Paid Care In Australia

Care for Australia's children and elderly is provided in a mixed economy, in which for-profit providers are playing an increasingly important role alongside more traditional government and non-government organisations. Does the growth of for-profit provision affect the quality of services or of jobs in paid care? Does it change the political dynamics of the social care sector in contemporary welfare states? How might service users, their families, and organisations work together to sustain and improve the quality of care services? What theories and evidence help us to understand the process and consequences of the shift toward for-profit provision of social care? In nine chapters by leading researchers, this book explores these and other questions, to inform policy and practice in this key field of social policy.

Australia’s health system functions remarkably well, despite operating under a complex set of institutions that make coordinating patient care difficult. Australia should adopt a national approach through an enhanced federal government role in steering policy, funding and priority setting.

This revised edition is a political history of child care in Australia from the 1890s to the late 1990s.

This highly topical book presents recent, significant research from eight nations where childcare markets are the norm.

At a time when neoliberal and conservative politics are again in the ascendency and social democracy is waning, Australian public policy re-engages with the values and goals of progressive public policy in Australia and the difficulties faced in re-affirming them. It brings together leading authors to explore economic, environmental, social, cultural, political and indigenous issues. It examines trends and current policy directions and outlines progressive alternatives that challenge and extend current thinking. While focused on Australia, the contributors offer valuable insights for people in other countries committed to social justice and those engaged in the ongoing contest between neo-liberalism and social democracy. This is essential reading for policy practitioners, researchers and students as well those with an interest in the future of public policy.

Providing a broad portrayal of how child participation is implemented in practice today, this volume brings together prominent authors from the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and Israel, to present descriptions of innovative programmes that engage children and youth in decision-making processes, as well as insightful findings regarding what children, their families and professionals think about these programmes. Beyond its contribution to the empirical evidence on the ways in which children engage in decision-making processes, it also contributes to the theoretical development of the meaning of 'participation', 'citizenship', 'inclusiveness' and 'relational rights' in regards to children and youth.

The Australian Defence Force, together with military forces from a number of western democracies, have for some years been seeking out and killing Islamic militants in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, detaining asylum seekers for periods at sea or running the judicial systems of failed states. It has also been ready to conduct internal security operations at home. The domestic legal authority cited for this is often the poorly understood concept of executive power, which is power that derives from executive and not parliamentary authority. In an age of legality where parliamentary statutes govern action by public officials in the finest detail, it is striking that these extreme exercises of the use of force often rely upon an elusive legal basis. This book seeks to find the limits to the exercise of this extraordinary power.