ORCID Profile
0000-0002-7289-896X
Current Organisation
University of Queensland
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Research Topics
In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Top 5 Research Topics
ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)
Sociology | Family and Household Studies | Social Change | Applied Sociology, Program Evaluation and Social Impact Assessment | Urban Sociology and Community Studies | Housing Markets, Development, Management | Health, Clinical and Counselling Psychology | Sociology | Applied sociology program evaluation and social impact assessment | Social Program Evaluation | Demography | Psychology | Social Policy | Policy and Administration | Urban Policy | Social and Community Psychology
ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)
Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society | Social Class and Inequalities | Social Structure and Health | Workforce Transition and Employment | Substance Abuse | Education and Training not elsewhere classified | Families and Family Services | Structure, Delivery and Financing of Community Services | Health not elsewhere classified |
Related Links
Publications
Young, anchored and free? Examining the dynamics of early housing pathways in Australia
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 27-12-2017
Staying safe, feeling welcome, being seen: how spatio-temporal configurations affect relations of care at an inclusive health and wellness centre
Publisher: The University of Queensland
Date: 23-02-2023
DOI: 10.14264/1540B42
Surveilling the marginalised: How manual, embodied and territorialised surveillance persists in the age of ‘dataveillance’
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 10-09-2020
Abstract: The emergence of new forms of data-driven surveillance – often referred to as ‘dataveillance’ – is reshaping how marginalised social groups are governed. It is generally thought that dataveillance replaces the manual monitoring of specific in iduals and spaces with automated monitoring of disembodied and deterritorialised populations. This article challenges this view. Drawing on an ethnographic study of surveillance and homelessness governance in Brisbane, Australia, we argue that embodied surveillance persists in the age of dataveillance due to its capacity to address certain ‘power/knowledge challenges’ associated with the governance of marginalised social groups. We show how the manual monitoring of in iduals and spaces is central to how governing actors keep track of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, and prevent them falling into ‘surveillance gaps’ arising from the extreme social and spatial marginalisation that homelessness entails. We also show how these practices are experienced as a ‘mixed blessing’ by people experiencing homelessness, as they have the capacity to result in both punitive targeting, as well as protection and housing-focused support.
Two pathways through adversity: Predicting well-being and housing outcomes among homeless service users
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-09-2016
DOI: 10.1111/BJSO.12127
Towards a phenomenology of poverty: defining poverty through the lived experiences of the ‘poor’
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 19-06-2020
Abstract: This article argues for the importance of defining poverty from the perspective of those who experience poverty. How poverty is defined and operationalised is critical to policy and academic debates, as this is intertwined with explanations, causes, and possible solutions. Yet current definitions are typically provided by the ‘non-poor’. What we lack is knowledge of whether these definitions of the concept are similar to or different from those understood and conceptualised by those experiencing poverty. Australian poverty research has typically relied on panel data, administrative data, or surveys to construct and define ‘poverty’. We propose that Australian poverty scholars embrace phenomenology as a way to highlight the voices of those experiencing poverty.
Applying for Social Housing in Australia – The Centrality of Cultural, Social and Emotional Capital
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-06-2023
Racial and gender bias in self-reported needs when using a homelessness triaging tool
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-12-2022
Resurgent charity and the neoliberalizing social
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-12-2021
Bureaucratic encounters “after neoliberalism”: Examining the supportive turn in social housing governance
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 05-02-2020
Single-site supportive housing: tenant perspectives
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 24-03-2015
Investigative panel into building and retaining and effective homelessness sector workforce
Publisher: Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI)
Date: 09-2023
Do we have the knowledge to address homelessness?
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date: 03-2017
DOI: 10.1086/691102
The Family Relationships of Older Australians at Risk of Homelessness
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 10-02-2020
DOI: 10.1093/BJSW/BCAA007
Abstract: This article explores the links between older people’s homelessness and family relationships and aims to inform social work practice frameworks. Whilst breakdown in family relationships is widely recognised as linked to being at risk of homelessness, there is less understanding of the interplay of family, both positive and negative, with older people’s homelessness. Drawing on a study incorporating data mining of service records, this article aims to provide clarity on supportive and troubled family relationships and their links to housing crises as experienced by older Australians. The findings highlight a number of domains for social work practice including undertaking skilled assessments to understand the strengths and constraints experienced by families. Assessments will then inform intervention to support and provide resources to some families to prevent their older family members’ homelessness and to intervene in both a preventative and empowering way to address elder abuse. The implications for policy, in particular, the need for sectors of housing, aged care and health to intersect, are discussed.
