This is a Case Study Research done inside a poor community in Brazil. The main goal of the research is to facilitate this community to understand their problems and to overcome it. Therefore the researcher and the researched developed the following question ‘why NovaMosanta is not achieving its goals? The researcher wanted to work as a facilitator throughout the whole process of dialogue that aims to empower the community. Departing from that question and based on Freire’s ideas of education the research aims to build new knowledge from the interaction of academic and community knowledge. To implement this case study field research the researcher decided to use Participant observation and questionnaires. Surprisingly during the research the NGO called NovaMosanta faced the challenge of remodeling a public school without government help; otherwise the school would be closed. This NGO succeeded with the help of the New Zealand Government that gave NZ$15,000 to build two new classrooms in the school. Community members helped working in the remodeling and local commerce gave discounts to enable the remodeling. As a result the school will not be closed and the students will continue to study there. It also helped to increase community support and participation. Although not designed as a Participant Action Research, this thesis evolved to produce action and to change the community reality. It was an empowering process to the researcher and the researched. The community support increased and it also served s a catalytic event in the process of transformation and inclusion. Finally it clarifies the importance of producing fast results to maintain community support. You can check the research results in the links below that contain two local network reports about it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz_FItXp3nM) & (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py5emCNXRlo)

Republic Act No. 9173, or the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002 enunciates a bevy of incentives under its Health Human Resource Production, Utilization and Development provisions, intended to stem the rising tide of Filipino nurses leaving the country to work overseas. Under Sections 30 to 34 of the Nursing Act, these incentives include the following: (1) upgrading the minimum base salary of nurses from salary grade 10 to 15; (2) establishing a nurse specialty program in government hospitals to upgrade the nurses’ skills whereby recipients of the program are required to work in government hospitals for two years; and (3) the provision of other benefits such as scholarship grants, free medical care, etc. These provisions are the government’s policy response to mitigate the impact of nurses’ migration and retain an adequate supply of skilled Filipino nurses in the country: This research is a qualitative study that seeks to assess the health human resource development provisions and their implementation and aims to help improve them. This study examines the responsiveness of the provisions to the needs of nurses, and identifies the deficiencies of the provisions by looking into the working conditions of nurses in two Philippine government hospitals. It also examines the processes and the factors affecting the implementation of the provisions. This study employed a combination of four data collection methods: (1) focus group interviews of nurses working in two Philippine government hospitals, (2) key informant interviews of officials of government agencies and private organizations tasked to implement the health human resource development provisions, (3) document analyses, and (4) researcher’s field notes/journal. The researcher conducted five focus group interviews with a total of 15 nurse participants and 12 key informant interviews. The nurses are working under conditions of low salaries and heavy workload, that is characterized by low nurse-to-patient ratios in the National and LGU Hospitals. The problems of inadequate nurse staffing, large number iii of patients and inadequate supplies in the two government hospitals are identified as causes for the heavy workload of nurses. The nurses want a salary increase that is commensurate to their heavy workload, their professional qualifications and long years of service. For the nurses, a salary increase signifies the government’s recognition of their dedication, hard work, and commitment to provide health care to Filipinos despite working under dire circumstances. The nurse specialty training program in areas such as oncology, nephrology, critical care, etc. has not been implemented because of the limited capacities of government hospitals to provide this kind of training and the lack of regulatory framework for the practice of nurse specialists in the Philippines. The other benefits have not been implemented as well. The provisions of the Nursing Act are deficient because they do not address the causes of the heavy workload of nurses. To improve the work conditions of nurses, the Philippine government needs to prioritize to the long neglected health sector by increasing the budgetary allocation in order to create more nurse positions in government hospitals, to provide adequate supplies and equipment for government hospitals and to improve the facilities for nurses.

