This report provides findings from an evaluation of 1800RESPECT, the national online and telephon... more This report provides findings from an evaluation of 1800RESPECT, the national online and telephone counselling service for people affected by domestic and family violence and sexual assault. The evaluation considered the appropriateness, effectiveness and efficiency of 1800RESPECT using a mixed method design. It was commissioned by the Australian Government Department of Social Services and undertaken by researchers from the Social Policy Research Centre and the Gendered Violence Research Network at UNSW Sydney. https://plan4womenssafety.dss.gov.au/evaluation-of-1800respect-final-report/
We would like to extend our deepest appreciation to the 744 community sector workers and leaders ... more We would like to extend our deepest appreciation to the 744 community sector workers and leaders who generously shared their experiences and perspectives by completing the survey. We would also like to thank ACOSS, the COSS network, and Community Sector Banking for their excellent support, including in distributing the survey to members and networks.
Violence against social workers and other social service practitioners is prevalent across countr... more Violence against social workers and other social service practitioners is prevalent across countries and service delivery settings, often accepted as implicit in working with vulnerable clients. A corresponding scholarly focus on workplace violence, and the factors that affect it, is, however, still developing. This is particularly stark in the domestic and family violence (DFV) and sexual assault (SA) sectors. To address this gap, this article explores the extent and impact of practitioners’ exposure to workplace violence, and the mix of work and organisational factors that predict it. Analysis of survey data from Australian DFV and SA practitioners (N = 903) enables a focus on the two main sources of workplace violence: violence from clients and violence from colleagues. Both types of violence were found to be prevalent, gendered and associated with emotional strain and intention to leave. We argue that in DFV and SA sectors, which respond to multiple forms of gendered violence, u...
Paid work promises pathways to financial security and wellbeing for families, yet variable schedu... more Paid work promises pathways to financial security and wellbeing for families, yet variable scheduling and low pay can interfere with the routines and rhythms of family life, and contribute to caregiving challenges and stress. Using qualitative data from a survey of retail workers, this article shows how Australian employment policies have enabled flexibility practices to be strongly oriented around the needs of employers, reducing employees’ resources for care. We develop the concept of ‘care theft’ from employees’ accounts of the ways flexible scheduling and low pay converge to transform and deplete their temporal, financial and ethical resources for care. As an extension of ‘time theft’ and alternative to individualised notions of ‘work-family balance’, care theft helps make visible the ways employment practices strip resources for care from working people, and shift risk to low-income families and communities.
Designing Social Service Markets: Risk, Regulation and Rent-Seeking
Family day care educators are also known as family day carers or 'childminders' in the United Kin... more Family day care educators are also known as family day carers or 'childminders' in the United Kingdom. In Australia, as part of a move towards professionalising the sector (Cook et al. 2013), all childcare workers, including those in family day care, are referred to by the term 'educators' if they work directly with children to provide early education and care.
The process evaluation reported here represents a subset of the National Evaluation of the SFCS a... more The process evaluation reported here represents a subset of the National Evaluation of the SFCS and includes information from: demographic profiles; service mapping; service coordination survey and field work relating to partnership model and service coordination.
Australian communities, and the community service organisations that support them, remain under p... more Australian communities, and the community service organisations that support them, remain under pressure amidst expectations of increasing poverty and homelessness in 2021. This report examines how Australia’s community services sector is addressing high levels of need in the community during early 2021, a period in which Australian communities sought to recover from the crises of 2020. These crises began with severe bushfires followed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and are not yet resolved. They have exacerbated the very high levels of poverty and inequality which successive governments have allowed to accumulate over decades.As part of the Australian Community Sector Study, the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) was contracted by the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), in partnership with the Councils of Social Service, to conduct research into the experiences of the community sector during early 2021. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with 35 community sector leaders working in diverse contexts across Australia, this report shows that the sector is confronting rising levels of need and increasingly complex experiences of hardship in the community. Exclusion of some populations from government support increased pressures on community services and supports. In early 2021, many services were bracing for the withdrawal of the support measures which had temporarily alleviated some of the pressures on households and on community service systems during 2020, including the Coronavirus Supplement, moratoriums on evictions, and JobKeeper. Sector leaders wanted to see short-term measures translated into the more enduring strategies and investments needed to bolster capacity and to progress shared agendas of economic, social and community development for Australia’s recovery
Providing supervision 8. Workers' perspectives on job quality 8.1 Job quality 8.2 Unpaid hours 8.... more Providing supervision 8. Workers' perspectives on job quality 8.1 Job quality 8.2 Unpaid hours 8.3 Intention to leave 8.4 Bullying, harassment, violence and threats 9. Managers' perspectives 9.1 Workforce characteristics in responding services 9.2 Service contact with people affected by violence 9.3 Recognising and responding to violence 9.4 Education and training 9.5 Supervision and practice leadership 9.6 Recruiting and retaining staff 9.7 Leaders' perspectives on resourcing 10. Concluding discussion 11. References
This report provides detailed analysis of the characteristics and contributions of Australia’s gr... more This report provides detailed analysis of the characteristics and contributions of Australia’s grant-making charities. It uses the Annual Information Statement (AIS) provided by charities to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) for the 2016 reporting period. The information provides unprecedented insight into the characteristics, structure, activities, purposes and resources of different types of grant-making charities, distinguishing between private ancillary funds (PAFs), public ancillary funds (PuAFs), trusts, and other grant-makers.
