbourne presented research findings on the often hidden toll experienced by women whose partners perpetrate online child sexual abuse. Here Zoë Goodall, a graduate of the University of Melbourne and Media Coordinator for PartnerSPEAK, urges for a policy rethink in the area of family violence and victims of crime.
Read MoreOver the past months we have run several blogs on single mothers and how welfare policies manage to both keep them on the brink of poverty and also create convoluted bureaucratic processes in their quest to move from welfare to work. It was heartening, therefore, to come across the research findings shared here by Haley Fisher, which reports that more generous child support both reduces poverty and increases rates of return to work for single mothers. It may seem contrary, but keeping families on the brink of poverty does not provide the right incentives for re-entering employment. This article originally appeared in The Conversation, and can be viewed in its original format here.
Read MoreWomen, work, and raising children is an oft-visited topic. But what about the men? In today’s post, Amanda Cooklin from LaTrobe University’s Transition to Contemporary Parenthood Program, shares recent research into how policy can better help fathers manage work-family conflict.
Read MoreAustralia’s approach to supporting carers reflects a judgment on parenting vs other kinds of caring, which has led to a punitive approach to supporting single parents, usually mothers. In no way does caring support provide the flexibility most carers – primarily women – would like for active participation in formal employment. Today’s policy analysis examines how caring policies could be reconfigured to provide more support for the lived realities of all carers while also interrogating the negative discourse around parenting roles.
Read MoreANZSOG researcher Joannah Luetjens has recently published on the application of design thinking to policymaking. Here she uses The Australian Centre for Social Innovation's Family by Family program as a case study to show how design thinking aims to connect with target populations and understand how they engage with their world.
Read MoreThere are so many policies that intersect at the level of the family, which either enable or create barriers to active workforce participation while also ensuring family needs are met. Today’s Scorecard summarises what the major issues are for families, gender equity in the workforce, an ageing population, and carer duties. This synopsis is backed by a comprehensive document created by the Work + Family Policy Roundtable, comprised of over 30 academics from 16 research institutions. This analysis was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 30 May, 2016.
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