Republic Act No. 9173, or the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002 enunciates a bevy of incentives under its Health Human Resource Production, Utilization and Development provisions, intended to stem the rising tide of Filipino nurses leaving the country to work overseas. Under Sections 30 to 34 of the Nursing Act, these incentives include the following: (1) upgrading the minimum base salary of nurses from salary grade 10 to 15; (2) establishing a nurse specialty program in government hospitals to upgrade the nurses’ skills whereby recipients of the program are required to work in government hospitals for two years; and (3) the provision of other benefits such as scholarship grants, free medical care, etc. These provisions are the government’s policy response to mitigate the impact of nurses’ migration and retain an adequate supply of skilled Filipino nurses in the country: This research is a qualitative study that seeks to assess the health human resource development provisions and their implementation and aims to help improve them. This study examines the responsiveness of the provisions to the needs of nurses, and identifies the deficiencies of the provisions by looking into the working conditions of nurses in two Philippine government hospitals. It also examines the processes and the factors affecting the implementation of the provisions. This study employed a combination of four data collection methods: (1) focus group interviews of nurses working in two Philippine government hospitals, (2) key informant interviews of officials of government agencies and private organizations tasked to implement the health human resource development provisions, (3) document analyses, and (4) researcher’s field notes/journal. The researcher conducted five focus group interviews with a total of 15 nurse participants and 12 key informant interviews. The nurses are working under conditions of low salaries and heavy workload, that is characterized by low nurse-to-patient ratios in the National and LGU Hospitals. The problems of inadequate nurse staffing, large number iii of patients and inadequate supplies in the two government hospitals are identified as causes for the heavy workload of nurses. The nurses want a salary increase that is commensurate to their heavy workload, their professional qualifications and long years of service. For the nurses, a salary increase signifies the government’s recognition of their dedication, hard work, and commitment to provide health care to Filipinos despite working under dire circumstances. The nurse specialty training program in areas such as oncology, nephrology, critical care, etc. has not been implemented because of the limited capacities of government hospitals to provide this kind of training and the lack of regulatory framework for the practice of nurse specialists in the Philippines. The other benefits have not been implemented as well. The provisions of the Nursing Act are deficient because they do not address the causes of the heavy workload of nurses. To improve the work conditions of nurses, the Philippine government needs to prioritize to the long neglected health sector by increasing the budgetary allocation in order to create more nurse positions in government hospitals, to provide adequate supplies and equipment for government hospitals and to improve the facilities for nurses.

Housing is both a social issue and a determinant for well being and is an integral component of social policy. The research specifically looked at the barriers for mental health service users to accessing affordable housing. Previous studies have identified affordability, lack of choice and discrimination as specific issues in relation to people with mental illness and housing. While previous studies focussed on housing affordability in relation to the individual, this research considered the barriers to affordable housing for mental health service users in relation to the capitalist structure of society. The research utilised a Marxist theoretical perspective that views housing in terms of the social structures of society and the relationship to class. This approach was supported by the social model of disability, a social construct where those with disabilities are oppressed by the social structures of society. Another element of the research provided a history of government housing policy in New Zealand. A quantitative and qualitative approach was used to collect data which consisted of statistical information and information gained from interviews with the relevant participants. Analysis from a Marxist perspective explained, from the findings, that there are systemic barriers in accessing affordable housing for mental health service users within a capitalist system. From the findings, the social model of disability explained that there are structural disadvantages for mental health service users that result in barriers to accessing affordable housing. An analysis of the history of government housing policy in New Zealand, which has continually promoted the commodification of housing, also explained from the findings that there are systemic barriers to accessing affordable housing for mental health service users within a capitalist system.