The research report builds on the literature review contained in the ANROWS Landscapes paper “Bui... more The research report builds on the literature review contained in the ANROWS Landscapes paper “Building effective policies and services to promote women’s economic security following domestic violence: State of knowledge paper” (Cortis and Bullen, 2015). That paper discussed how economic abuse is a frequent, yet under-researched tactic of violence. Financial issues, including the prospect of leaving property or assets behind, are major factors in women’s decisions about leaving or staying in violent relationships, and the economic difficulties arising from violence, including loss of wealth upon separation, reverberate through women’s lives and increase hardship in the long-term. The Landscapes paper also highlighted evidence of inadequacies in the systems intended to identify, prevent and respond to the economic harms arising from violence. This report builds on the Landscapes paper with new statistical analysis and qualitative evidence. The statistical material reinforces how domes...
Aged care services touch the lives of substantial - and increasing - numbers of people. Yet the c... more Aged care services touch the lives of substantial - and increasing - numbers of people. Yet the capacity of service systems to meet older people's needs, and to do so at standards acceptable to the Australian community, remains under question, subject to several major inquiries in recent years including the current Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. Recognising that the community expects aged care services to deliver supports which go beyond basic physical care, this report explores: - the ways current aged care arrangements and processes of care work attend to older people's social and emotional needs; and - the policy, regulatory and organisational arrangements which would more effectively ensure provision of quality, whole-of-person care. In exploring these issues, we recognise the high value that older people place on their relationships with care workers and on the time that workers have available to provide care, as documented in the large body of scho...
Summary: This state of knowledge paper outlines what is currently known about the economic tactic... more Summary: This state of knowledge paper outlines what is currently known about the economic tactics and financial impact of domestic violence, and ways to promote women’s economic security during and following violence. Research and policy literature highlights the need for action to build both the immediate and longer term economic security of women who have experienced domestic violence, and identifies strategies in a range of areas. A key challenge is the need for increased services and integrated responses across a diverse range of policy areas in order to respond to the multifaceted nature of domestic violence. This paper identifies the need to make economic issues primary components of domestic violence prevention and responses, and to ensure income support, employment, housing, financial, legal and other systems work more effectively together to prevent, identify and respond to the economic tactics and impacts of domestic violence. This work is part of the ANROWS Landscapes se...
This report provides an updated profile of Tasmania’s community services industry, based on infor... more This report provides an updated profile of Tasmania’s community services industry, based on information collected in a survey of organisational leaders conducted in mid-2019. It aims to build knowledge of the characteristics of Tasmania’s community service providers; the ways the industry is changing; the contribution the industry makes to Tasmania; and priorities for supporting the industry so it can continue to address social disadvantage and inequality
This report analyses information from almost 1500 disability service workers. It explores their c... more This report analyses information from almost 1500 disability service workers. It explores their characteristics and perceptions of their working conditions; their experiences of working under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS); and their concerns about the implementation of the Scheme and its impact on their working lives.
In many liberal welfare states, market-based reforms aimed at enhancing competition and choice in... more In many liberal welfare states, market-based reforms aimed at enhancing competition and choice in disability services have necessitated extensive regulatory reforms to ensure quality service provision. This article explores how the changing regulatory environment surrounding an individualised funding scheme is transforming frontline disability work. Drawing on data from a survey of 2341 Australian disability support workers, the article contributes to sociological understandings of market regulation by foregrounding the importance of frontline workers’ labour to the regulation of social service markets. Various regulation-related tasks and duties are identified which, while practically embedded among the client-focused components of care work previously documented, are analytically distinct from them. This category of undertheorised, unrecognised, often unpaid work is referred to as ‘regulatory labour’. The article illuminates the mechanisms through which workers enact and resist re...
