In this moving and controversial Quarterly Essay, doctor and writer Karen Hitchcock investigates the treatment of the elderly and dying through some unforgettable cases. With honesty and deep experience, she looks at end-of-life decisions, frailty and dementia, over-treatment and escalating costs. Ours is a society in which ageism, often disguised, threatens to turn the elderly into a “burden” – difficult, hopeless, expensive and homogenous. While we rightly seek to curb treatment when it is futile, harmful or against a patient’s wishes, this can sometimes lead to limits on care that suit the system rather than the person. Doctors may declare a situation hopeless when it may not be so. We must plan for a future when more of us will be old, Hitchcock argues, with the aim of making that time better, not shorter. And we must change our institutions and society to meet the needs of an ageing population. Dear Life is a landmark essay by one of Australia’s most powerful writers. “The elderly, the frail are our society. They are our parents and grandparents, our carers and neighbours, and they are every one of us in the not-too-distant future . . . They are not a growing cost to be managed or a burden to be shifted or a horror to be hidden away, but people whose needs require us to change.” —Karen Hitchcock, Dear Life

Analyzing the relationship between medicine and the media from different perspectives, these new essays fill a gap in this emerging field, providing new information on approaches to health communication and important reevaluations of health literacy theories. The contributors discuss ideas and methodologies across a range of topics, including multifaceted health communication, media coverage of maternal health, the rhetoric of diagnosis in autoimmune illness, media representation of the sick in data-driven healthcare, and health news coverage in print media.

Something Special, Something Rare presents outstanding short fiction by Australia’s finest female writers. These are tales of love, secrets, doubt and torment, the everyday and the extraordinary. A sleepy town is gripped by delusory grief after the movie being filmed there wraps and leaves. A lingering heartbreak is replayed on Facebook. An ordinary family walks a shaky line between hopelessness and redemption. Brilliant, shocking and profound, these tales will leave you reeling in ways that only a great short story can. Kate Grenville * Mandy Sayer * Penni Russon * Favel Parrett * Tegan Bennett Daylight * Sonya Hartnett * Isabelle Li * Gillian Essex * Brenda Walker * Gillian Mears * Fiona MacFarlane * Joan London * Karen Hitchcock * Charlotte Wood * Tara June Winch * Cate Kennedy * Alice Pung * Anna Krien * Delia Falconer * Rebekah Clarkson ‘This collection is a fantastic line-up of some of Australia’s best writers who simply happen to be women ... the themes explored are as wide-ranging and eclectic as the writers.’ —Sunday Age ‘All the stories here justify that use of “out-standing” in the collection’s subtitle. If pushed to choose one standout, for me it is Favel Parrett’s ‘Lebanon’, which in its three pages manages to convey more emotion than some stories do in 300 ... This beautiful meditation on loss and belonging evokes the Australian tyranny of distance and is a fine example what the short-story form can achieve.’ —The Australian ‘Perfect fodder for a Sunday arvo on the couch, these charming, funny, touching short stories from well-known Australian female writers are what winter was made for.’ —Cosmopolitan ‘A wonderful selection ... the strength of the collection is that it doesn’t define the Australian woman writer as a particular situation and includes writers from various social and cultural backgrounds.’ —Artshub

'The elderly, the frail are our society. They are our parents and grandparents, our carers and neighbours, and they are every one of us in the not-too-distant future. . . They are not a growing cost to be managed or a burden to be shifted or a horror to be hidden away, but people whose needs require us to change' In Dear Life, using vivid and moving case studies, Karen Hitchcock show what care for the elderly and dying is really like - both the good and the bad. With honesty and deep experience, she looks at end-of-life decisions and over-treatment, frailty and dementia. Throughout she argues against the creeping tendency to see the elderly as a 'burden' - difficult, hopeless, expensive and homogenous. We must plan for a future when more of us will be old, Hitchcock argues, with the aim of making that time better, not shorter. An we must change our institution and society to meet the needs of an ageing population. Dear Life is a landmark book by one of Australia's most powerful writers.

Spending the final chapter of your life in a nursing home is considered, by many, a fate worse than death. Others, however, have found that through enlightened, imaginative care even the frailest of lives can flourish. The key to such a transformation is to replace the constricting custodial centres of the past with a more informed, research-based approach. This book is timely, responding to evidence of the urgent need for change described in the Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety Final Report: Care, Dignity and Respect and its predecessor subtitled Neglect. In this book, the author proposes a model of care that places the whole person at its centre, sidestepping the constraints of a reductionist funding model that focusses on residents' deficits – and the proprietor’s financial gain. Aged care requires a comprehensive research-based guide to fulfil this aim. Narratives are included throughout the book to reinforce the fact that nursing home care is about individual residents and their unique lives. Topics explored in various chapters include: · Ageing in a Changing Community · Social, Gerontological Care · A Palliative Approach · Community Expectations Ageing in a Nursing Home: Foundations for Care takes a realistic approach that draws on contemporary research and narratives from the unique lives of older Australians who, despite their frailty, teach us how to care. Such knowledge informs and influences their future. The book is a resource intended for all who have a stake in the provision of best practice residential aged care, and all who benefit from such care. Its academic appeal will include those who design and teach courses in aged care: gerontology, general practice medicine, nursing, attendant care, allied health, and chaplaincy. Academics and teachers will find useful, well-referenced material for their courses, together with ample scope for researchers.

