Special Collections

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    Social factors in illness
    ( 1973-09) Graycar, Adam
    Man is a biological entity, but it is eroneous to think of him simply as a biological entity - man in these circumstances would be a non-entity. The collection of tissues - of muscles, blood, brain and water that together make up man exist within a social, cultural, and political setting. The well-being of the organism depends largely on the extent to which it adapts to its environment. Terms such as "well being", of course, are open to much argument and semantic dispute - "well being" varies from society to society.
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    Non-Government welfare organisations
    ( 1975-10) Graycar, Adam
    Government has a clear constituency, a reasonably well understood sense of responsibility and accountability, and sufficient resources to undertake the jobs it chooses to perform for the community. Voluntary agencies, on the other hand, do not have any clear constituency, nor sense of accountability. They choose their constituency and range of accountability themselves and do pretty well as they please with their resources. The dichotomy that emerges is that government can appear to be able to concentrate on social planning and policy development in a forward looking way while voluntary agencies must focus on service delivery only, and in a fragmented and limited manner. That government must be intimately involved in welfare cannot be disputed at all. Government's potency as intervener and underwriter derives from the complexity of the modern economy and the social and economic consequences of an industrial society. Report includes comments by Professor Ray Brown on centrally planned changes to the federal, state and local systems of welfare.
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    Participation
    ( 1976-11) Graycar, Adam
    Can the poorly educated person of low socio-economic status participate equally with the well trained engineer in the shiny suit? Is participation a threat to expertise? This is one of the themes taken up in the context of our varying conceptions of social welfare, our varying views on participation and the balance between citizen power, community leadership and bureaucratic expertise.
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    Consultative arrangements in social policy : the Second Bailey Report
    ( 1978-11) Graycar, Adam
    As Welfare Statism progressed from infancy to maturity it became increasingly apparent that the aspirations of those who stood to gain were being achieved in only the most limited manner. Significant steps were made in income security and opportunity security, but the relationship between donor and recipient was very much a one-way affair. Governments decided what steps should be taken to move more closely towards a welfare society, and target groups accepted the ensuing benefits with feelings of grudging gratitude and increasing powerlessness.
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    Backlash and the public sector : does the welfare state have a future?
    ( 1979-09) Graycar, Adam
    The Welfare State, once seen as an important mechanism for alleviating poverty and for redistributing resources is going into low gear. It has come under fire from critics on both the left and the right. Those on the left argue that it has failed to live up to its redistributive expectations (which, they claim, were unrealistic within the context of liberal democracy) while those on the right claim that it is wasteful, inefficient, and morally repugnant. Arguments about the present and future performance of the Welfare State are arguments about claims made on the system, and the legitimacy of those claims. This paper examines these themes,and studies notions of backlash and overload from three perspectives.
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    Social responsibility of business
    ( 1980-04) Graycar, Adam
    Looks at the interdependence of the welfare system and business in society.
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    Ageing in Australia: a pointer to political dilemmas
    ( 1981-00) Graycar, Adam
    The social consequence of ageing is cumulative exclusion of a significant number of people from income, jobs, and meaningful roles in society. The political consequence is determination of the legitimacy of claims made by those excluded, and the developing of policies to accommodate those whose claims are successfully presented. Low income and exclusion from the labour force creates a state of dependency. Future prospects for the well-being of Australia's elderly population centre on political claims for adequate income together with a service structure which can provide high quality social services. The scene is set for some major political debates about public and private provision of cash and services to Australia's elderly population. All persons, elderly and non-elderly alike make claims for allocations, which affect their well being, on four institutions - the state, the family, employers and the local community.
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    Public policy and the non-government welfare sector
    ( 1981-08) Graycar, Adam ; Yates, Ian
    This is a working paper for a larger report "Non-government welfare and the state". From the earliest days in colonial Australia 'charitable organisations' have been part of the social welfare system. Also from the earliest days these organisations have depended, in varying degrees, on public funds. The Commonwealth Task Force on Co-ordination in Welfare and Health (Bailey Report, Vol.2, p.32) estimated that there were between 15,000 and 60,000 organisations and agencies in Australia active in welfare/health/community development.
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    Changing needs of the Australian community
    ( 1981-08) Graycar, Adam
    In Australia, as in other industrial nations, expenditure on social policy items consumes the largest single item of public expenditure. This has led to intense political debate about whether we can continue to afford these expenditures. On the one hand there are those who maintain that we cannot continue to spend the amounts that we do on social well being; and on the other is the view that we cannot afford not to spend as much, or more, than we presently do.
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    An agenda for Australian social policy research
    ( 1981-10) Graycar, Adam
    There are two ways of talking about research and how research fits into a policy agenda. First of all, we can talk about where research fits into policy generally, and secondly, how in the research centre where I work we have identified the policy issues. We are an academic research body, not a policy body.
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    Health and social policy
    ( 1981-11) Graycar, Adam
    Problems in health care planning and delivery are part of the political economy of all modern industrial nations regardless of the financing mechanisms used, regardless of the degree of regulation attempted, regardless of the "health of the nation", regardless of consumer involvement and regardless of ideology. Together with rising demands, and cost, inequality of access to health care exists; there is a maldistribution of health care personnel; there is limited co-ordination and little incentive for co-ordination between health and social services; and consumer activity in health care is not strong.