Agency in advanced liberal services: grounding sociological knowledge in homeless people's accounts
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 29-12-2019
Abstract: This paper aims to understand how people who are homeless respond to advanced liberal social services that endeavour to promote their autonomy and responsible actions. We prioritize the experiences and positions of people who are homeless, and what agentic action means to them. Sociological literature is selective about what accounts are deemed agentic. Agency is associated with accounts that resist or subvert dominant neoliberal framings of homelessness as failure of in iduals. When people experiencing homelessness or poverty themselves foreground autonomy or responsibility, sociologists treat them as cultural dopes who have internalized neoliberal discourse. Our analysis is driven by an ethnographic study in an Australian homelessness shelter. We demonstrate how people who are homeless neither outright reject nor completely embrace advanced liberal practices to influence their actions and promote autonomy. People engaged in relational reasoning. Paternalist and advanced liberal social services were both lauded and rejected for their capacities and limitations to realize a good life. We contribute to the discussion for sociology to value people's accounts and experiences, rather than broader social process explaining their accounts. From the perspectives of people who are homeless, we show that just because something appears neoliberal does not mean it should be automatically rejected.
Staying safe, feeling welcome, being seen: How spatio‐temporal configurations affect relations of care at an inclusive health and wellness centre
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 05-09-2023
DOI: 10.1111/HEX.13858
Recognition or Redistribution? How Mainstream Media Frames Charitable Responses to People Experiencing Poverty
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 05-07-2022
DOI: 10.1177/00380385221095025
Abstract: Charitable responses to people experiencing poverty are often viewed as valuable community-led initiatives that address the support gaps created by a withdrawing welfare state. This perspective provides important insights into the culturally valorised nature of charity. The role of the mainstream media in cultivating and valorising charity, in contrast, remains relatively underexplored. Drawing on a framing analysis of Australian mainstream news reports published between 2014 and 2020, we analyse how the media frames charity as a response to people experiencing poverty. We demonstrate that the media frames people experiencing poverty as having a devalued identity, for which the remedy is the restoration of dignity through charity. Little attention is paid to the material inequalities that underpin people’s experiences of poverty nor the role of the media as a body that reifies the interests of the powerful, who benefit from poverty and charitable responses to it.
What about men? The marginalization of men who engage in domestic violence
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 18-02-2021
Abstract: In an international policy context that is increasingly recognizing the gendered nature of domestic violence, governments are becoming more attuned to the importance of improving policy responses for women who have domestic violence enacted against them. This has not, in general, been accompanied by a similar focus on improving policy responses to men who engage in domestic violence, despite a burgeoning body of scholarship suggesting that improved responses to such men are required to more effectively prevent domestic violence from occurring. Importantly, current scholarship also highlights the significant and complex tensions that may arise when policy informed by gendered understandings of domestic violence increases its focus on the men who enact it. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis methodology, we analyze how these tensions are negotiated in domestic violence policy in the Australian state of Queensland. Findings from this analysis demonstrate that the way government policy discursively constructs men who engage in domestic violence has important implications for how such policy targets and engages with members of this group. The article demonstrates that when such men are constructed as outsiders to the community, they may be viewed as undeserving of inclusion and support. This can result in governments failing to prioritize interventions targeted at men who engage in domestic violence, and prevent the active inclusion of such men in the development of policy and interventions. These findings provide important lessons for international governments seeking to implement or strengthen policy responses to end domestic violence against women.