Republic Act No. 9173, or the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002 enunciates a bevy of incentives under its Health Human Resource Production, Utilization and Development provisions, intended to stem the rising tide of Filipino nurses leaving the country to work overseas. Under Sections 30 to 34 of the Nursing Act, these incentives include the following: (1) upgrading the minimum base salary of nurses from salary grade 10 to 15; (2) establishing a nurse specialty program in government hospitals to upgrade the nurses’ skills whereby recipients of the program are required to work in government hospitals for two years; and (3) the provision of other benefits such as scholarship grants, free medical care, etc. These provisions are the government’s policy response to mitigate the impact of nurses’ migration and retain an adequate supply of skilled Filipino nurses in the country: This research is a qualitative study that seeks to assess the health human resource development provisions and their implementation and aims to help improve them. This study examines the responsiveness of the provisions to the needs of nurses, and identifies the deficiencies of the provisions by looking into the working conditions of nurses in two Philippine government hospitals. It also examines the processes and the factors affecting the implementation of the provisions. This study employed a combination of four data collection methods: (1) focus group interviews of nurses working in two Philippine government hospitals, (2) key informant interviews of officials of government agencies and private organizations tasked to implement the health human resource development provisions, (3) document analyses, and (4) researcher’s field notes/journal. The researcher conducted five focus group interviews with a total of 15 nurse participants and 12 key informant interviews. The nurses are working under conditions of low salaries and heavy workload, that is characterized by low nurse-to-patient ratios in the National and LGU Hospitals. The problems of inadequate nurse staffing, large number iii of patients and inadequate supplies in the two government hospitals are identified as causes for the heavy workload of nurses. The nurses want a salary increase that is commensurate to their heavy workload, their professional qualifications and long years of service. For the nurses, a salary increase signifies the government’s recognition of their dedication, hard work, and commitment to provide health care to Filipinos despite working under dire circumstances. The nurse specialty training program in areas such as oncology, nephrology, critical care, etc. has not been implemented because of the limited capacities of government hospitals to provide this kind of training and the lack of regulatory framework for the practice of nurse specialists in the Philippines. The other benefits have not been implemented as well. The provisions of the Nursing Act are deficient because they do not address the causes of the heavy workload of nurses. To improve the work conditions of nurses, the Philippine government needs to prioritize to the long neglected health sector by increasing the budgetary allocation in order to create more nurse positions in government hospitals, to provide adequate supplies and equipment for government hospitals and to improve the facilities for nurses.

Republic Act No. 9173, or the Philippine Nursing Act of 2002 enunciates a bevy of incentives under its Health Human Resource Production, Utilization and Development provisions, intended to stem the rising tide of Filipino nurses leaving the country to work overseas. Under Sections 30 to 34 of the Nursing Act, these incentives include the following: (1) upgrading the minimum base salary of nurses from salary grade 10 to 15; (2) establishing a nurse specialty program in government hospitals to upgrade the nurses’ skills whereby recipients of the program are required to work in government hospitals for two years; and (3) the provision of other benefits such as scholarship grants, free medical care, etc. These provisions are the government’s policy response to mitigate the impact of nurses’ migration and retain an adequate supply of skilled Filipino nurses in the country: This research is a qualitative study that seeks to assess the health human resource development provisions and their implementation and aims to help improve them. This study examines the responsiveness of the provisions to the needs of nurses, and identifies the deficiencies of the provisions by looking into the working conditions of nurses in two Philippine government hospitals. It also examines the processes and the factors affecting the implementation of the provisions. This study employed a combination of four data collection methods: (1) focus group interviews of nurses working in two Philippine government hospitals, (2) key informant interviews of officials of government agencies and private organizations tasked to implement the health human resource development provisions, (3) document analyses, and (4) researcher’s field notes/journal. The researcher conducted five focus group interviews with a total of 15 nurse participants and 12 key informant interviews. The nurses are working under conditions of low salaries and heavy workload, that is characterized by low nurse-to-patient ratios in the National and LGU Hospitals. The problems of inadequate nurse staffing, large number iii of patients and inadequate supplies in the two government hospitals are identified as causes for the heavy workload of nurses. The nurses want a salary increase that is commensurate to their heavy workload, their professional qualifications and long years of service. For the nurses, a salary increase signifies the government’s recognition of their dedication, hard work, and commitment to provide health care to Filipinos despite working under dire circumstances. The nurse specialty training program in areas such as oncology, nephrology, critical care, etc. has not been implemented because of the limited capacities of government hospitals to provide this kind of training and the lack of regulatory framework for the practice of nurse specialists in the Philippines. The other benefits have not been implemented as well. The provisions of the Nursing Act are deficient because they do not address the causes of the heavy workload of nurses. To improve the work conditions of nurses, the Philippine government needs to prioritize to the long neglected health sector by increasing the budgetary allocation in order to create more nurse positions in government hospitals, to provide adequate supplies and equipment for government hospitals and to improve the facilities for nurses.