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    Ageing in Australia: overview and social policy
    ( 1982-00) Graycar, Adam
    Elderly people require a wide range of supports, especially income support, health services, housing support and social services. Public resources which are allocated are substantial, yet the range of incomes, access to services and housing situation of elderly people is probably wider than for any other population category. While demographers argue about the extent to which the population is ageing, and about dependency ratios in years to come, the key issue is really why ageing is seen as a problem in the first place. In the second place, the question of for whom is it a problem must be raised; and third, what interventions are appropriate to deal with the situation.
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    An eye for evaluation
    ( 1982-00) Graycar, Adam ; Moller, Jerry
    A model is developed by which evaluation of social work services can study a cross-section of factors which affect the performance of that service. It demonstrates how the boundaries of an evaluation can be defined without developing a biased pattern of accountability.
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    Social aspects of dependence and family care
    ( 1982-02) Graycar, Adam
    Ageing in Australia (and in other industrial societies) is seen by many as a problem because it is so often associated with dependency. Dependency, I would argue, is socially structured and created, and the social consequence of ageing is cumulative exclusion of a significant number of people from income, jobs, and meaningful roles in society. The dependencies associated with ageing are chronic rather than transitional - furthermore they are not legitimized as are the dependencies of the young, who are seen as the producers and consumers of tomorrow. Dependency is a difficult concept to see clearly and unambiguously. It means different things to different people - it has a specific meaning in demography - a very different meaning in the bio-medical world and again a different meaning in terms of social constructs.
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    Who are the carers ; what are their needs?
    ( 1982-03) Graycar, Adam
    The rates of chronic illness in all industrial societies are very high. Chronic conditions increase in incidence with age. The Australian Bureau of Statistics survey identified the extent of chronicity in Australia, classifying any person aged 65 or more who has an activity limitation. Activity limitations mean that people with chronic conditions need some form of social and medical support. It is not known how many people with activity limitations live in institutional care, how many live alone, or how many live with relatives. The important policy questions are to try to determine what sort of support mechanisms are feasible to ensure that quality of life is enhanced and that adequate care is made available. There has been a worldwide emphasis on family policy and that families ought themselves to take care of their dependent elderly. It is important to ensure that families in a caring situation are provided with adequate support.
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    Traditional agencies
    ( 1982-03) Graycar, Adam
    The Wolfenden Committee in the U.K. identified four sectors which provide "social care" - the statutory, the commercial, the informal, and the "voluntary". The preferred term for "voluntary" is "non-government". The Social Welfare Research Centre, in conjunction with SACOSS is conducting a study of NGWOs, comprising roughly 37,000 agencies in Australia. The studies have been testing some of the theory that's been developed overseas, especially the relationship between non-government organizations and government, which in many cases is a heavy sponsor of NGWOs.
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    Non-government welfare organizations - policies and politics
    ( 1982-03) Graycar, Adam
    The Social Welfare Research Centre has conducted a study which tries to identify the number of non-government welfare organizations (NGWOs) in Australia and developed a classification. Our survey indicates there are approximately 37,000 non-government welfare organizations. NGWOs vary enormously from large traditional agencies providing care in a fairly organised and hierarchical manner (found particularly in some of the residential settings dealing with disabled and elderly people) right through to very small community groups which have been established to meet a particular need and run largely by consumers themselves.
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    Social policy
    ( 1982-04) Graycar, Adam
    Social policy is a broad term which describes systems of allocations in any society in which benefits are distributed to individuals and communities so that they might attain a certain standard of living and/or quality of life. there is often great disagreement about why anything should be allocated, what it is that is allocated, who the recipients ought to be, how generous the allocations ought to be, who should do the allocation, and how it might be financed. In Australia the debates about these issues have closely paralleled debates in other affluent industrialised nations. Increasing industrialisation has not automatically benefited all the people in the community. Industrial progress has not eliminated poverty, it has not ensured that all people are adequately housed, adequately serviced with health care, have adequate access to the employment market, will receive adequate incomes.
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    Trends in social and community services in the future
    ( 1982-07) Graycar, Adam
    Those of us involved in social welfare, either as service providers or as academic researchers, are concerned with the well being of people in our community - with levels of living, with peoples' access to quality care, and informal social supports - in short with standards of life and of living. The majority of people in our modern, affluent, industrial society enjoy a standard of living that is envied the world over, but a very large minority miss out. It is the combination of three things - tangible resources, effective services and close companionship that our welfare structures are geared towards. Governments, voluntary agencies (like Legacy) and informal structures (like families and other local networks) each deliver what they can. All are under immense pressure in a changing world. The number of elderly people is increasing and this will bring a range of mounting health problems, income difficulties and high levels of dependency. What we are faced with is an explosion of social care, and one of the most difficult tasks facing us is to determine how to specify target populations who ought to receive the major focus of our attention, how to allocate the resources, and how to determine how the various care sectors - that is government, the voluntary sector, and the family, play their respective roles.
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    Agencies, services and Government funding
    ( 1982-08) Graycar, Adam ; Silver, Wendy
    State governments provide for disabled people's needs through their departments of health, education and welfare. Most State Governments also provide funds to non-government welfare organizations (NGWOs) in this area of service. The Commonwealth Government provides for income security through the invalid pension. It also supports some families with disabled members via the Handicapped Child's Allowance and Domiciliary Nursing Benefits as well as some direct services through its network of rehabilitation centres. Through the Department of Social Security's "Handicapped Persons Welfare Programme" it subsidises the activities of NGWOs providing services for disabled people. Late in 1981 a study was conducted of some aspects of the functioning of NGWOs providing services to disabled people in Western Australia. A full report of the study has been published as a monograph by the authors entitled "Funding of Non-Government Welfare: Agencies Serving Disabled People in Western Australia".