11 research outputs found
Investing in local people and harnessing local communities: a progress report on Victoria’s Work and Learning Centres
No full textThis report presents early findings about the impact of the Work and Learning Centres model, which aim to create learning and employment pathways for jobseekers by providing personalised support, implemented at five sites across Victoria.
Overview
Work and Learning Centres operated by community organisations with strong local networks aim to create learning and employment pathways for jobseekers by providing personalised support, non-vocational training, career guidance and direct links to vocational education and training and to employers. This report presents early findings about the impact of the WLC model implemented at five sites across Victoria (Carlton, Geelong, Moe, Ballarat and Shepparton). This research sought to gauge the efficacy of the model and to find what works for which clients and the elements that clients themselves identify as contributing to their outcomes
Being around other women makes you brave: evaluation of Stepping Stones, a micro-business program for women from refugee and migrant backgrounds
No full textAn evaluation of a micro-business program for women from refugee and migrant backgrounds shows the importance of recognising existing skills while building knowledge about Australia\u27s regulatory systems.
Stepping Stones, a micro-business program for women of refugee and migrant backgrounds, was launched by the Brotherhood of St Laurence with financial support from the AMP Foundation. Central to the program is recognition of the participants’ strengths and skills. Stepping Stones provides training, information and support to help women on the path to economic security. This report outlines features of the Stepping Stones model, outcomes achieved and lessons learned
What’s the difference? Jobseeker perspectives on employment assistance
No full textThis qualitative study from the Brotherhood of St Laurence illustrates the challenges faced by jobseekers navigating today’s labour market. Drawing on insights from service users in four focus groups with 39 clients from the Carlton, Moe and Shepparton, the report outlines the contrasting approaches taken by Australia’s mainstream employment services and the five Victorian Work and Learning Centres
Making work pay and making income support work
No full textThis report calls for a wide-ranging overhaul of income support, housing and employment services to create a system that can make the transition to work pay for some of the most disadvantaged members of our community.
With the Henry Tax Review in mind, this research began with the modest aim of documenting ways in which the tax and transfer system has created barriers against labour market entry for some unemployed people and sole parents through high effective marginal tax rates (EMTRs). What we found, however, through our in-depth interviews with 44 such people, was a far more complex, sometimes chaotic, pattern of incentives and disincentives which often fails to serve the best interests of these citizens. Our report calls for a wide-ranging overhaul of income support, housing and employment services to create a system that can indeed make the transition to work pay for some of the most disadvantaged members of our community.
The report exposes some serious structural flaws at the heart of Australia’s income support system. It reveals a system still grounded in a false assumption of a labour market which effectively offers people a choice between unemployment and a full-time job, in which the latter is a guarantee of social inclusion. This world, however, vanished with globalisation and labour market deregulation. Today low-paid workers must deal with a labour market characterised more by job insecurity, high rates of casualisation and truncated career structures (Pocock 2009). Our welfare system has failed to adapt to this new economic environment. Moreover, it has failed to equip our most disadvantaged citizens to manage the manifold risks they face in engaging with these insecure forms of paid work.
We believe that this research is particularly significant for policy makers because it takes us behind many of the myths which have been created around the behaviours of our citizens on welfare. For example, why do many of the more disadvantaged income support recipients remain ‘on the system’ rather than taking on paid work? It is partly because if they take on work which is short-term or insecure they will likely face the penalty of ‘falling off the system’ and being forced to undergo the arduous process of reapplying for income support. Instead, they choose to stay on income support, despite this guaranteeing their ongoing poverty. In general, the research shows us a system in which inflexible rules surrounding income support, tax and public housing interact to create perverse outcomes, making paid work not only unattractive but simply not an option for many income support recipients.
Overwhelmingly the research reveals that people on income support have the same aspirations and goals in life as countless other Australians. What our study participants need and want is an income support system (and broader employment services) which can work with them towards these longer term goals and aspirations rather than just push them into dead-end work. Their goals include a desire for secure, ongoing work and for jobs ‘with a future’. The study also shows that the current system inadequately recognises the care responsibilities and obligations of many, including single mothers, who are forced to manage care for their children around the demands of their paid work and the inflexible obligations of the income support system.
The research shows more generally that many recipients navigate the contradictions of an outdated income support system and attempt to make the best possible decisions about paid work in light of these contradictions. Indeed, in the current policy context, and given their personal circumstances, income support recipients are shown to make sensible and realistic decisions regarding engagement with paid work. These findings are in stark contrast with the stereotypes of welfare recipients as ‘dependent on welfare’ or incapable of making ‘responsible’ decisions, stereotypes which shape both public opinion and government policy. Furthermore, many income support recipients are engaged in paid work, and those who are not want to work, but they also want paid work to be ‘worthwhile’ and, like most Australians, to enable them to ‘get ahead’.
The Making Work Pay study builds on previous research which identifies that single parents and Newstart Allowance recipients are affected by high effective marginal tax rates, which are thought to act as a powerful disincentive to return to work or increase hours of paid work, through the withdrawal of income support payments, concessions and rebates such as rebated public rents (Harding 2008). The present study provides a deeper understanding of the ways in which these financial incentives or disincentives are experienced by income support recipients and, importantly, the extent to which these factors and the other non-financial considerations influence actual decisions about paid work.