Bystander intervention in intimate partner violence: a scoping review of experiences and outcomes
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 31-08-2023
DOI: 10.1177/15248380231195886
Abstract: Governments across the globe are increasingly implementing policies that encourage bystanders to prevent intimate partner violence (IPV) by intervening in violent or potentially violent situations. While a wealth of research examines the most effective mechanisms for increasing potential bystanders’ feelings of self-efficacy and rates of intervention, there is significantly less evidence demonstrating how effective bystander intervention is at preventing or interrupting IPV. This article thus presents a scoping review of the literature examining the experiences and outcomes of bystander intervention in IPV. Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines, six databases were searched for relevant peer-reviewed studies published in English between 2001 and 2021. A total of 13 articles were ultimately included in the review. The review highlights that although current knowledge on the topic is highly limited, the combined findings of the studies indicate that immediate responses to bystander intervention are heavily context dependent: victims (and perpetrators) tend to react differently to bystander intervention depending on the type of intervention, the type of violence being used, and their relationship to the bystander. However, we have little to no understanding of the outcomes of bystander intervention, or how these outcomes might vary across different contexts. We argue that a more comprehensive understanding of the immediate and long-term implications of bystander intervention across different contexts is crucial if we are to maximize the effectiveness and minimize the potential for harm resulting from bystander interventions in IPV.
Surveillance in supportive housing: intrusion or autonomy?
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 20-07-2015
Abstract: The interdisciplinary literature demonstrates that the built form constitutes home when people have capacity to exercise control. Consistent with normative ideas of autonomy and freedom, home is a place where we are free from surveillance at home we expect to live of our own volition. Freedom and autonomy in the home are contrasted with the public realm, and the value of privacy in the home is central for self-determination and identity construction. In line with such reasoning, surveillance in housing is theorised, and indeed widely assumed, as antithetical to home. This paper presents empirical material to examine how surveillance in supportive housing is understood by those with firsthand experiences as tenants and service providers. The research draws on in-depth interviews with tenants (n = 28) and service providers (n = 22) in single-site supportive housing in Australia. The empirical material demonstrates how surveillance is experienced as intrusive, but that surveillance also promotes the conditions for people to feel safe and to exert control over their lives. The research shows how tenants actively used surveillance as a desirable resource, including using surveillance to restrict unwanted visitors. Surveillance achieved functions, particularly safety and security, that in iduals were unable to experience as homeless or achieve in housing through informal controls.
Willing but Unable: How Resources Help Low-Income Mothers Care for their Children and Minimise Child Protection Interventions
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 14-02-2022
DOI: 10.1093/BJSW/BCAC027
Abstract: Low-income mothers face disproportionately high risks of engaging with statutory child protection systems. Whilst this is often perceived as a result of poor or irresponsible parenting practices, an increasing body of scholarship foregrounds the role of structural issues—such as poverty and homelessness—that constrain mothers’ agency and impact their ability to care for their children. In this article, we examine Australia’s first permanent Supportive Housing for Families (SHF) programme, which offers low-income mothers practical resources to minimise the risk of statutory child protection intervention. Our research aims to understand low-income mothers’ willingness and ability to care for their children, and how mothers engaged with and made meaning of their experiences residing in SHF. Using a qualitative research design, we analyse interview data with programme mothers (n = 17), programme support workers (n = 10) and statutory child protection officers (n = 7). We find that the resources provided through the programme enabled mothers to care for their children in ways that aligned with their parenting beliefs and aspirations. We conclude that SHF programmes may be an effective means through which low-income mothers can overcome the structural barriers that keep them engaged with statutory child protection systems.
Policies and programmes to end homelessness in Australia: Learning from international practice
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 31-05-2012
Responding to people sleeping rough: Dilemmas and opportunities for social work
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 18-03-2011
Homelessness as a choice
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-2012
Increases in income-support payments reduce the demand for charity: A difference-in-difference analysis of charitable-assistance data from Australia over the COVID-19 pandemic
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 12-07-2023
DOI: 10.1371/JOURNAL.PONE.0287533
Abstract: Charities play an increasingly important role in helping people experiencing poverty. However, institutionalized charity shifts the burden of poverty reduction away from the state and exposes recipients to stress and stigma. In this paper, we examine whether the need for institutionalized charity can be offset through enhanced state support. As in other countries, the Australian government responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by substantially increasing the level of income support to citizens through several temporary payments. We draw on this natural experiment and time-series data from the two largest charity organizations in Queensland, Australia to examine how these payments altered the demand for institutionalized charity. We model these data using difference-in-difference regression models to approximate causal effects. By exploiting the timing and varying amounts of the payments, our analyses yield evidence that more generous income support reduces reliance on charity. Halving the demand for charity requires raising pre-pandemic income-support by AUD$42/day, with supplements of approximately AUD$18/day yielding the greatest return on investment.
