Citizenship confers an identity on an individual (such as being a member of a nation-state like Australia), but citizenship is also generally understood to confer rights and obligations. This chapter covers the extent to which non-citizenship and partial citizenship are associated with social exclusion, the relevance of citizenship concepts in promoting social cohesion, the similarities and differences between pre-1960s assimilation of immigrants and 2010s post-multicultural assimilation, and the relationship between globalisation and localism and what it can mean for social exclusion. It directs readers to locate their own values and practices within debates about diversity, rights and entitlements in contemporary Australian society.

Government policy made specifically for and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as distinct from other Australians, evolved from the time of white settlement in 1788. A range of social policy decisions arguably contributed to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experiencing multilevel disadvantage, including lower life expectancy and education levels, poorer physical and mental health and higher rates of infant mortality, unemployment, family violence, incarceration and homelessness than other Australians. This chapter focuses on the assumptions about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that have underpinned past and present social policy, the impact of explicit and implicit racism in past and present policy focused on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, instances of Indigenous policy formulation flaws and delivery implementation gaps, and concepts of equity, citizenship and human rights to measures like compulsory income management. It encourages the reader to reflect on their own value base and practice in light of claims regarding white privilege and the control of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Social policy resists a neat, narrow definition, but broadly speaking it provides the framework for the welfare state – that is, the set of institutional arrangements established to achieve citizen wellbeing. The institutions most relevant to this discussion are generally categorised as the human services, and this draws a narrower focus than public policy, which is taken to refer to all elements of government intervention. The boundaries are blurred, however, because many aspects of public policy (such as taxation and – increasingly – climate change policies) involve distribution and redistribution of resources and generally aim for outcomes broadly compatible with those of social policy. This chapter introduces the concepts and debates circling social policy in Australia in the twenty-first century.

Australia’s system of human services early in the twenty-first century has built on the long-standing combination of service delivery by government departments and NGOs, although over time it has become an increasingly complex and multi-layered system, as described in Chapter 3. This complexity is evident in the way funding and contractual relationships between the state and NGOs have changed, and continue to change, impacting human services professionals, the agencies in which they work and ultimately the end users of services. This chapter covers funding models underpinning social policy implementation and the implication of these for NGOs and their workers, the impermanence of many government priorities and consequent funding for policy delivery and the ways in which this impacts NGOs, the implications for NGOs of governments’ adoption of new public management principles, contractual relationships between the state and NGOs as a precursor to more effective negotiation of contracts when working as a practitioner, and the ways in which the client–worker connection is affected by the terms of the state–NGO contractual funding relationship.

Human services NGOs have long played a key role in Australian social welfare, although the ways in which they have been funded or subsidised by governments have changed over time, as has the extent to which they have had autonomy and control over their own decision-making. At the start of the twenty-first century, human services delivered by NGOs were a driver of the fastest growing sector of the Australian labour force. This chapter focuses on the size, scope and importance of the human services sector in Australia, the policy and funding decisions that impact conditions for workers in human services NGOs, the ways in which a focus on NGOs operating in similar ways to for-profit organisations may change the modus operandi of NGOs and the relationships between workers in and clients of the sector, and debates about the roles and responsibilities of volunteers within the broader context of the human services.

Human services practitioners who are entering the field in the early twenty-first century, or who have worked in the field for some time and have seen wide-ranging changes in the ways human services are conceived, funded and delivered, face the same task of making sense of complexity at the government, organisational and grassroots levels. In analysing current social policy, it is appropriate to ask not only what is expected to be the impact of any proposed policy change on affected individuals and groups but also how the particular issue being addressed has come to be nominated as a social problem and which ideological forces are proposing change or opposing it. Social policy in Australia since white settlement has been shaped by dominant white, Judaeo-Christian values. Beyond that, any classification of Australian political dynamics and debates concerning social policy in terms of competing ideologies risks over-simplification. A distinguishing feature of successive Australian governments in the twentieth century was their respective approaches to social change being shaped by fundamentally different commitments to and strategies of social welfare provision.

As one of Australia’s most controversial political topics, health policy was a major issue in federal elections from the 1940s through the 2010s. Decisions on the contested concepts of social policy play out in this arena as explicitly as any other aspect of social policy. This chapter covers the relationship between health and inequality, the impacts of health policy on vulnerable groups, the suitability of a market model of funding and delivery for health services, contested concepts of welfare within current government health policy, and the impact of Australia’s current health policy on NGOs and their workers.

All advanced countries provide some form of financial support (often with conditions attached) for people who are unable to support themselves – for example, due to being unemployed or older, caring for a dependent or having disability. While most systems use a mix of benefits types in supporting the various categories of people in need of them, the types emphasised vary significantly from country to country and within countries over time. This chapter focuses on poverty, inequality and social exclusion, contested concepts of welfare within a policy domain, changing manifestations by governments of the contested concepts of welfare, income support policy in relation to its impact on people’s lived experiences, and the complex role played by human services professionals in the alleviation of poverty and disadvantage.

Social policy is not developed or delivered in a vacuum. It is the result of a complex web of interactions between policy actors, political ideology, political manoeuvring, and economic and global imperatives and constraints. It is also an interplay of values, beliefs, standpoints about how society should be, and an expression of power and persuasion. It is a constantly shifting and contested powerful environment in which decisions are made, which often have profound effects on the lives of members of a society. Where those effects are felt most keenly is often the territory in which human service workers operate, at the level of working with people experiencing distress and disadvantage. This chapter focuses on major policy-making models and how to apply them in order to analyse Australian social policies, the assumptions made during the development of Australian social policies, the links between fundamental debates in social policy, personal and professional values and the policy-making process, and the impact of policy actors at all stages of problem identification and development, implementation and evaluation of policies.

The term ’family’ is understood differently by English-speaking people around the globe and in Western societies has been understood differently throughout history. In the twenty-first century, it has been demonstrated that fixed criteria concerning kinship and cohabitation cannot be used to define the family, in light of evolutions in family structure, family diversity, roles within the family, economic and sociopolitical dimensions of family life and values attached to the family. This chapter focuses on the links between income support and family functioning and wellbeing, issues of eligibility, entitlement and responsibility in family policy, concepts of equity and fairness in policies purported to enhance opportunities for families, measures that have stated outcomes of protecting children, and their personal philosophy and practice in complex and often challenging situations involving family violence and abuse.

Colonial welfare in Australia operated on the charity model originally imported from the United Kingdom, but by the end of the nineteenth century a distinctive Australian social policy was emerging. Policy at the turn of the twentieth century could be characterised as a manifestation of the egalitarianism for which Australia had been famous, although since then that distinctiveness has been eroded. As the century progressed, there was a convergence of political ideology and perspectives on the welfare state that was influenced by increasing acceptance of a neoliberal ideology by both major political parties. This chapter focuses on the emergence and change over time of Australian social policy, of the differences between a policy position that sees welfare as charity and one that sees welfare as a right of people in times of need, the influence of policy advocates like ACOSS, the Australian Medical Association, religious organisations and unions on the development of social policy, the role of the state within the broader social, political and economic environments, and social policy decisions in terms of government perspectives on the contested concepts of welfare.