2018, Bennett, Cary

The concept of 'moral panics' continues to be used as a framework for analysing the causes, structures and functions of social and political crises. Nonetheless, as an analytical tool, such a framework is limited in its capacity to explain the ongoing and interconnected relationships between drugs and society. Drawing first on an interdiscursive and intertextual framework, the field of analysis is broadened to consider how recent drug panics in Australia depend upon, signify and condense wider social and historical anxieties around drugs and other social problems. However, such an approach also has its limitations given that the play of intertextuality is conditioned by relations of power at the level of what Foucault calls a 'dispositive', a historically contingent configuration that strategically orientates our responses to the problem. Three dispositional drug-related prototypes are considered and how they work together to shape, reinforce and condition the drug problem and our responses to it.

2008, Bennett, Cary

This article questions conceptualisations and attributions that record the emergence of Australia's first national drug campaign as a necessary and inevitable governmental response to an escalating social problem around drug abuse. I argue that the proposal for, and subsequent establishment of, the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NCADA) in 1984-85 was contingent upon historically specific discourses and events in the lead up to the 1984 federal election that were not primarily or solely concerned with drug use or 'abuse' (as suggested by the campaign's title), but with perceptions of crime and governmental corruption, and the social and political anxiety these were generating. As such the NCADA was more an expression of political rather than health concerns.

2015, Rahn, Alison, Lykins, Amy, Bennett, Cary, Jones, Tiffany

With Consumer Directed Care (CDC) on the horizon and a wave of baby boomers who are ageing, aged care providers need to be aware of and respect the desires and requirements of future 'consumers'. In contrast with current provider arrangements, funding is linked to the individual rather than the institution in a CDC model, with the likelihood that there will be greater demand for those facilities that meet emerging consumer expectations and offer couple-friendly environments. One group that has largely been ignored at all levels in residential care, from government policy to service provision, is couples, or partnered individuals. Situated within a broader study exploring the needs of partnered baby boomers, this paper investigates whether existing residential aged care facilities provide the conditions needed to facilitate the sexual and intimacy needs of partnered aged care residents. Such exploration is particularly pertinent at a time when the National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) Ageing and Aged Care Strategy is being implemented. In this presentation we report on early findings of a phenomenological study using semi-structured interviews conducted in 2015 with 29 key informants with expertise and experience in aged care law, policy, practice, health, education, research and related service areas. Early findings suggest that difficult though necessary conversations are being avoided by older people, by those representing them, and by service providers. Recommendations for aged care providers include the need for comprehensive education and training in the areas of sexuality and intimacy with the aim to facilitate communication around residents' sexual needs and the formulation of individually tailored care plans. We believe that such initiatives would have the potential to create more positive outcomes for partnered older persons and aged care staff.

2016, Rahn, Alison, Jones, Tiffany, Bennett, Cary, Lykins, Amy

Despite legal protections, couples in Australian residential aged care facilities experience institutional interference in their intimate and sexual relationships. Panoptic surveillance remains widespread in aged care. Little attention is given to privacy. Some residents' doors are kept open at all times. Couples may be separated or provided with single beds only, unable to push them together. Staff frequently enter without knocking, commonly ignore 'do not disturb signs' and often gossip about residents. This culture has its origins in colonial institutions. Attempts at legislative reform to redress this situation have been met with mixed responses, with the most vociferous opposition coming from religious conservatives. A recurrent source of conflict is the tension between the 'rights' of religious and political institutions versus those of individuals. This article identifies systemic issues faced by partnered aged care residents, their historical origins, and the legislation that is designed to protect residents. Using a thematic analysis methodology, it reviews political debates in the past 40 years, in both federal Parliament and newspapers, and provides a critical analysis of recurrent themes and ideologies underpinning them. It concludes with recommendations for legislation that is consultative and 'person-centred' and recommends proscriptive privacy protections. Adoption of these ideas in future policy reforms has the potential to create more positive outcomes for partnered aged care residents.

2011, Bennett, Cary

This article examines key aims, objectives, technologies, strategies, and procedures utilised in Australian methadone maintenance programs over the past thirty years. An examination of the major policy documents reveal that, in addition to medico-health concerns, methadone programs have been strategically deployed to manage specific sociopolitical problems including illicit drug use, crime, and the spread of infectious diseases. The techniques, technologies, and procedures utilised in methadone programs and the 'disciplinary monotony' of the methadone regime itself aim to produce a more compliant, conforming, and self-regulating subject. It is argued that the promotion of methadone maintenance as a 'treatment' modality obscures these disciplinary objectives and the political goals that have fostered them.