Fulfilling and desperately needed: Australian media representations of responses to homelessness
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 26-01-2022
DOI: 10.1002/AJS4.201
Abstract: Homelessness is a significant social issue that continues to confront Australian society, despite burgeoning public and policy responses to the issue. Existing scholarship demonstrates the important role the media can play in shaping such responses by framing homelessness – and the people who experience it – in particular ways. However, to date there has been limited focus on how the media represents social responses to homelessness, or how such representations might influence public perceptions of the appropriateness of current responses. Drawing on analysis of four years of media articles (2016–2019), this article examines how the print media frames responses to homelessness in Brisbane, Australia. Our findings demonstrate that the media largely frames current responses as fulfilling and enjoyable for volunteers, and as desperately needed by people who experience homelessness. In representing the issue in this way, the media highlights the unequal power dynamics between those experiencing homelessness and those responding to homelessness. Rather than challenging this problematic power hierarchy, however, the media reifies it through its celebration of temporary and inadequate homelessness responses. We argue that such framing has the potential to promote public and policy support for responses that do little to address the underlying causes of the issue.
Longing for a Forever Home: Ontological insecurity is collectively produced in fixed-term supportive housing for families
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-02-2023
Response to Ann Coleman: Context, Context, Context: A Commentary on Responding to People Sleeping Rough: Dilemmas and Opportunities for Social Work
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-2012
Stories from the street: a theology of homelessness
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-09-2014
Home is where the house is: The meaning of home for people sleeping rough
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-2012
Book Review: TOGETHER ALONE: PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS IN PUBLIC PLACES Calvin Morrill, David A. Snow and Cindy H. White (eds) Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, 305 pp
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 09-2008
The Impact of Self-Categorizing as “Homeless” on Well-Being and Service Use
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 29-10-2015
DOI: 10.1111/ASAP.12089
The Florence Nightingale effect: Organizational identification explains the peculiar link between others' suffering and workplace functioning in the homelessness sector
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 28-01-2016
Conditionality in the context of housing‐led homelessness policy: Comparing Australia’s Housing First agenda to Scotland’s “rights‐based” approach
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 26-12-2020
DOI: 10.1002/AJS4.97
Beyond the 'At Risk' Individual: Housing and the Eradication of Poverty to Prevent Homelessness
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-2012
The homeless person in contemporary society
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 23-05-2018
Preventing Domestic Violence by Changing Australian Gender Relations: Issues and Considerations
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 31-07-2019
COVID-19 and the meaning of home: how the pandemic triggered new thinking on housing
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 15-12-2022
Self-management of health care: Multimethod study of using integrated health care and supportive housing to address systematic barriers for people experiencing homelessness
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing
Date: 2018
DOI: 10.1071/AH16277
Abstract: Objectives The aims of the present study were to examine tenants’ experiences of a model of integrated health care and supportive housing and to identify whether integrated health care and supportive housing improved self-reported health and healthcare access. Methods The present study used a mixed-method survey design (n = 75) and qualitative interviews (n = 20) performed between September 2015 and August 2016. Participants were tenants of permanent supportive housing in Brisbane (Qld, Australia). Qualitative data were analysed thematically. Results Integrated health care and supportive housing were resources for tenants to overcome systematic barriers to accessing mainstream health care experienced when homeless. When homeless, people did not have access to resources required to maintain their health. Homelessness meant not having a voice to influence the health care people received healthcare practitioners treated symptoms of poverty rather than considering how homelessness makes people sick. Integrated healthcare and supportive housing enabled tenants to receive treatment for health problems that were compounded by the barriers to accessing mainstream healthcare that homelessness represented. Conclusions Extending the evidence about housing as a social determinant of health, the present study shows that integrated health care and supportive housing enabled tenants to take control to self-manage their health care. In addition to homelessness directly contributing to ill health, the present study provides evidence of how the experience of homelessness contributes to exclusions from mainstream healthcare. What is known about the topic? People who are homeless experience poor physical and mental health, have unmet health care needs and use disproportionate rates of emergency health services. What does the paper add? The experience of homelessness creates barriers to accessing adequate health care. The provision of onsite multidisciplinary integrated health care in permanent supportive housing enabled illness self-management and greater control over lifestyle, and was associated with self-reported improved health and life satisfaction in formerly homeless tenants. What are the implications for practitioners? Integrated health care and supportive housing for the formerly homeless can improve self-reported health outcomes, enable healthier lifestyle choices and facilitate pathways into more appropriate and effective health care.
