Louise Harms
Biographic Data
| ID | 4426886 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Louise Harms |
| GIVEN NAMES | Louise |
| FAMILY NAME | Harms |
| SIGNATURE | HARMS L |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Melbourne |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8984-8571 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Diversity of International Students in Australian Social Work Courses
The number of international students in social work courses in Australia has increased in recent years. This diversification of student experiences and perspectives needs to be understood for the effective delivery of social work education. In the exploratory study reported here, using an online survey, the authors examined the characteristics, experiences, and wellbeing of international students in entry-to-practice social work courses. This art…
Independent living transitions for young people with cerebral palsy in Australia
The transition to independent living is a key marker of adulthood for many adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with disability. How families adapt to this highly complex process is an important area for examination, to inform policy and practice that effectively support family life. This study aimed to understand family adaptation processes during the independent living transitions for families of AYAs with cerebral palsy. Semi-structured intervi…
Achieving better engagement with care and support for young people living with HIV in Australia
Young people aged 18-29 are considered "adult" within the Australian HIV health service context. However, evidence increasingly defines this age group as distinct from the broader adult population such that the needs of young people living with HIV may be overlooked in the context of HIV service design and delivery. This analysis draws on the Young + Positive study, a national study in Australia that documented the perspectives of young people (a…
International students and social work education
With increasing numbers of international students across the globe, it is essential that social work education continually adapts and innovates in ways that are inclusive of and responsive to this diverse group of students. Innovations in social work education with international students requires an understanding of the existing perspectives and knowledge base. This scoping review investigates published peer-reviewed articles written in English f…
Women Caregivers’ Engagement With Healthcare Services for Their Personal Healthcare Needs
The objective of this scoping review is to map the extent, range and nature of literature pertaining to women caregivers and their engagement with healthcare for their personal healthcare needs. It is estimated that 3 out of 5 people will become caregivers at some stage throughout their life, with a large percentage of women (75%) being primary carers. Family or informal care has been the subject of extensive research in the past, demonstrating t…
Effective reassurance policing after collective trauma events
Crimes on the scale of a collective trauma event (CTE) can generate fear, grief, and a sense of injustice that impact beyond those directly affected. Increasingly, reassurance policing is mobilised to restore a sense of community safety and security. Yet little is evidenced as to what constitutes effective reassurance policing, and its barriers and enablers. This study examined police perceptions of good reassurance practice within Victoria Polic…
Individual and community experiences of posttraumatic growth after disaster
PTG is evident in longer-term disaster recovery. While PTG appears to vary across communities, the findings suggest that it is an individual's own sense of community (rather than community-level cohesion) that is most closely related to this longer-term growth following a bushfire event. While PTG is currently understood as an outcome of individual-level perceptions, community-level experiences shape the potential for positive transformations to …
Long-term post-traumatic growth after natural disasters
Social work is invested in supporting positive change for individuals and communities grappling with natural disasters within a changing climate. This scoping review investigated the extent, range and nature of longitudinal research examining contextual influences on experiences of post-traumatic growth (PTG) following a natural disaster. Literature searches of four databases were conducted from December 2021 to April 2022 to identify thirty-two …
Anger Following the Victorian Black Saturday Bushfires
Anger is a well-recognised but little understood emotion in postdisaster contexts. For service providers working in recovery environments, it is critical to understand anger to ensure effective supports and interventions are mobilised. This article describes findings from a study conducted four years after the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday bushfires. Thirty-eight community and service-provider participants were interviewed as individuals, dyads, …
Post-disaster social work research
The aim of this study was to understand the extent, range and nature of social work research activity after natural disasters and to identify the implications for future research and practice. A Scoping review methodology framework was used search of three databases: Web of Science, ProQuest and Informit was conducted to identify relevant studies between 2000 and 2018. Selection of studies was based on empirical research about social work and nat…
