Guest Post: Getting Social Policy Back on the Election Agenda

By Alison Moffitt. Also available here.

The Policy Unit released a report yesterday that is getting tons of coverage, which is very exciting for us. Nothing like a political media release in the middle of an election campaign. Unfortunately the kinds of issues it raises are not issues that the pollies are engaging with this time around. None of them have talked extensively about social policy or looking after marginalised, until Julia Gillard's announcement today about a new disability insurance scheme.

The report we released focused on three groups in society who are particularly vulnerable:

• people who access Emergency Relief (food, clothing, bills assistance etc);
• African refugees, many of whom struggle to settle because of housing problems; and
• ageing parent carers, that is, older people who are looking after adult children with disabilities. Many of these parents are ageing and developing their own health issues, which makes their caring responsibilities even harder.

So many outlets have run with the story. It's been rad. The best two I have seen so far are:

1. This article from the Sydney Morning Herald (If you don't read anything else, make sure you read this one.)
2. The news story put together by ABC TV, which aired at midday today and hopefully will be on air on tonight's news too. (My colleagues and I are in it!)

Other places to pick up the story include Channel 7, 2UE radio, ABC radio and Sydney Anglican Media.

If you can, please check out the report. These are very important issues to think about, especially if you live in Australia. You can find it here. There is a link to download the report at the bottom of the page.

Guest Post: Foray Into Media-Land

A syndicated guest post by Alison Moffitt

My department has been working on a report for the last couple of months that was released to the media on Tuesday (November 10) as part of Anglicare's Christmas appeal launch. It's the first time that I have ever written something for the public, and even though very few people outside of the industry will read it, it was still kind of cool to have something out there that was covered in the news for a fleeting moment.

The report was an update on a larger report my co-workers put together in June. It was an analysis of trends among people who access emergency relief services from Anglicare - the kind of help that comes in the form of emergency financial assistance for people who are really struggling to pay bills and buy food. The previous report identified that

- single mothers
- indigenous people
- people in public housing
- people who lived alone

were massively overrepresented.

It also called for a better emergency relief model. Many single mothers, indigenous people, single person households and people in public housing struggle with many other social and financial issues that can't be addressed by giving them a food hamper or paying off an occasional electricity bill. The government currently only funds organisations like Anglicare for this kind of assistance. When emergency relief staff spend time helping people negotiate centrelink or helping people access counselling services, parenting classes, drug and alcohol programs, budgeting classes or anything that isn't a financial transaction, the organisation has to subsidise it themselves.

Our update happened because we got an extra 5 months of data which helped us see how the global financial crisis impacted on these people. Firstly, there were more of them. The demand for services increased, although we couldn't actually help many more people because we were already operating at capacity. The same sorts of people were accessing services but, they were coming with different problems. Many many more people were coming because they were having trouble securing housing, and many many more were presenting with unemployment.

If you want to check out the report, you can find it here.

If you are more of a visual person, you can look at the wordle instead:


So on Tuesday, the report was made public, there were media releases and the report was covered by both Fairfax and News Limited with an identical story, although different headlines (having taken the story from AAP). I'm not sure how that works. This is my first experience like this, but somehow I wasn't surprised when the reports were dramatically incorrect. I am never complaining about poor journalism in the Sydney Anglican newspaper ever again. It has nothing on this. They just copied and pasted extracts of the Anglicare media release, and then got creative. They changed 'increased' to 'rocketed' and pulled out the biggest stats they could find from the media release. They also made up something about increasing requests for counselling and family services, even though (as I just mentioned) the only data we had was for people coming to financial assistance, and the media release was pretty straightforward about that. It's making me suspicious of most of what I have ever read in the newspapers.

This post is also available here.

Two Must Read Articles on Social Welfare in Sydney

Firstly, Stephen Judd (CEO Hammond Health Care) and Anne Robinson (Chair, World Vision) spoke on "Christianity and Australia’s Social Services" at Australia’s Christian Heritage National Forum, Parliament House, 2006. Their paper reveals some surprising results about the nature of non-government welfare providers in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Less than a quarter of the top 25 US charities are Christian, in the UK there are only three such Christian agencies. In Australia by comparison, 23 of the top 25 non-profit organisations by income are Christian organisations - almost all focused on social services. Make sure you read this paper (h/t APK for drawing my attention to it).

Secondly, last Friday Peter Kell (CEO ANGLICARE Sydney) delivered the annual Richard Johnson Lecture at the University of Wollongong. It is well worth reading for what Kell says about 'social exclusion' and urban planning in Sydney. See also this.

Kell also sets out a rational for caring:

"For Christians, deeply aware of the nature of saving grace in their lives and the need to honestly question any personal motivation beyond a simple response to grace, the question of why we care is just as important as the question of how we care. And this is especially true also for an organisation like ANGLICARE, a Sydney Anglican
diocesan organisation charged with delivering care beyond the scope of individual Christians and the local church but, wherever possible, in partnership with them. ANGLICARE Sydney has always been committed to the reality that the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. So it must first be said unequivocally, that for ANGLICARE the gospel is primary."

Kell goes onto quote Don Carson's sermon on 1 Cor. 15 at the 2007 Gospel Coalition Pastors’ Colloquium. According to Carson, the gospel is primary because it is:

1. Christological: that is, that the gospel centres on the person and work (the life, death and resurrection) of Jesus Christ.
2. Theological: The gospel tells us that sin is first and foremost an offence against God and that salvation is first to last the action of God, not our own.
3. Biblical: The gospel is essentially the message of the whole Bible.
4. Apostolic: The gospel is passed on to us by Jesus’ disciples as authoritative eyewitnesses.
5. Historical: The gospel is not philosophy or advice on how to find God, but rather the news of what God has done in history to find and save us.
6. Personal: The gospel must be personally believed and appropriated.
7. Universal: The gospel is for every tongue, tribe, people and individual.
8. Eschatological: The gospel includes the good news of the final transformation, not just the blessings we enjoy in this age.

I'm happy to say a hearty Amen! to this (although it is probably far too individualistic, and if you are going to talk about sin in the second point then I would also want to talk about evil). But I would add a ninth point: the gospel is primary because it is political. This has been touched on in several points, but I think it needs to be explicit. The gospel is primary because it is political: Jesus Christ is Lord. He is Lord over the evil powers, he is Lord over earthly powers, and he is Lord over my life. The gospel is political because it brings about the obedience of faith from among the nations and demands that I submit every aspect of my life to the Lordship of Christ. This makes the gospel primary and also provides a basis for caring - because Jesus isn't satisfied with just our souls, but demands also our heart, souls mind and strength in every part of our life.