Posts in 21stC Policy and Rights

The Quiet Crisis: Challenges, changes and co-production to hear the voices of healthcare staff

In complex healthcare systems, staff voice is vital for ensuring healthcare professionals and service providers uphold safe, ethical and high-quality care. When staff are unable to voice concerns about patient safety or their own wellbeing, mistakes and misconduct are more likely to go unaddressed, allowing scandals to happen or last longer. Organisations such as the National Health Service (NHS) have been long aware of these risks and currently use “speaking up” policies to combat the silencing or neglect of staff concerns. After 9 years of speaking up policy many NHS staff still find themselves unheard or silenced. Now, the U.K. government’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), which oversees the NHS, proposes new plans to remove these existing policies and introduce new staff voice policy under the NHS Fit for the Future strategy (NHS England, 2025). In this blog post Sukhwinder Essie Kaur unpacks the failings of Speaking Up and explores how co-production research may be a key player in designing new policies and mechanism that better support NHS staff to voice their concerns.

Creating using evidence, Issues, Policy and governance, Advocacy, 21stC Policy and RightsPower to Persuade18 July 2025Policy making, Policy Research, healthcare

Police contact deaths for those with poor mental health

The role played by the police in our wider mental health system has never been truly resolved. In both Australia and the United Kingdom, as across the world, discussion is at its most intense when considering police contact deaths involving those of us affected by our mental health. In this blog, Michael Brown explores the complex issues behind tragic outcomes and starts to think about how to embed “lessons learned” into policy.

21stC Policy and Rights, Creating using evidence, Human Rights, Policy and governancePower to Persuade14 July 2025public policy, police, mental health

With yet another Aboriginal death in police custody, the lethal intersections of colonial violence, racism and ableism have never been more obvious

21stC Policy and Rights, Disability Royal Commission, Policy and governancePower to Persuade12 June 2025justice

International Feminist Spaces: Who Gets to Belong?

21stC Policy and Rights, GenderPower to Persuade10 June 2025feminism, representation

No Wrong Door: Why Every Family Deserves a Wendy in the First 1,000 Days

Bernadette Black AM, CEO and Founder of SEED Futures, shares her deeply personal journey from teenage motherhood to national systems change advocate. Reflecting on the transformative impact of one woman’s care and belief in her, she makes a powerful case for reimagining the way Australia supports families in their earliest, most vulnerable days. With warmth and urgency, Black argues that kindness must not depend on chance—it must be built into the system. Through SEED Futures and the Incremental Reform Catalogue, she offers a clear, practical path to make that vision real.

Lived experience, Service Delivery, Policy and governance, Issues, Human Rights, Gender, 21stC Policy and Rights, AdvocacyPower to Persuade6 June 2025SEED Futures, Family support, 1000 days, Young parent, Incremental Reform Catalogue, National Primary Preventative Framework

Gen Z and the Ballot Box: Rethinking Political Inclusion in Australia

As the federal election campaign begins ahead of Saturday, 3 May 2025, one question stands out: how can we meaningfully engage young Australians—now the largest voting bloc, led by Gen Z and Millennials? In today’s post, Planning Saw (@PlanningSaw) and Cham Kim, both final-year medical students at the University of Melbourne and members of the Future Healthy Countdown 2030 Working Group, explore how best to involve young people in shaping Australia’s democratic future.

Advocacy, 21stC Policy and RightsPower to Persuade10 April 2025young people, Children, politics and democracy, Election, Policy making

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