In a world where seventy is the new fifty, old age isn't what it used to be. COVID-19 has changed fundamental concepts of ageing, maturity and mortality. And with the virus's particular impacts on the aged, it's time to challenge – and rectify – the exclusion of the elderly from our culture, and focus on people as people, not as problems to be solved. With exciting new work from Helen Garner, Charlotte Wood, Gabbie Stroud, David Sinclair, Vicki Laveau-Harvie, Samuel Wagan Watson, Andrew Stafford, Jay Phillips, Jane R Goodall, Glenn A Albrecht, Leah Kaminsky, Ailsa Piper and many more, Griffith Review 68: Getting On offers an insightful exploration of the changing truths of ageing – as well as celebrating the triumph of longevity. It's a timely look at the question of how we age successfully – as individuals, as a society, as a population.

The Politics and Possibilities of Self-Tracking Technology focuses on the dialectical relationship between users and designers of wearable technology to examine how datafication processes redefine the body, and explores what this means for the design, administration and study of self-tracking systems.

Critical social work encourages emancipatory personal and social change. This text focuses on the challenge of incorporating critical theory into the practice of social workers and provides case studies and insights from a range of fields to illustrate how to work with tensions and challenges. Beginning with an outline of the theoretical basis of critical social work and its different perspectives, the authors go on to introduce key features of working in this tradition including critical reflection. Part II explores critical practices in confronting privilege and promoting social justice in social work, examining such issues as human rights, gender, poverty and class. Part III considers the development of critical practices within the organisational context of social work including the fields of mental health, child and family services, within Centrelink and prison settings. Part IV is focused on doing anti- discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice in social work with particular populations including asylum seekers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, domestic violence survivors, older people and lesbian, gay and transgender groups. Finally, Part V outlines collectivist and transformative practices in social work and beyond, looking at environmental issues, social activism, the disability movement and globalisation. 'A highly valuable addition to social work education and practice literature in Australia and beyond its shores.' Ruth Phillips, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney

America is fading, and China will soon be the dominant power in our region. What does this mean for Australia’s future? In this controversial and urgent essay, Hugh White shows that the contest between America and China is classic power politics of the harshest kind. He argues that we are heading for an unprecedented future, one without an English-speaking great and powerful friend to keep us secure and protect our interests. White sketches what the new Asia will look like, and how China could use its power. He also examines what has happened to the United States globally, under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump – a series of setbacks which Trump’s bluster on North Korea cannot disguise. White notes that we have got into the habit of seeing the world through Washington’s eyes, and argues that unless this changes, we will fail to navigate the biggest shift in Australia’s international circumstances since European settlement. The signs of failure are already clear, as we risk sliding straight from complacency to panic. ‘For almost a decade now, the world’s two most powerful countries have been competing. America has been trying to remain East Asia’s primary power, and China has been trying to replace it. How the contest will proceed – whether peacefully or violently, quickly or slowly – is still uncertain, but the most likely outcome is now becoming clear. America will lose, and China will win.’ —Hugh White, Without America ‘This important essay clarifies China’s brinkmanship in Asia and confronts the hard facts of what it means for Australia’ —Fiona Capp, The Sydney Morning Herald ‘In ... Without America: Australia in the New Asia, Hugh White has given us possibly his best piece of writing, and on a subject of the first importance.’ —Weekend Australian ‘Just when the foreign-policy orthodoxy seemed to be catching up with him, White [has] upend[ed] it again.’ —The Interpreter

How did the big banks get away with so much for so long? Why are so many aged-care residents malnourished? And when did arms manufacturers start sponsoring the Australian War Memorial? In this passionate essay, Richard Denniss explores what neoliberalism has done to Australian society. For decades, we have been led to believe that the private sector does everything better, that governments can’t afford to provide the high-quality services they once did, but that security and prosperity for all are just around the corner. In fact, Australians are now less equal, millions of workers have no sick leave or paid holidays, and housing is unaffordable for many. Deregulation, privatisation and trickle-down economics have, we are told, delivered us twenty-seven years of growth ... but to what end? In Dead Right, Denniss looks at ways to renew our democracy and discusses everything from the fragmenting Coalition to an idea of the national interest that goes beyond economics. ‘Neoliberalism, the catch-all term for all things small government, has been the ideal cloak behind which to conceal enormous shifts in Australia’s wealth and culture ... Over the past thirty years, the language, ideas and policies of neoliberalism have transformed our economy and, more importantly, our culture’ —Richard Denniss, Dead Right