This paper from the 2007 Australian Social Policy Conference explored differences in school engagement and family life for the 16 year olds who have grown up in low-income families and those in higher income families; the links to the workforce for those who have left school early and those still at school; and the history...

This report from stage 7 of the Brotherhood’s longitudinal Life Chances Study, when the young people were aged 15, explores school engagement and transition issues. It reports on interviews with 41 selected fifteen-year-olds and their parents, and contains several illustrative case studies. These young people's engagement with school (at a critical stage) was influenced by...

Peter Saunders, Kelly Sutherland and co-authors report on the first stage of a project designed to develop new indicators of disadvantage for Australia in the new millennium. This stage of their project involved a series of focus group discussions with clients of selected welfare programs that were designed to investigate, in detail, how people experience...

Settling refugees in country towns is not the answer to dwindling regional populations unless support services are improved, according to Janet Taylor and Dayane Stanovic. In this report they look at the settlement experiences of two recent refugee groups (Iraqi and Sudanese) in the Victorian towns of Shepparton, Colac and Warrnambool.

The debate about the regional settlement of refugees takes place within a number of important and at times conflicting policy arenas: humanitarian goals and obligations, population strategy and economic development of regional areas. In a paper for the Australian Social Policy Conference 2005, Janet Taylor discusses a recent Brotherhood of St Laurence study to explore...