Analyzing Neo-liberalism's Impact on Child Protection in Australia

This essay plan investigates the impact of neo-liberalism on community and human services, with a specific focus on child protection in Australia. It begins by defining neo-liberalism and its core tenets, particularly its emphasis on privatization and free-market capitalism. The plan then explores the effects of these policies on child protection services, examining both positive and negative consequences. The essay will analyze how privatization can lead to increased efficiency and CSR practices, while also potentially contributing to exploitation and inequality. It incorporates research from various sources, including journal articles and online resources, to support its arguments. The essay plan outlines key topics such as the role of neo-liberalism in child protection and its influence on child development, safety, and health. The plan includes a CRAAP test for source evaluation, a detailed essay structure with topic sentences, and a bibliography of cited sources, ensuring a comprehensive analysis of the topic.

Library Research and
Essay Plan (LREP)

Table of Contents
Interpreting the topic........................................................................................................................1
Exploring the Topic.........................................................................................................................1
Finding relevant supporting source..................................................................................................2
Planning your essay.........................................................................................................................4
Taking the next steps.......................................................................................................................4
BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................................6

Interpreting the topic
For conducting the essay, the topic that has been selected is “Analysing the impact of
Neo-liberalism on the community and human service in Australia.” Under this topic, the main
concern or the focus is on Child protection. Neo-liberalism is about bridging economical, social
and political studies which seek to transfer control of economic factor to private sector from
public sector for promoting free-market capitalism which doesn't include governmental
regulations, spending and public ownership. But this Neo-liberalism highly affects the
community as well as human services offered within Australia towards the welfare of child
protection. This is because children are usually vulnerable to structured inequality within society
due to poverty, background or other related issues.
But despite all this, Neo-liberalism has improved the human services toward child
protection by privatising the operations of several private organisations by way of reducing their
policies and legislations in operations. This in turn increases the profitability of private
organisations and turns their way towards performing CSR practices for the welfare of
community and promoting a positive brand image at the market place. This in turn increases the
development of several communities and welfare centres which work towards the development
as well as protection of children. In addition to this, it also has some negative influences over
child protection as privation leads to increase in exploitation of children which results into
poverty, harassment as removal of regulation increases the corruption.
Exploring the Topic
Neo-liberalism approach gained importance in order to make opposition of policy
doctrine in order to ensure minimising the size as well as influence of state. This will help in
increasing the deregulation and promoting private enterprise to work freely without many
restrictions. Hence, neo-liberalism basically leads to selling off of public goods like education
and other child development related services through private medium. This in turn increases the
economic inequality as well as social marginalisation in the form of housing shortage, long term
unemployment, poverty related health issues etc.
In order to gather this information, there are a number of key words that will be used to
help in collecting the information more effectively and quickly. These words include: Neo-
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liberal, child protection, impact of Neo-liberal over community, Human service, government,
privatisation, Neo-liberal policies, Cultural and Social Studies etc.
Finding relevant supporting source
As per the article Privatising child protection presented by Nigel Parton, 2014,
Department for Education's recent proposal regarding outsourcing child protection services to
private companies such as G4S and Serco describe about the services it offers to vulnerable
children and families. The number of registered child protection plans has also increased after
privatisation. The author has pointed out that the privatisation of child protection will bring about
exceptional transformational transformation in the manner in which services are being provided
for vulnerable families and children and take it back to the stage where the welfare services of
state were in the hands of local as well as national charities (Privatising child protection:how the
state is becoming more authoritarian). The CRAAP test of this article is given below:-
CRAAP Test
It refers to the set of evaluation criteria which are applied over websites in order to
identify the reliability of particular sources. CRAAP test is acronym stands for Currency,
Relevancy, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose. Currency:- The information was posted on 29th May,2014. This source use correct
information about the specific topic. Relevancy:- The information is related to the topic. The intended audience is the students
and researcher and they appear to be interested in Analysing the impact of Neo-liberalism
on the community and human service. Authority:- The author of this source is Nigel Parton. The source given by the auhor is
trustworthy. It is a website and the source with URL is
https://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2014/may/29/privatising-child-
protection-state-authoritarian Accuracy:- The information is gathered from a blog of author. The language given in this
is very easy to understood. Purpose:- The purpose of the information is to inform the audience about the impact of
Neo-liberalism on the community and human service. The purpose of information along
with author's view point are clear.
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This article will provide assistance in answering the essay question as the topic is about
shifting the power from public sector to private sector and this article is also talking about
