Australian social policy and social work practice

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Australian social policy and social work
practice Professor Lesley Chenoweth
Griffith University Queensland, Australia
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Overview

• Australian social welfare overview
• Social work in Australia
• Discussion Questions

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The Australian context

• Australian post-war welfare state British
  origins
• Wage earners welfare state (Castles, 1983)
• Federated model Commonwealth State
  responsibilities

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Tiers of Government
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The Australian context

• Macro changes over the past two decades
• Economic globalisation
• Rise of neo-classical economics
• New public management
• Downsizing the welfare state

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Shift in distribution of income, power resources
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Welfare reform

• Gradual dismantling of the welfare state over
  last 20 years
• Global economic forces tariff removals,
  reconfigured industry and domestic labour market
  
• Old reliance on full-time, life long employment
  now redundant
• OECD recommendations undoing of social
  citizenship rights under income security policies
  
• (McDonald Chenoweth, 2006)

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Welfare reform

• Reduction of welfare
• Initially target- long-term unemployed (1990s)
• Development of Workfare
• Focus on obligations rather than rights
• More recently since 2005
• people with disabilities
• single parents

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Key features of current welfare provisions

• Highly targeted
• Funded by general revenue
• Low levels of payment
• People on benefits live with significant
  financial stress
• Decreasing levels of public support for some
  payments - eg unemployed (Ziguras, 2006)

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Social issues current

• Child protection
• Ageing population
• Health
• Indigenous Australians
• Disability
• Homelessness
• Refugees and asylum seekers
• Regional and rural communities
• The social inclusion agenda

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Australians enjoy one of the longest life
expectancies in the world
71.3
Life expectancy at birth in top 20 OECD
countries 2005
However Indigenous Australians have an average
life expectancy of 59.4 for men and 64.8 for
women1
For more on Indigenous health and disadvantage,
see The Future of Indigenous Australia
1. 2001 data 2. 2004 data Note Ireland, Italy
and Luxembourg excluded from 2004 OECD life
expectancy data Source OECD, Health Data 2005
Productivity Commission, Overcoming Indigenous
Disadvantage (2007) "Strategic Areas For Action"
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Social work in Australia

• In 1939, the first degree level social work
  program at Uni of Sydney. In 2010, 26 degree
  programs across Australia
• Social work BSW degree MSW
• Professional body Australian Association of
  Social Workers AASW
• AASW accredits programs including a 4-year
  BSocWk, 2-year graduate entry and since 2008, a
  Masters qualifying program (Healy Lonne,
  2010)
• Social workers employed in
• Federal government eg Centrelink
• State governments eg child protection , health
  , disability, mental health
• Community sector - large charities, faith based
  agencies, small to medium organisations
• Private practice - increasing

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Social work in Australia

• Social work is not a registered profession unlike
  in UK, USA and New Zealand (Lonne Duke 2008)
• Participation rate of low income students in
  Higher Education is lower than representation in
  the community, and static since 2002
• Significant reforms since 1986 have led to
  greater co-operation between higher education and
  Vocational Education sector (in Healy Lonne,
  2010) and improved pathways from VET sector into
  Higher Education

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Trends in Social Work and Human Services

• Human services 4th fastest industry sector
• Demand for qualified practitioners is high
• Rural and remote recruitment and retention
• Some sectors employing 3 year trained graduates
  eg child protection, NGOs
• Casualisation of workforce
• More flexible modes of delivery

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Trends in Social Work and Human Services

• Decreased professional autonomy
• Management of risk (Healy Meagher, 2004
  Baines,2006)
• Move to use of ICT technologies call centres,
  on line counselling
• Use of computer technology for surveillance of
  clients?
• Fly in fly out service delivery to remote areas

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Centrelink

• Government agency administers eligibility,
  payments and compliance
• Employs large numbers of social workers (650)
• Sites of service delivery offices and call
  centres
• Highly technologised (ICT) service delivery
• Coordinates Australia disaster social work
  responses eg
• Asian tsunami
• Victorian bushfires
• Bali bombings

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On a typical day, Centrelink IT supports 55,000
business function points in 14 million lines of
code through 8000 functions on 3200 screens to
31,000 desktops and 400 LAN servers in 1000
sites. This means that 13,000 users concurrently
generate 12 million online transactions each day
on 14 million customer records
(Vardon, 2003)
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Questions and Discussion

• Does Australia have too many levels of government
  and service delivery?
• What do you think are the main features of social
  welfare in Australia?
• How are they different/ similar to Norway?
• What do you see as the roles for social workers
  in Australia?
• Should Australian social workers become
  registered?