Making & Breaking Social Policy

This week, we are talking with Associate Professor CatherineRobinson about child and youth homelessness. Catherine challenges us about the person we imagine when we think about homeless children and young people. She showsus that who we imagine is homeless makes it easier for us to ignore the issue, but also changes how we might respond.

We also discuss the potential changes to negative gearingand capital gains tax. We use Carroll Bacchi’s WPR question 6 to think about where these ideas are disseminated, disrupted and reproduced.

This week we are talking with Associate Professor Deb Greenabout school bullying and the subjects of social policies. Deb’s research has focused on the persistent bully, or those who keep bullying despite intervention. She also helps us think about the other people, institutions and social norms that make bullying in schools possible.

We also briefly discuss the major changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme announced by the Australian Federal Government. We use Carrol Bacchi’s WPR question 5 to think about the discursive, lived and subjectification effects of these changes.  

This week we are talking with the South Australian Youth Forum about loneliness and the importance of youth voice in research and decision-making.

The SA Youth Forum help us understand the value for youngpeople and for research on important topics like loneliness of including them as much as possible in making decisions and designing projects.

We also make a connection to the work of an earlier guest onthe podcast, The Guardian for Children and Young People, and her recent report on the state of holding cells in the Youth Court.

This week we are talking with Professor Philippa Collinabout young people’s political participation and the impact of recent policy that restricts access to social media.

Philippa helps us think about ideas like child rights, digitalcitizenship and how society (including adults) might benefit from young people’sparticipation in decision-making and policy.

Professor Philippa Collin is Principal Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University and co-director of the Young and Resilient Research Centre. She researches the role of the digital in the social, cultural and political lives of young people, with a focus on the implications for health and wellbeing. Her work is alsoconcerned with new forms of political participation, identity and governance as they relate to the dynamics of elitism and exclusion.

We are talking with Dr Alice Campbell about Domestic and Family violence and examining underpinning presuppositions and assumptions.

We also think about the presuppositions and assumptions within the reporting on the One Nation result in the recent SA Election.

This episode was recorded on the 24/03/26. The election results discussed in this episode are not yet finalised and are discussed based on the reporting at the time.

Dr Alice Campbell is a Lecturer in Social Research at the University of Tasmania. Her research examines inequalities in gender, intimate relationships and families across the life course. Her work on sexual fluidity among women and inequalities by sexual identity established her as a leading quantitative scholar in this field.

We are talking about problem representations in social policy through the lens of the reporting on the algal bloom in South Australia.

Dr Kirsten Macaitis from JBI at Adelaide University joins us to help make sense of the ways that different types of knowledge shape how we respond to social issues.

We are talking about “ramping” in South Australia with the excellent Dr Jodie Curth-Bibb, Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Flinders University.

It is just 11 days away from an election at the time of recording and Jodie helps us understand the complexity of the political landscape in South Australia and Australia. This context is important for thinking about making a case for change in Social Policy in Australia.

It’s a new era at Making and Breaking Social Policy with a new format and co-host! Welcome (back) to Dr Tin Ablaza!

We are recording live each week for the next 8 weeks with arange of guests and topics.

In this episode, we chat about the new format, our different approaches to social policy and some proposed policies in the upcoming South Australian Election focussing on Public Education and Transport.

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Tin drops in to tell us about her research on Workforce Australia and how it measures up as a way to tackle precarity and unemployment in Australia.

We chat about Work for the Dole, Mutual Obligations and the casualisation of work. Honestly, it was a huge chat and we could have talked for ages. Thanks Tin!

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Julia drops in to tell us about her research on what it is really like when people borrow from the bank of Mum and Dad when they want to buy a home... or from their siblings! We then break down the pros and cons of the policies Labor, the Coalition, and the Greens took to the 2025 Federal election.

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Shona chats about her approach to working with children and young people in Child Protection and Juvenile Justice to raise their voices and insights about legislation that impact their lives. Talking about recently proposed changes to the Children and Young People (Safety and Support) Bill 2024, Shona describes how this approach provided important insight into issues like Child Rights and Privacy.

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Tharin and Leah share about their PhD projects and the challenges and rewards of competing in the Flinders Uni 3 Minute Thesis competition. Tharin is investigating a solution for Tinnits that involves zapping brains and Leah is investigating the impact on self-compassion in how we act to ourselves and others.

Luke - now an official friend of the Pod ;) - chats about his new paper about Yarning as a culturally protected practice and how it can be used appropriately in social work research.

Dr Rachael Owens explains Contextual Safeguarding and how it complements Family Group conferencing in the UK. She also shares about her career in creative arts and how it informs her Social Work practice and scholarship.

More about Rachael here -

A/Prof Keming Yang chats about his research on loneliness among 14 year olds utilising the Millennium Cohort Study. He describes the need to rethink the way we conceptualise loneliness to account for the presence of undesirable connections and relationships (like bullying).

Tiff Downing and Jessie Bennie chat about the youth mentoring program at the Sammy D Foundation and why it makes for good policy (and good practice) with young people. Sammy D recently partnered with the Social Work Innovation Research Living Space at Flinders Uni to conduct an evaluation of this program. The evaluation used an innovative method called ‘friendship as method’ which leveraged the mentoring relationship between the mentor and mentee to gain rich insights into the mentoring experience.