The report also provides real examples of the effects of ‘welfare locks’ for individuals and families on public housing waiting lists. Research by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute has found that welfare locks are created by the eligibility requirements for public housing, which require applicants to maintain their low incomes and income support recipient status in order to stay on the waiting list, thereby providing another powerful disincentive to look for or accept paid work during the waiting period (Dockery et al. 2008). The report includes stories from participants who are frustrated to find themselves trapped in such a way, wanting to work, but needing to house themselves and their family
Zones of intolerance: cultural and physical geographies of prostitution in Kings Cross and surrounding suburbs
No full textNo abstract availabl
Challenging choices : welfare to work, lived lives and told stories
No full textThis examination of the introduction of welfare to work for single mothers exposes the contradictory political rationality of contemporary welfare reform. The thesis contributes to broader understandings of social policy, choice and decision making through exploration of the complex interplay between social structures, individuals’ lived lives and their told stories
Book Reviews of \u3ci\u3eBird Navigation: The Solution of a Mystery?\u3c/i\u3e, \u3ci\u3eThe Last of the Curlews\u3c/i\u3e, \u3ci\u3eA Naturalist\u27s Sketchbook\u3c/i\u3e, \u3ci\u3eBird Walk Through the Bible\u3c/i\u3e, \u3ci\u3eLife Histories of North American Petrels and Pelicans and their Allies\u3c/i\u3e and \u3ci\u3eLove of Loons\u3c/i\u3e
No full textBird Navigation: The Solution of a Mystery?, R. Robin Baker, 1984, Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., New York. vi + 256 pp., ISBN 0-340-33416-9, softcover, no price given. Originally published by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. in Great Britain but handled in the United States by Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., Import Division, IUB Building, 30 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003.
R. Robin Baker, Reader in Zoology at the University of Manchester, is a noted authority on avian navigation. The word solution in the title of this book is somewhat misleading because this book does not solve the mystery of how birds navigate. However, this book is the most thorough, up-to-date review of the various theories on how birds navigate, and integrates these theories to give the reader an idea of how birds might really navigate. The author does an excellent job of presenting all the different ideas in an easily understood and easy to read style. Discussions of each theory include some of the history behind the research, how each theory fits with other theories, how each theory might work on short and long distance movements, and what research needs to be conducted in the future to help clarify how birds navigate. The book explains how birds might navigate under one set of conditions and switch to another navigation technique when conditions change. A fascinating topic presented in a very readable manner.
The Last of the Curlews, Fred Bodsworth, illustrated by T. M. Shortt, x + 144 pp., 6 x 9, Dodd Mead & Co., N.Y. 8.95 soft cover.
This is a reprint, with a foreword by Dr. Harold D. Mahan, and as part of the Edwin Way Teale Library of Nature Classics, of a book originally published in 1955. At that time it was thought (fortunately, incorrectly) that the Eskimo Curlew was extinct, and this is the story of a year in the life of the last bird. Ascribing human-type thoughts and reactions to the bird helps to carry the story along and doesn\u27t seem to be overdone. It is interesting reading and the illustrations are very nice, and, presently at least, one can keep in the back of his mind that the Eskimo Curlews are still in existence. The author is careful to distinguish between Hudsonian Curlews and Whimbrels , but A. O. U. combined them after the book was written
Impacts of climate driven range changes on the genetics and morphology of butterflies
No full textThis thesis studied the genetic responses of butterflies to climate induced distribution shifts in terms of patterns of genetic diversity at expanding and contracting range margins, the relative importance of genes versus environment on adaptations to dispersal and local adaptation to temperature during range expansion.
Loss of genetic diversity during range expansion in Pararge aegeria was confirmed using neutral genetic markers (AFLPs). High reductions of genetic diversity were discovered at the range margin relative to the distribution core. Range margin populations exhibit a nearly 50% reduction in neutral genetic diversity, and lower genetic divergence between sites.
The contracting southern range margin of the butterfly Erebia aethiops has not suffered a reduction in genetic diversity relative to the distribution core. As genetic diversity remains relatively high population extinction is unlikely to be exacerbated by inbreeding or reduced fitness from low genetic diversity during range contraction.
Contrary to results from laboratory reared butterflies, wild male P. aegeria do not have significant differences in flight morphology between core and margin sites. This suggests developmental influences suppress the expression of genetic adaptations to dispersal. Wild butterflies also represent a smaller range of phenotypes possibly indicating balancing selection on morphological traits.
Little to no evidence for local adaptation to temperature is apparent at the expanding range margin of P. aegeria. Neither was there evidence for reduced fitness due to lower genetic diversity, as F2 butterflies from core sites had poorer survival rates than the less genetically diverse margin sites.
This study found that neutral genetic diversity is unlikely to affect species during distribution shifts as even high losses during distribution expansion do not appear to affect survival rates. Also adaptation to dispersal and temperature may be limited during range expansion both by environmental constraints and limited selection pressure respectively