Review of The Homelessness Industry: A Critique of U.S. Social Policy. By Elizabeth Beck and Pamela C. Twiss. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2019
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date: 2020
DOI: 10.1086/706750
SARS-CoV-2 Gamma and Delta Variants of Concern Might Undermine Neutralizing Activity Generated in Response to BNT162b2 mRNA Vaccination
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 15-04-2022
DOI: 10.3390/V14040814
Abstract: The Delta variant raised concern regarding its ability to evade SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. We evaluated a serum neutralizing response of 172 Italian healthcare workers, three months after complete Comirnaty (BNT162b2 mRNA, BioNTech-Pfizer) vaccination, testing their sera against viral isolates of Alpha, Gamma and Delta variants, including 36 subjects with a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. We assessed whether IgG anti-spike TRIM levels and serum neutralizing activity by seroneutralization assay were associated. Concerning Gamma variant, a two-fold reduction in neutralizing titres compared to the Alpha variant was observed, while a four-fold reduction of Delta virus compared to Alpha was found. A gender difference was observed in neutralizing titres only for the Gamma variant. The serum s les of 36 previously infected SARS-CoV-2 in iduals neutralized Alpha, Gamma and Delta variants, demonstrating respectively a nearly three-fold and a five-fold reduction in neutralizing titres compared to Alpha variant. IgG anti-spike TRIM levels were positively correlated with serum neutralizing titres against the three variants. The Comirnaty vaccine provides sustained neutralizing antibody activity towards the Alpha variant, but it is less effective against Gamma and even less against Delta variants.
Enhancing Well-being of Homeless Individuals by Building Group Memberships
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 19-04-2016
DOI: 10.1002/CASP.2272
Charity and Poverty in Advanced Welfare States
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 23-07-2021
From Hostels to Hotels: An Empirical Study of Brisbane’s Innovative Homelessness Response
Publisher: The University of Queensland
Date: 17-07-2023
DOI: 10.14264/5BC9122
Housing First and the Reassembling of Permanent Supportive Housing: The Limits and Opportunities of Private Rental
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 13-02-2017
Permanent supportive housing: A ten-year study of entries and exits
Publisher: The University of Queensland
Date: 18-04-2023
DOI: 10.14264/C46109D
Responding to Domestic and Family Violence: The Role of Non-Specialist Services and Implications for Social Work
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 07-2022
DOI: 10.1093/BJSW/BCAC125
Abstract: Social workers play a critical role in responding to the needs of in iduals impacted by domestic and family violence (DFV). Social work literature has long been devoted to understanding the functioning, accessibility and effectiveness of specialist DFV services. In contrast, much less is known about how non-specialist services can, and do, support victims of DFV. This study addresses this important gap by empirically examining the links between DFV and a non-specialist service designed to assist people experiencing financial hardship. To accomplish this, we draw on an expansive administrative database of assistance records (n = 305,176) from the St Vincent de Paul Society, one of the largest non-specialist support providers in Australia. Descriptive analyses of DFV-related records (n = 4,374) yield novel insights into the socio-demographic profile of clients seeking assistance due to DFV, the types of assistance they required and how non-specialist providers respond to DFV-related requests for assistance. Our results demonstrate that non-specialist services play a critical yet under-recognised role in responding to people impacted by DFV. This has significant social work practice implications, highlighting the importance of specialist DFV services working in tandem with non-specialist services to deliver the best outcomes for victims.