privatising one major sector of world in order to give contribution towards Neo-Liberalism.
But as per the article “Neoliberalism and Child protection” which is written by Martha
Knox Haly, 2019, the impact of neo-liberal policies within department get chaged with
protecting the most vulnerable members of society and those who are at risk of slipping into
poverty. The major disadvantage of outsourcing public welfare to the charitable sector or other
private organisation leads to increase in the exploitation of children as it result to increase in
corruption with the minimisation of regulation. Here, it is argued that the Carr Government got
indulged within in soft neo-liberalism owing to the fact that it retained a contracted senior
executive service, assisted the accommodation programs which remained outsourced to private
sector and managerial system of individually directed investigative procedures were applied to
DoCs staff (Neoliberalism and Child protection, 2019). This source will help owing to the fact
that it is based upon the practical application of neo-liberalism by the Carr government and thus
will provide assistance in executing this study upon Neo Liberalism.
As per the view point of Gary Sponlander, Linda Martin, Lambert Engelbrecht, 2014,
within last three decades, several societies have experienced economical, cultural and political
changes which have transformed the community with the implementation of less number of
regulations in market with the assistance of neo-liberalism (Implication of Neo-liberalism for
social work, 2014). But this is turn has increased the inequality in term of economy,
employment, poverty, child education etc. After evaluating the information it would be then
compared with the current knowledge as well as content available through other sources in order
to present more accurate and reliable information in the essay.
According to the view point of Steve Rogowski, 2013, neo-liberalism has impacted over
the social benefit practices which created vulnerabilities and new inequality has been created
within society. This in turn has increased the poverty among society which creates issues related
to children development, safety, health and many more (Neoliberalism and social work, 2013).
It includes a comparison of public and private organisation in term of managing children
protection services within the society. In order to use the information available on this webpage,
a deep analysis would be performed over the data available in the web link. This will help to
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analyse the accuracy and validity of data, thereby, presenting information within the essay which
is appropriate and relevant to the topic of essay.
Planning your essay
Topic sentence:- Concept of Neo-liberalism
 It is a set of economic, political or religious practices which is consider as an strategy that
has been implemented in order to prevent the social conflicts and development of
community (Venugopal, 2015). Neo-liberalism is a kind of model which work toward bridging economics and political
studies that seeks to transfer control from public or governmental sector to private
organisation in order to promote free market capitalism which is not restricted with
governmental policies (Corry, 2014).
Topic sentence – Role of neo-liberalism in child protection
 Neo-liberal doesn't leads to overall improvement of children,despite of this it has
increased the inequality between society by differentiating in income and ethnic group
(Lonne and et. al., 2015). It has created several issues in term of housing shortage for people, increase in
unemployment, health issue related with poverty etc. (Parton, 2014).
Topic sentence:- Influence of neo-liberalism within child protection
 Neo-liberalism has a negative influence over child protection as it create economic
inequality among human community by giving birth to several issues such as increasing
rate of educational and health related services which reduces access of poor children to
services which are essential for development (Craig, 2016).
 Apart from this neo-liberal has positive impact over society as with the enhancement and
development of private organisations, concern of employees toward development of
children by creating care centres, orphans house etc. (Pacini-Ketchabaw and Taylor,
2015).
Taking the next steps
Before completing the essay, it is very essential to ensure that the information that will be
presented with the help of essay must be accurate and authenticated. For this an evaluation will
be performed over the sources that are used for gathering the information to determine its
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authenticity. In addition to this several sources will be compared as per the content presented in
them and then most appropriate one will be selected to work over essay. Apart from this the
objective of essay will be compared with the information contained to determine whether it will
help in accomplishing those goals or not. This will help in determining gap so that action can be
taken quickly for its improvement and then conclude the information effectively.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books & Journals
Corry, O. (2014). From Defense to Resilience: Environmental security beyond neo‐liberalism.
International political sociology. 8(3). 256-274.
Craig, L. (2016). Contemporary motherhood: The impact of children on adult time. Routledge.
Lonne, B., Harries, M., Featherstone, B., & Gray, M. (2015).Working ethically in child
protection. Routledge.
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Taylor, A. (Eds.). (2015). Unsettling the colonial places and spaces of
early childhood education. Routledge.
Parton, N. (2014).The politics of child protection: Contemporary developments and future
directions. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Venugopal, R. (2015). Neoliberalism as concept. Economy and Society. 44(2). 165-187.
Online
Parton. N. 2014. Privatising child protection:how the state is becoming more authoritarian.
[Online] Available
through:<https://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2014/may/29/privatising-
child-protection-state-authoritarian>./
Haly. K. 2019. Neoliberalism and Child protection. [Online] Available through:
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5263/labourhistory.98.1.121?
seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents>./
Sponlander. G., Martin. L. and Engelbrecht, L., 2014. Implication of Neo-liberalism fro social
work. [Online] Available through:
<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020872814524964>./
Rogowski. S. 2013. Neoliberalism and social work. [Online] Available through:
<https://policypress.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/neoliberalism-and-social-work-facing-
the-challenges/>./
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