Factors Influencing Social Work Identity in Mental Health Placements
This article shares findings from a study that explored factors contributing to the development of a social work professional identity, with a particular focus on social work students undertaking field education placements in mental health settings. Social work identity is not well recognised or articulated by experienced practitioners, nor does it appear to be adequately emphasised in social work education and training programmes. There is limit…
Hierarchies of affectedness after disasters
Disasters result in a range of impacts that significantly disrupt the health and wellbeing of those affected. After disasters, a hierarchy of affectedness may be explicitly or implicitly developed, where those affected are compared to each other, and to people affected by disasters in other locations. When an individual's sense of place is so significantly disrupted, these hierarchies are critical to improving the understanding of recovery trajec…
Stressors and Supports in Postdisaster Recovery
Many studies show that long-term poor mental health outcomes for disaster-affected people are predicted by postdisaster stressors. Despite this finding, existing recovery frameworks vary in how these stressors are conceptualised. This paper examines community members’ subjective perceptions of what they found problematic and useful in their recoveries after the Australian 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, and considers them in the light of these fra…
Being a Parent after a Disaster
This article explores parental experiences over nearly seven years that followed catastrophic Australian bushfires in 2009. Principles of pragmatism and the constructionist tradition guided the use of semi-structured interviews with parents (nineteen mothers and three fathers) and inductive thematic analysis to distil what participants said about the trauma, loss and disruption caused by the fires, and ways in which they responded as parents. Cha…
The Value of Mixing It Up
One-to-one supervision has been widely acknowledged in the social work literature as the gold-standard approach in field education. However, the sustainability of this approach has been challenged in recent decades amidst the managerial mandates permeating both education and health/human service sectors. Universities and placement organisations have experimented with alternative supervision approaches in response to these contextual pressures, al…
Postdisaster Social Work
According to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED, 2016), a disaster is technically defined as “a situation or event that overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request at the national or international level for external assistance; an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction and human suffering” (p. 13). Social workers have long been involved in supporting people in the aftermath of su…
Postdisaster Posttraumatic Growth
Posttraumatic growth (PTG) is emerging in the published literature as an important aspect of postdisaster recovery. Despite these research insights into the positive transformations that people experience, PTG has not been formally operationalised in postdisaster psychosocial recovery efforts. This paper presents findings from a mixed methods study of people affected by the 2009 Victorian “Black Saturday” bushfires. Data from in-depth interviews …
Social Work
Social Work: From Theory to Practice uses an integrated approach to explore a variety of social theories through social work's unique interpretative lens. Systems, psychodynamic and person-centred theories, and cognitive-behavioural, narrative and strengths-based practices are specifically addressed, and students are shown how to apply these in human service settings. These theories are supported by case studies written by experienced practitione…
Human Service Organizations in the Disaster Context
When a disaster strikes, the demand for human service responses is immediate and often overwhelming of existing systems. Being prepared for such experiences should form a key part of all human serv
Conceptualising Post-Disaster Recovery
In the disaster literature, psycho-social recovery is conceptualised typically as the alleviation of traumatic stress, with the alleviation of disaster-related grief as a less prominent part of this. Yet, incorporating grief understandings into recovery conceptualisations post disaster is important. This paper explores these conceptualisations by analysing participants' bereavement experiences following the Black Saturday bushfires. It draws on d…
Social Work
Beyond Bushfires
Conducting the study over five years and focussing on the role of social networks will provide new insights into the interplay between individual and community factors and their influence on recovery from natural disaster over time. The study findings will thereby expand understanding of long term disaster recovery needs for individuals and communities
Black Saturday” and its Aftermath
Social workers at The Alfred, a major tertiary referral teaching hospital in Melbourne, Australia, played a key role in providing psychosocial support to patients and their families following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in the State of Victoria. Faced with the highest number of casualties ever admitted simultaneously, and the media and community involvement surrounding the national disaster, new practice challenges emerged that led to tensi…