What’s God got to do with Sex? Exploring the relationship between Spiritual engagement and the sexual health activities of Samoan youth. Improving the health and social wellbeing of Pacific youth is a key priority for the New Zealand Government. When the Pacific youth population’s sexual health is compared with that of other ethnic groups in New Zealand there are clear disparities. At the same time, spiritual engagement is frequently noted as protecting young people from engaging in health-risk taking behaviours. Objectives: This study determines whether a relationship exists between patterns of spiritual engagement and the sexual health activities of Samoan attending secondary schools in New Zealand. Does going to church or rating spiritual beliefs as important influence the sexual health activities of Samoan youth? Method: This research analyses data from ‘Youth 2000’, a youth health and wellbeing survey conducted in 2001. The survey was conducted with approximately 10,000 New Zealand secondary school students which included 646 Samoan and 5219 New Zealand Europeans. Nine sexual health activities were explored. Data relating to spiritual engagement and the sexual health activities of Samoan and New Zealand European students were extracted from the survey, measured and compared. Results: A significant proportion of Samoan youth have not had sexual intercourse. Just under a third of Samoan students (32.1%) have had sexual intercourse, with the average age of first sexual intercourse around 14 years. Findings reveal that the spiritual engagement variables: church attendance and the importance of spiritual beliefs have mixed influences on the different sexual health activities of Samoan youth. Conclusions: This study reinforces the central importance of spiritual engagement in the lives of many Samoan secondary school students. Government policies and interventions require an understanding of key health behaviours and their related risk and protective factors specific to New Zealand youth.

This research considers the problem of ensuring citizens having meaningful opportunities to provide input in local government environmental planning and decision-making. Planning processes are often as much a product of uncertain human behaviours as they are the result of rational activity and formal institutional arrangements. Both the conduct and outcomes of these processes are heavily influenced by conflicts between actors’ underlying perspectives, yet these perspectives are hard to define and their influence is very poorly understood by researchers. Instead, local government research focuses almost exclusively on institutional arrangements and substantive debates over physical resources. This research focuses on the influence of epistemological and procedural dimensions of actors’ perspectives on the integration of citizens’ agendas in environmental planning and decision-making in New Zealand local government. From a deliberative democratic perspective, I examine obstacles to the conduct of an effective integrative process and consider possible practical and theoretical responses. The research studies two local government wastewater planning processes. It combines Q-methodology with interviews, observation and documentary analysis. This approach allows me to identify actors’ subjective perspectives and to consider their influence on planning and decision-making. This combination of methods has not previously been used in local government research in New Zealand. The research shows that while conflicts between actors’ perspectives pose significant barriers to the integration of citizens’ agendas, they can also offer opportunities for addressing those barriers. Integration is clearly limited by a positivist, rationalist perspective that privileges objectivity in knowledge and planning practices. Integration is further limited by a competitive adversarial perspective. Nevertheless, there is also potential where deliberative perspectives are present that are more value-critical and that seek intersubjective understanding of actors’ inputs. Such compromise-seeking perspectives contribute to more communicatively rational planning and more legitimate and durable decisions. The thesis argues that councils should foster a change among actors towards a more deliberative perspective and should champion such behaviour themselves. Such change is often obstructed by the tacit, unacknowledged, yet persistent, nature of most actors’ perspectives. The thesis concludes that while transformation of perspectives is unrealistic, a more communicatively rational planning approach is achievable as a basis for legitimate decisions that more effectively integrate citizens’ agendas.