Of Good Mothers and Violent Fathers: Negotiating Child Protection Interventions in Abusive Relationships
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 22-02-2023
DOI: 10.1177/10778012231158107
Abstract: This article examines the efficacy of a supportive housing program aiming to provide mothers in violent relationships with the practical resources to minimize child protection intervention. Drawing on qualitative interviews with program mothers, child safety officers, and program practitioners, we explore the extent to which the program enabled mothers and children to live free from fathers’ violence and disengage from the child protection system. We find that, although valuable, the program did not fully mitigate the risks posed by violent fathers. We therefore argue that responsibility must be shifted onto violent fathers to change their behavior and build their parenting capacities.
Social housing after neo-liberalism: new forms of state-driven welfare intervention toward social renters
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 22-04-2022
Breaking the cycle of homelessness: Housing stability and social support as predictors of long-term well-being
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 20-11-2016
Reified scarcity & the problem space of ‘need’: unpacking Australian social housing policy
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-04-2022
Discrimination and well-being amongst the homeless: the role of multiple group membership
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 06-2015
Homeless identities: enacted and ascribed1
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-2011
DOI: 10.1111/J.1468-4446.2011.01373.X
Abstract: Homelessness has been a perennial concern for sociologists. It is a confronting phenomenon that can challenge western notions of home, a discrete family unit and the ascetics and order of public space. To be without a home and to reside in public places illustrates both an intriguing way of living and some fundamental inadequacies in the functioning of society. Much homelessness research has had the consequence of isolating the 'homeless person' as distinct category or indeed type of in idual. They are ascribed with homeless identities. The homeless identity is not simply presented as one dimensional and defining, but this imposed and ill-fitting identity is rarely informed by a close and long-term engagement with the in iduals it is supposed to say something about. Drawing on a recent Australian ethnographic study with people literally without shelter, this article aims to contribute to understandings of people who are homeless by outlining some nuanced and erse aspects of their identities. It argues that people can and do express agency in the way they enact elements of the self, and the experience of homelessness is simultaneously important and unimportant to understand this. Further, the article suggests that what is presumably known about the homeless identity is influenced by day-to-day lives that are on public display.
Social domains of discrimination against people who inject drugs: Links with health and wellbeing
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2020
DOI: 10.1016/J.DRUGPO.2019.102620
Abstract: People who inject drugs frequently experience discrimination. However, little is known about how discrimination experienced in different social domains is linked to health and wellbeing. We used data collected in 2016 from the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS), an Australian survey of people who inject drugs. We used a modified version of the Discrimination Scale (DISC-12) to assess discriminatory behaviours in erse social domains, including public institutions, neighbours, family and friends. We used the Kessler-10 scale, the Personal Wellbeing Index and specific items from the IDRS questionnaire to assess participants' health and wellbeing. Sixty three percent of participants who responded to the discrimination module included in the IDRS 2016 (N = 796) reported ever having experienced discrimination due to their injecting drug use and 53% reported having experienced discrimination in the past month. Discrimination in all social domains analysed was linked with poor health and wellbeing, except for housing. Self-reported mental health problems and poorer general health were most frequently associated with discrimination. Participants who experienced discrimination from friends were three times more likely to report mental health problems (AOR=3.0, CI There are significant associations between the domains in which discrimination takes place and the health and wellbeing of people who inject drugs. Our findings highlighted the importance of assessing the social domains of discrimination in relation to mental health. Further research needs to assess not just whether a group or in idual is discriminated against, but rather how they are likely to perceive this discrimination and how this experience can affect their life as a whole.
Homeless is what I am, not who I am: Insights from an inner-city Brisbane study
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-2010
Indigenous rough sleeping in Darwin, Australia: 'out of place' in an urban setting
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 08-05-2014
Abstract: Much of what is known of street homelessness is informed by accounts from urban centres throughout North America and the UK. The nature of the problem and the ways in which it is addressed are implicitly assumed to be similar across erse major cities. The street homeless are thought to be highly marginalised and vulnerable. In turn, contemporary policy aims to provide housing/accommodation and welfare to address this form of homelessness as deep exclusion. Based on empirical research in Australia’s northernmost capital city, Darwin, this article demonstrates the role of culture in how homelessness is experienced and addressed. It argues that cultural mobility and modes of behaviour that normalise rough sleeping are embedded within condoned poverty and discriminatory legislation directed towards Indigenous people. Indigenous people are constructed as out of place in urban environments and rather than housing and welfare, the focus is directed towards moving the problem.