Social Work with Aboriginal Clients
The many Aboriginal and non Aboriginal social workers who work with Aboriginal communities to address health and socioeconomic disadvantage have a key role to play in reducing the continuing inequalities experienced by many Aboriginal clients in Australia. The need for more culturally-responsive practice is well recognised, as historic barriers to effective practice and relationships persist. This paper describes the views of Aboriginal people ab…
After the accident
Road accidents affect thousands of lives each year in Australia. This article discusses findings from three years of research into survivors of major road trauma. The research aimed to examine how survivors of road trauma understood their own experiences of recovery, after sustaining serious orthopaedic injuries and undergoing rehabilitation at a Victorian rehabilitation centre. Seventy‐nine respondents completed a self‐administered survey and 24…
Social Work with Aboriginal Clients
The many Aboriginal and non Aboriginal social workers who work with Aboriginal communities to address health and socioeconomic disadvantage have a key role to play in reducing the continuing inequalities experienced by many Aboriginal clients in Australia. The need for more culturally-responsive practice is well recognised, as historic barriers to effective practice and relationships persist. This paper describes the views of Aboriginal people ab…
Postdisaster Social Work
According to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED, 2016), a disaster is technically defined as “a situation or event that overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request at the national or international level for external assistance; an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction and human suffering” (p. 13). Social workers have long been involved in supporting people in the aftermath of su…
Black Saturday” and its Aftermath
Social workers at The Alfred, a major tertiary referral teaching hospital in Melbourne, Australia, played a key role in providing psychosocial support to patients and their families following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in the State of Victoria. Faced with the highest number of casualties ever admitted simultaneously, and the media and community involvement surrounding the national disaster, new practice challenges emerged that led to tensi…
Factors Influencing Social Work Identity in Mental Health Placements
This article shares findings from a study that explored factors contributing to the development of a social work professional identity, with a particular focus on social work students undertaking field education placements in mental health settings. Social work identity is not well recognised or articulated by experienced practitioners, nor does it appear to be adequately emphasised in social work education and training programmes. There is limit…
Stressors and Supports in Postdisaster Recovery
Many studies show that long-term poor mental health outcomes for disaster-affected people are predicted by postdisaster stressors. Despite this finding, existing recovery frameworks vary in how these stressors are conceptualised. This paper examines community members’ subjective perceptions of what they found problematic and useful in their recoveries after the Australian 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, and considers them in the light of these fra…
Postdisaster Posttraumatic Growth
Posttraumatic growth (PTG) is emerging in the published literature as an important aspect of postdisaster recovery. Despite these research insights into the positive transformations that people experience, PTG has not been formally operationalised in postdisaster psychosocial recovery efforts. This paper presents findings from a mixed methods study of people affected by the 2009 Victorian “Black Saturday” bushfires. Data from in-depth interviews …
Conceptualising Post-Disaster Recovery
In the disaster literature, psycho-social recovery is conceptualised typically as the alleviation of traumatic stress, with the alleviation of disaster-related grief as a less prominent part of this. Yet, incorporating grief understandings into recovery conceptualisations post disaster is important. This paper explores these conceptualisations by analysing participants' bereavement experiences following the Black Saturday bushfires. It draws on d…
Being a Parent after a Disaster
This article explores parental experiences over nearly seven years that followed catastrophic Australian bushfires in 2009. Principles of pragmatism and the constructionist tradition guided the use of semi-structured interviews with parents (nineteen mothers and three fathers) and inductive thematic analysis to distil what participants said about the trauma, loss and disruption caused by the fires, and ways in which they responded as parents. Cha…
After the accident
Road accidents affect thousands of lives each year in Australia. This article discusses findings from three years of research into survivors of major road trauma. The research aimed to examine how survivors of road trauma understood their own experiences of recovery, after sustaining serious orthopaedic injuries and undergoing rehabilitation at a Victorian rehabilitation centre. Seventy‐nine respondents completed a self‐administered survey and 24…