A/Prof Andrew Orton chats about his experience of working with policymakers and practitioners in policy creation through participatory practices. We discuss the opportunities and challenges of participatory practices in this context including the ethical dilemmas, power structures, and building collaborative responses to social issues.

A/Prof Jonathon Wistow chats about how despite the hold of competitive and possessive individualism in neoliberal societies, he thinks the Social Contract is not yet broken.

This is a special episode about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament.

This episode is a republishing of a Voice to Parliament event organised by the Office of Indigenous Strategy and Engagement at Flinders University.

The panel includes:

• Dwayne Coulthard, member of the Uluru Dialogue, SA
• Dr. Rob Manwaring, Associate Professor of Politics and Policy
• Dr. Rowan Nicholson, Lecturer in Law
• Dr. Jessica Genauer, Senior Lecturer in International Relations

Thank you to Flinders University and the Office of Indigenous Strategy and Engagement for permission to republish this event.

Kit Lian talks about the opportunities and challenges of managing a prison as a social worker. Kit Lian is one of the first social workers to manage a prison in South Australia. We chat about the tensions when implementing government policy in a prison while maintaining social work values such as the goal of rehabilitation.

Dr Alhassan chats with us about his work on child protection and a recent project investigating the welfare of refugee children in Ghana.

Alhassan talks about the importance of engaging with multiple stakeholders (refugees, professionals and community) to gain a holistic understanding of the barriers to child protection.

This episode focuses on school bullying as an issue that is tied to the social experiences of being young, as well as the spaces and times (spatiotemporal) when and where school bullying happens.

This episode is a recording from Flinders Uni’s Fearless Minds Series, in which I am interviewed about my research on School Bullying and Youth Violence.

Thank you to Flinders Uni for permission to use the audio.

Isabelle Hermes (PhD candidate at Flinders University) comes to chat about Addictions and Drug Policy in Australia. She has a practice background in Social Work as a drug and alcohol counsellor with homeless, criminalised, and at-risk young people. Isabelle unpacks the key pillars in the National Drug Strategy as well as international approaches to decriminalisation, legalisation and regulation of drugs.

Kylie (CEO of Community Centres SA) chats about the findings of a research project on what Community Centres are doing to tackle loneliness and build social connection. We discuss the importance of physical and social ‘bumping spaces’ that encourage interaction and building connection. Kylie also tells us why she loves community development and advocacy.

Erin tells us about the findings from an in-depth national investigation of Australian young people’s attitudes and understanding of domestic violence from her work with ANROWS. Erin describes the implications for policy and practice design of discovering a gender-ignoring lens – utopian gender-free assumptions – in young people’s attitudes and how these insights were uncovered through research that facilitated young people ‘filling in the gaps’.

Nat talks to us about what is and will be done about the skyrocketing housing market locking young people out of homeownership, the backlog of social housing need and the policy choices that produce homelessness. She plans to put homefulness on the policy agenda and lived experience at the heart of policymaking in SA.

Nat also mentions:

In this episode, Lexi talks to us about her experience of growing up in out of home care. She is an advocate for the Make it 21 campaign championed by the CREATE Foundation.

In this episode, Dr Sarah Moulds from Uni SA gives us a realistic but hopeful account of her experience and research on getting the community involved in legislation and policy creation. She talks us through the various mechanism governments use to consult with the public and give us some hot tips and tricks about how to use them most effectively.

Find Sarah here:

In this episode Sean Lappin (Connected Self) and Luke Cantley (SWIRLS) chat about the Raising the Age of Criminal Responsibility Campaign. Drawing on ideas including Two Way Learning, Self Determination for Aboriginal People, Restorative Justice and Intergenerational Trauma they help us imagine an alternative to locking up 10 year-olds and perpetuating cycles of criminality.

Resources:

Dr Michelle Jones chats about her research on the sustainability of the Obesity Prevention and Lifestyle (OPAL) program run in South Australia between 2009 and 2017. She unpacks how a shift in the program funding spurred the community to take ownership over part of the project they valued most.

Find Michelle and her work

Dr Carmela Bastian chats about her research on the factors the facilitate the centring children in social work practice in the child protection system. She talks about how children can be made invisible due to the competing priorities of the child protection system, but also how social workers draw on a range of resources, including practice wisdom, to recentre and prioritise children’s voices.

Find Carmela and her work on:

Prof Sarah Wendt and Senior Lecturer Kate Seymour chat about the implication of the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children for developing a Domestic Violence Workforce. They draw attention to the gendered nature of the problem of domestic violence and the similarly gendered nature of the workforce.

Dr Joel McGregor and I have a chat about what change is really possible in young people’s lives through case management.

Joel is a Lecturer in Criminology at Swinburne University. His work focuses on the complex relational practices that make up a case manager’s day-to-day work. We chat about a paper we published recently together that examines case management ratios, reporting requirements and qualifications in Flexible Learning Options and Joint Support Program.