The potential for urban surveillance to help support people who are homeless: evidence from Cairns, Australia
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 25-09-2018
Abstract: Numerous studies have documented how surveillance practices, such as CCTV, are deployed to support ‘revanchist’ responses to homelessness wherein punitive policing and urban design practices are used to exclude people who are homeless from prime urban areas. However, few studies have considered the capacity of surveillance to facilitate supportive responses to homelessness. In this paper, we explore this supportive capacity through an ethnographic case study of responses to homelessness in the regional Australian city of Cairns. We demonstrate that, whilst surveillance is deployed to police the homeless in Cairns, it is also used to facilitate social services to access and engage with them, for ex le by using CCTV as a means to coordinate supportive street outreach activities. We conclude from this that there is no necessary relationship between surveillance and punitive/revanchist responses to homelessness, therefore efforts should be made to document and promote its positive uses alongside critiquing its punitive ones.
Poverty by Design: The Role of Charity and the Cultivated Ethical Citizen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 14-06-2021
DOI: 10.1017/S1474746421000312
Abstract: Across numerous countries with advanced welfare states, governments have relied on a hybrid of publicly funded and delivered welfare services and voluntary charity to meet the needs of people in poverty. Driven by austerity and economic downturns, many scholars agree that governments are increasingly relying on charity as a response to poverty. Taking Australia as a case study, this article demonstrates how the decayed welfare state is not just about outsourcing welfare provision to charities, but also a part of a broader project to cultivate a society in which social problems are responded to through spontaneous, community-led initiatives, powered by the ethical commitment of everyday citizens. We show how this project produces poverty through welfare state retrenchment, whilst simultaneously cultivating charity through material and symbolic support from the state. This results in the construction of charity as an end in itself, with little consideration given to its effectiveness in alleviating poverty.
Introduction to the special issue on welfare conditionality in Australia
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 13-02-2020
DOI: 10.1002/AJS4.102
Supportive housing: Justifiable paternalism?
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 19-01-2016
Human Agency and Social Work Research: A Systematic Search and Synthesis of Social Work Literature
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 07-01-2016
DOI: 10.1093/BJSW/BCV145
Cost offsets of supportive housing: evidence for social work
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 22-09-2016
DOI: 10.1093/BJSW/BCW115
The ambiguities of homelessness governance: disentangling care and revanchism in the neoliberalising city
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-08-2020
DOI: 10.1111/ANTI.12671
Media representations of social housing before and during COVID-19: the changing face of the socially excluded
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 14-10-2022
Shame, anger and hope: The messy relations of charitable help within the welfare state
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 28-08-2023
DOI: 10.1177/00380385231195790
Abstract: The shame of being poor and asking for charity has been a key theme in sociological research on poverty. This article draws on ethnographic research across two charity centres in Australia to address the overemphasis on shame as the dominant feeling of being poor and trying to help. We find that hope and anger are key emotions that sit alongside shame. Service providers tried to cultivate hope for a brighter poverty-free future. Hope was important for people in poverty, but they had smaller versions of hope informed by their everyday struggle. They were also angry at hope lost. Participants co-constructed charity and their experiences of poverty as a messy problem space where difficult and hopeful emotions hang together. The article contributes to the literature by coupling ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ feelings of poverty to trace a ‘political economy of hope’ within the welfare state that nuances people’s experiences of charitable help.
Homeless for the first time in later life: an Australian study
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 29-09-2014
Bold reform or policy overreach? Australia's attack on homelessness: 2008–2013
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-10-2014
An investigation into repeat requests for charity: evidence from the St Vincent de Paul Society Queensland, Australia
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 22-08-2018
Abstract: In advanced industrialized economies, charitable organizations work alongside formal social services provided through welfare states to assist people living in poverty. The work of charities with socially and economically marginalized people, however, often takes place in the absence of robust evidence about what impact charity has on people’s lives. This study draws on a large administrative database to investigate what determines repeat requests for charity and how people may achieve dignity. Our findings show that frequent residential address changes seem to make people more reliant on charity, whereas the more time spent with people receiving charity significantly decreases repeat requests for charity. We propose that the provision of charity can be an opportunity to promote connectedness.