Anger Following the Victorian Black Saturday Bushfires
Anger is a well-recognised but little understood emotion in postdisaster contexts. For service providers working in recovery environments, it is critical to understand anger to ensure effective supports and interventions are mobilised. This article describes findings from a study conducted four years after the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday bushfires. Thirty-eight community and service-provider participants were interviewed as individuals, dyads, …
After the accident
Road accidents affect thousands of lives each year in Australia. This article discusses findings from three years of research into survivors of major road trauma. The research aimed to examine how survivors of road trauma understood their own experiences of recovery, after sustaining serious orthopaedic injuries and undergoing rehabilitation at a Victorian rehabilitation centre. Seventy‐nine respondents completed a self‐administered survey and 24…
Social Work with Aboriginal Clients
The many Aboriginal and non Aboriginal social workers who work with Aboriginal communities to address health and socioeconomic disadvantage have a key role to play in reducing the continuing inequalities experienced by many Aboriginal clients in Australia. The need for more culturally-responsive practice is well recognised, as historic barriers to effective practice and relationships persist. This paper describes the views of Aboriginal people ab…
Beyond Bushfires
Conducting the study over five years and focussing on the role of social networks will provide new insights into the interplay between individual and community factors and their influence on recovery from natural disaster over time. The study findings will thereby expand understanding of long term disaster recovery needs for individuals and communities
Black Saturday” and its Aftermath
Social workers at The Alfred, a major tertiary referral teaching hospital in Melbourne, Australia, played a key role in providing psychosocial support to patients and their families following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in the State of Victoria. Faced with the highest number of casualties ever admitted simultaneously, and the media and community involvement surrounding the national disaster, new practice challenges emerged that led to tensi…
Social Work
Social Work: From Theory to Practice uses an integrated approach to explore a variety of social theories through social work's unique interpretative lens. Systems, psychodynamic and person-centred theories, and cognitive-behavioural, narrative and strengths-based practices are specifically addressed, and students are shown how to apply these in human service settings. These theories are supported by case studies written by experienced practitione…
Human Service Organizations in the Disaster Context
When a disaster strikes, the demand for human service responses is immediate and often overwhelming of existing systems. Being prepared for such experiences should form a key part of all human serv
Conceptualising Post-Disaster Recovery
In the disaster literature, psycho-social recovery is conceptualised typically as the alleviation of traumatic stress, with the alleviation of disaster-related grief as a less prominent part of this. Yet, incorporating grief understandings into recovery conceptualisations post disaster is important. This paper explores these conceptualisations by analysing participants' bereavement experiences following the Black Saturday bushfires. It draws on d…
Social Work
Postdisaster Social Work
According to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED, 2016), a disaster is technically defined as “a situation or event that overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request at the national or international level for external assistance; an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction and human suffering” (p. 13). Social workers have long been involved in supporting people in the aftermath of su…
Postdisaster Posttraumatic Growth
Posttraumatic growth (PTG) is emerging in the published literature as an important aspect of postdisaster recovery. Despite these research insights into the positive transformations that people experience, PTG has not been formally operationalised in postdisaster psychosocial recovery efforts. This paper presents findings from a mixed methods study of people affected by the 2009 Victorian “Black Saturday” bushfires. Data from in-depth interviews …
The Value of Mixing It Up
One-to-one supervision has been widely acknowledged in the social work literature as the gold-standard approach in field education. However, the sustainability of this approach has been challenged in recent decades amidst the managerial mandates permeating both education and health/human service sectors. Universities and placement organisations have experimented with alternative supervision approaches in response to these contextual pressures, al…
Hierarchies of affectedness after disasters
Disasters result in a range of impacts that significantly disrupt the health and wellbeing of those affected. After disasters, a hierarchy of affectedness may be explicitly or implicitly developed, where those affected are compared to each other, and to people affected by disasters in other locations. When an individual's sense of place is so significantly disrupted, these hierarchies are critical to improving the understanding of recovery trajec…
