Abstract. Reforms to the Australian health system aim to ensure that services are accessible, clinically and culturally appropriate, timely and affordable. During the reform consultation process there were urgent calls from stakeholders to specifically consider the health needs of the thousands of refugees who settle here each year, but little is known about what is needed from the refugee perspective. Access to health services is a basic requirement of achieving the quality use of medicines, as outlined in Australia's National Medicines Policy. This study aimed to identify the barriers to accessing primary health care services and explore medicine-related issues as experienced by refugee women in South Australia. Thirty-six women participated in focus groups with accredited and community interpreters and participants were from Sudan, Burundi, Congo, Burma, Afghanistan and Bhutan who spoke English (as a second language), Chin, Matu, Dari and Nepali. The main barrier to accessing primary health care and understanding GPs and pharmacists was not being able to speak or comprehend English. Interpreter services were used inconsistently or not at all. To implement the health reforms and achieve the quality use of medicines, refugees, support organisations, GPs, pharmacists and their staff require education, training and support.

It is important for the complexities of homelessness to be considered when constructing policy or practice relating to people who are without safe and stable accommodation. These complexities can be loosely categorised around the definitions, causes and experiences of homelessness. While definitions and causes are topics of current debates, study of the lived-experiences of homelessness remains an area that is largely under-researched. This paper explores some of the implications for social work and social workers when the individual's understanding and experience of her/his identity as a 'homeless person' and consequent relationships with service providers are not factored into policy and practice. This article draws on the findings of a study of homeless adults in inner city Adelaide to illustrate the author's arguments. It outlines the importance of listening to service users' perspectives in order to assess whether dominant constructions of social work, homelessness and 'homeless people' are meeting the needs of and improving outcomes for individual clients. More broadly, it is hoped that making these perspectives visible will assist in the development of 'client-focused' practice and policy.

Over the past decade, the dominance of ‘new localism’, ‘partnerships’ and ‘social inclusion’ in policy discourse in countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has influenced Australian stated policy directions in employment services. In contrast to other OECD countries, however, Australian federal legislators have excluded local government in contractual service delivery and governance arrangements. In response, some Australian local governments draw on UK practice to guide social inclusion agendas and inclusive partnership models. There is irony in such use of policy transfer strategies given that the UK is currently reforming public employment services to emphasise the contractualism that typifies the Australian Job Network.

Australian Social Policy and the Human Services contends that human services practitioners benefi t from understanding the relationship between social policy, the human services and their own practices. In this comprehensive introduction to the subject, readers are encouraged to develop their policy literacy , or critical understanding of the development, implementation and evaluation of social policies in specifi c areas.The book emphasises the links between policy and practice, and the importance of developing the capacity to deliver services and advocate for improved social policy in line with principles of equity and social justice.

The Coalition party's victory at the 1996 Australian federal election has inaugurated a radical shift in social policy. A 'new deal' regarding social welfare entitlements is emerging, especially regarding recipient obligations. This article argues that policy shifts, such as the newly implemented volunteer option for the unemployed, reflects free market ideology and establishes a new social contractual relationship between recipients of social security, the state and the 'community'. This policy orientation may be regarded as the next step in dismantling the statist/labourist welfare tradition in Australia and the legitimation of a new social contract, heralding a new era in which 'working' for one's welfare benefits becomes a requirement rather than an option.