Senior leaders are usually understood to be ideally positioned to drive the organisational change... more Senior leaders are usually understood to be ideally positioned to drive the organisational changes needed to promote workplace gender equality. Yet seniority also influences leaders’ values and attitudes, and how they interpret evidence of inequalities, determine organisational priorities, and design and implement remedies. This article examines leaders’ perceptions of workplace gender equality, using system justification theory to explain survey data from Australia’s public sector (n=2292). Multivariate analysis indicates that male and female leaders more positively rate the gender equality climate in their agencies, compared with lower-level staff, and that male leaders show most propensity to defend the status quo. Findings call into question the effectiveness of change strategies that rely on leadership and buy-in of those whose privilege is embedded in existing arrangements, and problematise dominant organisational approaches casting senior leaders as effective change agents for gender equality. The article helps to explain gendered power dynamics which produce and sustain organisational inequalities and make workplace equality so hard to achieve, and points to ways to strengthen practical approaches to promote equality in organisations
Despite significant efforts to end it, violence, abuse and neglect continue to contribute to prev... more Despite significant efforts to end it, violence, abuse and neglect continue to contribute to preventable harms and deaths among people using disability services. To explore why these harms persist and what is needed to prevent them, we examine the safety-related attitudes and practices among frontline staff delivering services in the context of an individualized funding scheme, Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Analysis of survey data (n=2341) showed almost half of frontline disability workers were aware of harms affecting clients in the past year, and three in five felt their employers’ safety and incident reporting protocols were inadequate. Workers’ accounts of barriers to performing their safeguarding roles underline how government’s meta-regulatory approach is enabling provider organizations to prioritise financial concerns and tolerate high safety risks. We argue that advancing the rights of people with disability to be safe from harm whilst engaged in s...
The Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) was commissioned by Family Day Care Australia to conduct... more The Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) was commissioned by Family Day Care Australia to conduct research into quality in family day care. Six high quality services agreed to participate in the study. At each service, the SPRC research team conducted interviews with families, educators, coordination unit staff and representatives from managing organisations, comprising a total of 44 interviews with 52 people. All interviewees were strongly committed to providing quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) and had a belief in family day care’s unique strengths. The interviews explored ideas about the distinctive nature of quality in family day care, strengths and challenges, and how quality can be best supported. The data was analysed to reveal common themes across the services.
This report provides findings from an evaluation of 1800RESPECT, the national online and telephon... more This report provides findings from an evaluation of 1800RESPECT, the national online and telephone counselling service for people affected by domestic and family violence and sexual assault. The evaluation considered the appropriateness, effectiveness and efficiency of 1800RESPECT using a mixed method design. It was commissioned by the Australian Government Department of Social Services and undertaken by researchers from the Social Policy Research Centre and the Gendered Violence Research Network at UNSW Sydney. https://plan4womenssafety.dss.gov.au/evaluation-of-1800respect-final-report/
We would like to extend our deepest appreciation to the 744 community sector workers and leaders ... more We would like to extend our deepest appreciation to the 744 community sector workers and leaders who generously shared their experiences and perspectives by completing the survey. We would also like to thank ACOSS, the COSS network, and Community Sector Banking for their excellent support, including in distributing the survey to members and networks.
Violence against social workers and other social service practitioners is prevalent across countr... more Violence against social workers and other social service practitioners is prevalent across countries and service delivery settings, often accepted as implicit in working with vulnerable clients. A corresponding scholarly focus on workplace violence, and the factors that affect it, is, however, still developing. This is particularly stark in the domestic and family violence (DFV) and sexual assault (SA) sectors. To address this gap, this article explores the extent and impact of practitioners’ exposure to workplace violence, and the mix of work and organisational factors that predict it. Analysis of survey data from Australian DFV and SA practitioners (N = 903) enables a focus on the two main sources of workplace violence: violence from clients and violence from colleagues. Both types of violence were found to be prevalent, gendered and associated with emotional strain and intention to leave. We argue that in DFV and SA sectors, which respond to multiple forms of gendered violence, u...
Paid work promises pathways to financial security and wellbeing for families, yet variable schedu... more Paid work promises pathways to financial security and wellbeing for families, yet variable scheduling and low pay can interfere with the routines and rhythms of family life, and contribute to caregiving challenges and stress. Using qualitative data from a survey of retail workers, this article shows how Australian employment policies have enabled flexibility practices to be strongly oriented around the needs of employers, reducing employees’ resources for care. We develop the concept of ‘care theft’ from employees’ accounts of the ways flexible scheduling and low pay converge to transform and deplete their temporal, financial and ethical resources for care. As an extension of ‘time theft’ and alternative to individualised notions of ‘work-family balance’, care theft helps make visible the ways employment practices strip resources for care from working people, and shift risk to low-income families and communities.
