'Smarten up the Parents': Whose agendas are we serving? Governing parents and children through the Smart Population Foundation Initiative in Australia

This article critiques the Smart Population Foundation Initiative (SPFI), which was established to ‘bring parenting information and the science of child development to Australian parents and carers’ (Smart Population Foundation, 2006) and to satisfy the need for a credible and easily accessible source of information for parents. The article draws on the notion of modern governance developed by Rose and analyses the Initiative as a deeply political project. It looks at the Initiative from a critical distance created by the context of governmentality. The authors argue that the discourses produced by the Initiative constitute a particular notion of parent as ‘smart’ (lifelong learner, responsible and informed). These discourses govern parents through ‘ethopolitics’ to take up a certain art of parenting as their supposed free choice. Through standardising and sanctioning a particular way of acting as a parent, the SPFI translates governmental objectives into parents’ own values and practices. As a result, the discourse the SPFI constitutes about parenting effectively ‘shuts down’ multiple understandings of being a ‘good’ parent. Hence, parents’ conscious formation of their parenting practices are inhibited and with that, the ethical debates around this contentious issue are silenced

'Part of the family': sources of job satisfaction amongst a group of community-based dementia care workers

The development of community-based services for people with dementia brings new challenges for health and social care providers, not least that of sustaining an enthusiastic workforce who are motivated to provide care and support under potentially isolating and difficult conditions. The present paper, based on interview data gathered from a group of community-based dementia care workers, seeks to identify their sources of job satisfaction and reward. Interviews were conducted with seven workers at two points in time and the data were analysed using a case by theme matrix approach. The results indicate that there were high levels of job satisfaction amongst the group, which were enhanced by several factors, including: good organisational support; day-to-day autonomy; the ability to maintain relationships with people with dementia and their families; and staffs' feelings of contributing to and improving the status and quality of life of people with dementia. Implications for workforce development are briefly considered.</p