Exiting Unsheltered Homelessness and Sustaining Housing: A Human Agency Perspective
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date: 06-2014
DOI: 10.1086/676318
Striving for Gender Equality: Representations of Gender in Progressive Domestic Violence Policy
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 03-04-2020
Abstract: International feminist scholarship highlights the benefits of approaching domestic violence policy through a gendered lens. Yet to be examined, however, is the extent to which explicitly gendered domestic violence policies may contain barriers that limit the potential benefits of a gendered approach. This qualitative research examines the assumptions embedded in explicitly gendered domestic violence policy in the Australian state of Queensland. Findings suggest that Queensland’s “progressive” domestic violence policy is underpinned by dominant gendered assumptions that reinforce existing unequal social structures. These findings offer important lessons for international jurisdictions that aspire to adopt gendered domestic violence policy.
The role of housing policy in perpetuating conditional forms of homelessness support in the era of housing first: evidence from Australia
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 22-07-2019
Understanding responses to homelessness during COVID-19: an examination of Australia
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 05-10-2020
Governing through (an exclusive) community: Limitations of state conceptualisations of ‘the community’ in domestic violence policies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 26-08-2022
DOI: 10.1017/S1474746422000495
Abstract: In response to growing evidence that cultural values and behaviours are key drivers of men’s use of domestic violence against women, states across the globe are increasingly implementing prevention policies aimed at mobilising cultural change within the community. Through an examination of one Australian state’s recent and significant domestic violence policy reform, we demonstrate that, although state-led efforts to change community culture hold merit, they can also be undermined by exclusive constructions of the community. As a result, efforts to change community culture exclude the very group whose values and behaviours are most problematic: men who perpetrate domestic violence. We argue that broadening conceptualisations of community is of critical importance for policies seeking to change community culture. Such conceptualisations must necessarily include men who perpetrate domestic violence, as theirs are the values and behaviours that most urgently require change.
Common Ground in Australia: An Object Lesson in Evidence Hierarchies and Policy Transfer
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 07-08-2013
Rejecting Wraparound Support: An Ethnographic Study of Social Service Provision
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 06-06-2017
DOI: 10.1093/BJSW/BCX045
Evidence for an integrated healthcare and psychosocial multidisciplinary model to address rough sleeping
Publisher: Hindawi Limited
Date: 26-08-2019
DOI: 10.1111/HSC.12835
Abstract: People who sleep rough/experience unsheltered homelessness face barriers accessing mainstream healthcare and psychosocial services. The barriers to service access exacerbate poor health, which in turn create additional challenges for rough sleepers to access health and psychosocial services, including stable housing. The study presents descriptive statistics to identify housing outcomes of people working with a Multidisciplinary Model that comprises integrated healthcare and psychosocial support, and qualitative data with clients and service providers to investigate how the Model is experienced and delivered in practice. Fieldwork was conducted between December 2016 and March 2018 with the Multidisciplinary Team operating in Cairns, in the far north of Australia. Qualitative data are drawn from in-depth interviews with 26 rough sleepers and 33 health and psychosocial service providers from the Multidisciplinary Team and the wider service system. Descriptive statistics show that 67% of clients who were sleeping rough were supported to immediately access stable housing, and at the end of the program, all clients remained housed. The qualitative findings illustrated how integrated healthcare and psychosocial outreach enabled people sleeping rough to overcome barriers they experienced accessing mainstream healthcare and other services. With the benefit of healthcare, people felt sufficiently well to engage with the psychosocial service providers to have their housing and other psychosocial needs addressed. This article demonstrates how in idual responsibility for and control over healthcare is not only a matter of the in idual, but also a matter requiring systems change and the active provision of resources to cater for the constraints and opportunities present in people's immediate environments.
Assertive outreach as a response to rough sleeping: seeing people, sharing information, and supporting housing access
Publisher: The University of Queensland
Date: 12-09-2023
DOI: 10.14264/A370D12
Created in the image of God? Progressive social services and faith-based organizations
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-09-2021
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