2020-12, Bennett, Cary

This article draws from a wider research project undertaken in 2018 in Armidale, a small regional city in New South Wales (NSW) Australia, to explore the challenges commercial venues face in presenting and maintaining a regular live music programme. An analysis of the main themes suggests that the issues regional venues encounter are often qualitatively and/or quantitatively different from those facing their urban counterparts. This research found that regulatory issues, such as licensing, planning and noise, were not considered major impediments to regularly hosting live music. Rather, finding and accessing affordable quality bands in the numbers and styles needed to keep audiences coming to gigs, and getting audiences to regularly attend and spend money in the numbers needed to sustain the gigs, were identified as ongoing difficulties. Although venues in larger metropolitan cities are often confronted with similar problems, these are not the sort of issues that stand out in the research in this area. Rather the regulatory environment is emphasised. By drawing attention to the non-regulatory challenges regional venues face, important new avenues of research are opened up that will benefit live music scenes across Australia.

2016, Flatt, Jeffrey Stephen, Humphries, Judy, Bennett, Cary

This thesis explores the interface between professional knowledge and evidence-based medicine research for Australian naturopathic and Western herbal medicine practitioners. The focus is the boundary between practice philosophies, concepts of illness causality, reasoning of knowledge and the ways participants negotiate epistemological pluralism in relation to these. The aim is to clarify reasoning underlying action and to understand how this intersects with current concepts of knowing in healthcare.

2020-07-24, Wardle, Sabina, Bennett, Cary

This research project deals with the important topic of palliative care services in regional New South Wales (NSW), Australia. There is an increasing emphasis on meeting the healthcare needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities in Australia. Negotiating the point of culturally appropriate care and the transition to palliative care requires effective communication and sensitivity to socio-cultural, religious, spiritual and linguistic needs. This can be a challenging process for clinicians, patients, and families.

Employing Leininger’s Trans-Cultural Theory, Engel’s biopsychosocial model and Fricker’s concept of “epistemic injustice” in context with healthcare for marginalised migrant groups, this exploratory empirical case study was undertaken in three towns of the Riverina region of NSW (Wagga Wagga, Griffith, and Albury). A burgeoning population group of Punjabi Indians residing in the Riverina region was chosen for this study. Group interviews were conducted with six locally based Punjabi Indian families that had experienced care services at their local residential aged care services. To complement and provide a more comprehensive picture, group interviews were also conducted with care staff (nurses and personal care assistants) of residential aged care facilities (RACFs) in the same towns.

In line with the exploratory nature of this research, a qualitative approach was adopted utilising an interpretive phenomenological methodology in the design, implementation and presentation of findings of the research. The informants in the research were selected through a non-random, purposeful selection process. Thematic analysis was used to determine the major findings of this study.

The study identified barriers to appropriate and equitable palliative care and services for regionally based Punjabi Indians, with important implications for the wider CALD population. The study argues that the dominant medical knowledge base in context to palliative care services does not adequately account for experiences of the CALD population. To build a stronger foundation for the quality of culturally appropriate care, the palliative care sector must undertake fundamental change. Central to this reenvisioned approach is respect for cultural and religious practices that one is required to follow at end of life. The study proposes strategies to strengthen palliative care delivery models in regional areas of NSW by providing insight from consumers’ and care providers’ perspectives on processes that continue to be recommended in state and national policies as best-practice palliative care for people from diverse backgrounds. The study recommends a human rights framework where stronger ethics of care and cultural respect is demonstrated through the palliative care service delivery model.

2009, Bennett, Cary, Donovan, Raymond

This article examines the controversy around the proposal in the late 1980s and early 1990s to mainstream HIV/AIDS treatment, services, and care in Australia. With the predicted increase in HIV infections, and with improved prophylaxis and antiretroviral therapy (such as AZT) extending the lives of people with HIV/AIDS, mainstreaming was proposed as a strategy that could meet the anticipated increased demand in HIV/AIDS services. Our analysis suggests that mainstreaming was strategically positioned as a necessary intermediary step between specialist and community control, one in which general practitioners and local health workers would serve as conduits through which specialist knowledge and information could be deployed. The strategy also reflected a general shift in thinking and acting on public health that emerged in the late 1980s, a shift that sought, inter alia, to reorientate health services towards fostering the self-managing capacities of HIV/AIDS affected communities.

2010, Bennett, Cary

This article investigates the links between drug law enforcement initiatives designed to reduce the availability of illicit drugs, and the illicit drug problem in Australia. Of particular interest are supply-reduction initiatives designed to locate and eradicate the production of illicit drugs in 'source' countries; the interdiction of drugs at the border; and attempts to disrupt the distribution of drugs at the community or street level. The examples provided illustrate that rather than reducing or deterring the trade in illicit drugs, many supply-reduction initiatives, when 'successful', create conditions that are favourable to the operation and expansion of the trade. This suggests that drug law enforcement is not the 'solution' to the drug problem, but part of the problem. The initiatives and effects outlined will be situated and discussed within the concepts of success and failure, power and resistance, and constitutive dialects.