Designing Social Service Markets: Risk, Regulation and Rent-Seeking
Family day care educators are also known as family day carers or 'childminders' in the United Kin... more Family day care educators are also known as family day carers or 'childminders' in the United Kingdom. In Australia, as part of a move towards professionalising the sector (Cook et al. 2013), all childcare workers, including those in family day care, are referred to by the term 'educators' if they work directly with children to provide early education and care.
The process evaluation reported here represents a subset of the National Evaluation of the SFCS a... more The process evaluation reported here represents a subset of the National Evaluation of the SFCS and includes information from: demographic profiles; service mapping; service coordination survey and field work relating to partnership model and service coordination.
Australian communities, and the community service organisations that support them, remain under p... more Australian communities, and the community service organisations that support them, remain under pressure amidst expectations of increasing poverty and homelessness in 2021. This report examines how Australia’s community services sector is addressing high levels of need in the community during early 2021, a period in which Australian communities sought to recover from the crises of 2020. These crises began with severe bushfires followed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and are not yet resolved. They have exacerbated the very high levels of poverty and inequality which successive governments have allowed to accumulate over decades.As part of the Australian Community Sector Study, the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) was contracted by the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), in partnership with the Councils of Social Service, to conduct research into the experiences of the community sector during early 2021. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with 35 community sector leaders working in diverse contexts across Australia, this report shows that the sector is confronting rising levels of need and increasingly complex experiences of hardship in the community. Exclusion of some populations from government support increased pressures on community services and supports. In early 2021, many services were bracing for the withdrawal of the support measures which had temporarily alleviated some of the pressures on households and on community service systems during 2020, including the Coronavirus Supplement, moratoriums on evictions, and JobKeeper. Sector leaders wanted to see short-term measures translated into the more enduring strategies and investments needed to bolster capacity and to progress shared agendas of economic, social and community development for Australia’s recovery
Providing supervision 8. Workers' perspectives on job quality 8.1 Job quality 8.2 Unpaid hours 8.... more Providing supervision 8. Workers' perspectives on job quality 8.1 Job quality 8.2 Unpaid hours 8.3 Intention to leave 8.4 Bullying, harassment, violence and threats 9. Managers' perspectives 9.1 Workforce characteristics in responding services 9.2 Service contact with people affected by violence 9.3 Recognising and responding to violence 9.4 Education and training 9.5 Supervision and practice leadership 9.6 Recruiting and retaining staff 9.7 Leaders' perspectives on resourcing 10. Concluding discussion 11. References
This report provides detailed analysis of the characteristics and contributions of Australia’s gr... more This report provides detailed analysis of the characteristics and contributions of Australia’s grant-making charities. It uses the Annual Information Statement (AIS) provided by charities to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) for the 2016 reporting period. The information provides unprecedented insight into the characteristics, structure, activities, purposes and resources of different types of grant-making charities, distinguishing between private ancillary funds (PAFs), public ancillary funds (PuAFs), trusts, and other grant-makers.
The research report builds on the literature review contained in the ANROWS Landscapes paper “Bui... more The research report builds on the literature review contained in the ANROWS Landscapes paper “Building effective policies and services to promote women’s economic security following domestic violence: State of knowledge paper” (Cortis and Bullen, 2015). That paper discussed how economic abuse is a frequent, yet under-researched tactic of violence. Financial issues, including the prospect of leaving property or assets behind, are major factors in women’s decisions about leaving or staying in violent relationships, and the economic difficulties arising from violence, including loss of wealth upon separation, reverberate through women’s lives and increase hardship in the long-term. The Landscapes paper also highlighted evidence of inadequacies in the systems intended to identify, prevent and respond to the economic harms arising from violence. This report builds on the Landscapes paper with new statistical analysis and qualitative evidence. The statistical material reinforces how domes...
Aged care services touch the lives of substantial - and increasing - numbers of people. Yet the c... more Aged care services touch the lives of substantial - and increasing - numbers of people. Yet the capacity of service systems to meet older people's needs, and to do so at standards acceptable to the Australian community, remains under question, subject to several major inquiries in recent years including the current Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. Recognising that the community expects aged care services to deliver supports which go beyond basic physical care, this report explores: - the ways current aged care arrangements and processes of care work attend to older people's social and emotional needs; and - the policy, regulatory and organisational arrangements which would more effectively ensure provision of quality, whole-of-person care. In exploring these issues, we recognise the high value that older people place on their relationships with care workers and on the time that workers have available to provide care, as documented in the large body of scho...