Despite New Zealand receiving the number one ranking for ease of doing business in a major international comparative survey of compliance requirements, SME owners continue to rate compliance as a significant concern. This research project set out to investigate why this was so. The qualitative research undertaken for this thesis involved case study interviews with six SME owners. A resource-based approach was taken, looking at the resources SME owners needed to address the compliance task, and how they sourced and applied these. The scope of the study extended beyond the confines of the workplace to encompass the impact of compliance on the personal lives of SME owners and their families. Firkin’s model of entrepreneurial capital was applied and extended. Accordingly, the study encompassed an examination of economic, human, social, cultural and personal capital. An original concept, temporal capital, was developed to address the application of ‘potentially productive time’ as a resource. The findings are applied to a discussion of the Quality Regulation Review currently underway in New Zealand. It is recommended that SME issues could be more comprehensively addressed by incorporating screens within the Business Cost Calculator that estimate the relative psychic and opportunity costs associated with proposed regulations. A gender analysis of the compliance task was also undertaken. This revealed that the impact of compliance measures may be disproportionately borne by those whose business and personal lives are intertwined, primarily women. The invisibility of these workers has contributed to their needs being inadequately addressed by traditional processes of consultation and data analysis. The thesis concludes that it is not the regulatory regime alone that determines ease of doing business. It is the match between the requirements of the regime and the compliance-related entrepreneurial capital accessible to those subject to it. Recommendations relate therefore, to improving both the institutional capital of the regulator and the compliance-related entrepreneurial capital accessible to the SME.

Sustainable development is the modern rhetoric to guide environmental or natural resources management. There are many ways to do this and one concern the wider utilization of economic instruments, such as taxes or levies. Although such levies are becoming common in Australia and worldwide, the role of the taxes or levies is still limited. In many cases, these taxes/levies -although environmentally related- have a fiscal rather than a purely environmental motive, for example, the Natural Resources Management (NRM) Levy in South Australia. In South Australia, under the NRM Act 2004, all property owners are required to pay the NRM levy. Local governments collect the levy and distribute it to the relevant NRM board. The NRM boards have selected to calculate the levy on the basis of property value or simply applied a flat rate. The percentage of property value or the amount of the flat rate can vary amongst local government areas. How a tax or levy is designed should be determined by its ultimate purpose. Taxes or levies for fiscal and/or redistributive reasons should be designed in a way securing stable inflow of revenues, such as, levying on the values of property. However, this approach is often in sharp contrast with the goal of environmental taxes or levies which aim to change resource consumption behaviour. This study evaluates the NRM levy policy in South Australia using one NRM region and focussing on the urban community. The justification of this research is that few analyses of the effectiveness of environmental taxes or levies have ever been carried out, although the implementation of these measures has increased significantly during the last decades. There are fewer studies analysing the impacts of the tax or levy base method. This is the first study on this NRM levy policy from the perspective of the urban community who actually pay it. This study employed the Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen & Fishbein 1980) to examine the relationships between community attitudes to the levy policy and water consumption behaviour. Data was collected through a web-based survey with 770 respondents who answered 59 questions. The key findings show that governments are perceived to have the main responsibility for water resources management by respondents. However, there is huge information void towards the NRM levy policy. Community has few complaints about the levy level but strongly prefers to have a levy calculated on the volume of water consumed. Respondents also indicated that they would use less water if the levy were calculated on the volume of water consumed. The study makes contributions to relevant theory and policy analysis. Theoretically, the results show that the theory of reasoned action has limited strength in explaining the present research context. Practically, the study provides recommendations for policymakers and practitioners in South Australia, other Australian States, and internationally. The clear implications of the results suggest that if a tax or levy aims to change water consumption behaviour then it should be based on the volume of water consumed not on property value.