Summary: This state of knowledge paper outlines what is currently known about the economic tactic... more Summary: This state of knowledge paper outlines what is currently known about the economic tactics and financial impact of domestic violence, and ways to promote women’s economic security during and following violence. Research and policy literature highlights the need for action to build both the immediate and longer term economic security of women who have experienced domestic violence, and identifies strategies in a range of areas. A key challenge is the need for increased services and integrated responses across a diverse range of policy areas in order to respond to the multifaceted nature of domestic violence. This paper identifies the need to make economic issues primary components of domestic violence prevention and responses, and to ensure income support, employment, housing, financial, legal and other systems work more effectively together to prevent, identify and respond to the economic tactics and impacts of domestic violence. This work is part of the ANROWS Landscapes se...
This report provides an updated profile of Tasmania’s community services industry, based on infor... more This report provides an updated profile of Tasmania’s community services industry, based on information collected in a survey of organisational leaders conducted in mid-2019. It aims to build knowledge of the characteristics of Tasmania’s community service providers; the ways the industry is changing; the contribution the industry makes to Tasmania; and priorities for supporting the industry so it can continue to address social disadvantage and inequality
This report analyses information from almost 1500 disability service workers. It explores their c... more This report analyses information from almost 1500 disability service workers. It explores their characteristics and perceptions of their working conditions; their experiences of working under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS); and their concerns about the implementation of the Scheme and its impact on their working lives.
In many liberal welfare states, market-based reforms aimed at enhancing competition and choice in... more In many liberal welfare states, market-based reforms aimed at enhancing competition and choice in disability services have necessitated extensive regulatory reforms to ensure quality service provision. This article explores how the changing regulatory environment surrounding an individualised funding scheme is transforming frontline disability work. Drawing on data from a survey of 2341 Australian disability support workers, the article contributes to sociological understandings of market regulation by foregrounding the importance of frontline workers’ labour to the regulation of social service markets. Various regulation-related tasks and duties are identified which, while practically embedded among the client-focused components of care work previously documented, are analytically distinct from them. This category of undertheorised, unrecognised, often unpaid work is referred to as ‘regulatory labour’. The article illuminates the mechanisms through which workers enact and resist re...
Senior leaders are usually understood to be ideally positioned to drive the organisational change... more Senior leaders are usually understood to be ideally positioned to drive the organisational changes needed to promote workplace gender equality. Yet seniority also influences leaders’ values and attitudes, and how they interpret evidence of inequalities, determine organisational priorities, and design and implement remedies. This article examines leaders’ perceptions of workplace gender equality, using system justification theory to explain survey data from Australia’s public sector (n=2292). Multivariate analysis indicates that male and female leaders more positively rate the gender equality climate in their agencies, compared with lower-level staff, and that male leaders show most propensity to defend the status quo. Findings call into question the effectiveness of change strategies that rely on leadership and buy-in of those whose privilege is embedded in existing arrangements, and problematise dominant organisational approaches casting senior leaders as effective change agents for gender equality. The article helps to explain gendered power dynamics which produce and sustain organisational inequalities and make workplace equality so hard to achieve, and points to ways to strengthen practical approaches to promote equality in organisations
Despite significant efforts to end it, violence, abuse and neglect continue to contribute to prev... more Despite significant efforts to end it, violence, abuse and neglect continue to contribute to preventable harms and deaths among people using disability services. To explore why these harms persist and what is needed to prevent them, we examine the safety-related attitudes and practices among frontline staff delivering services in the context of an individualized funding scheme, Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Analysis of survey data (n=2341) showed almost half of frontline disability workers were aware of harms affecting clients in the past year, and three in five felt their employers’ safety and incident reporting protocols were inadequate. Workers’ accounts of barriers to performing their safeguarding roles underline how government’s meta-regulatory approach is enabling provider organizations to prioritise financial concerns and tolerate high safety risks. We argue that advancing the rights of people with disability to be safe from harm whilst engaged in s...
The Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) was commissioned by Family Day Care Australia to conduct... more The Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) was commissioned by Family Day Care Australia to conduct research into quality in family day care. Six high quality services agreed to participate in the study. At each service, the SPRC research team conducted interviews with families, educators, coordination unit staff and representatives from managing organisations, comprising a total of 44 interviews with 52 people. All interviewees were strongly committed to providing quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) and had a belief in family day care’s unique strengths. The interviews explored ideas about the distinctive nature of quality in family day care, strengths and challenges, and how quality can be best supported. The data was analysed to reveal common themes across the services.
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Papers by Natasha Cortis