Stressors and Supports in Postdisaster Recovery
Many studies show that long-term poor mental health outcomes for disaster-affected people are predicted by postdisaster stressors. Despite this finding, existing recovery frameworks vary in how these stressors are conceptualised. This paper examines community members’ subjective perceptions of what they found problematic and useful in their recoveries after the Australian 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, and considers them in the light of these fra…
Being a Parent after a Disaster
This article explores parental experiences over nearly seven years that followed catastrophic Australian bushfires in 2009. Principles of pragmatism and the constructionist tradition guided the use of semi-structured interviews with parents (nineteen mothers and three fathers) and inductive thematic analysis to distil what participants said about the trauma, loss and disruption caused by the fires, and ways in which they responded as parents. Cha…
Post-disaster social work research
The aim of this study was to understand the extent, range and nature of social work research activity after natural disasters and to identify the implications for future research and practice. A Scoping review methodology framework was used search of three databases: Web of Science, ProQuest and Informit was conducted to identify relevant studies between 2000 and 2018. Selection of studies was based on empirical research about social work and nat…
Factors Influencing Social Work Identity in Mental Health Placements
This article shares findings from a study that explored factors contributing to the development of a social work professional identity, with a particular focus on social work students undertaking field education placements in mental health settings. Social work identity is not well recognised or articulated by experienced practitioners, nor does it appear to be adequately emphasised in social work education and training programmes. There is limit…
Effective reassurance policing after collective trauma events
Crimes on the scale of a collective trauma event (CTE) can generate fear, grief, and a sense of injustice that impact beyond those directly affected. Increasingly, reassurance policing is mobilised to restore a sense of community safety and security. Yet little is evidenced as to what constitutes effective reassurance policing, and its barriers and enablers. This study examined police perceptions of good reassurance practice within Victoria Polic…
Individual and community experiences of posttraumatic growth after disaster
PTG is evident in longer-term disaster recovery. While PTG appears to vary across communities, the findings suggest that it is an individual's own sense of community (rather than community-level cohesion) that is most closely related to this longer-term growth following a bushfire event. While PTG is currently understood as an outcome of individual-level perceptions, community-level experiences shape the potential for positive transformations to …
Long-term post-traumatic growth after natural disasters
Social work is invested in supporting positive change for individuals and communities grappling with natural disasters within a changing climate. This scoping review investigated the extent, range and nature of longitudinal research examining contextual influences on experiences of post-traumatic growth (PTG) following a natural disaster. Literature searches of four databases were conducted from December 2021 to April 2022 to identify thirty-two …
Anger Following the Victorian Black Saturday Bushfires
Anger is a well-recognised but little understood emotion in postdisaster contexts. For service providers working in recovery environments, it is critical to understand anger to ensure effective supports and interventions are mobilised. This article describes findings from a study conducted four years after the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday bushfires. Thirty-eight community and service-provider participants were interviewed as individuals, dyads, …
Achieving better engagement with care and support for young people living with HIV in Australia
Young people aged 18-29 are considered "adult" within the Australian HIV health service context. However, evidence increasingly defines this age group as distinct from the broader adult population such that the needs of young people living with HIV may be overlooked in the context of HIV service design and delivery. This analysis draws on the Young + Positive study, a national study in Australia that documented the perspectives of young people (a…
International students and social work education
With increasing numbers of international students across the globe, it is essential that social work education continually adapts and innovates in ways that are inclusive of and responsive to this diverse group of students. Innovations in social work education with international students requires an understanding of the existing perspectives and knowledge base. This scoping review investigates published peer-reviewed articles written in English f…
Women Caregivers’ Engagement With Healthcare Services for Their Personal Healthcare Needs
The objective of this scoping review is to map the extent, range and nature of literature pertaining to women caregivers and their engagement with healthcare for their personal healthcare needs. It is estimated that 3 out of 5 people will become caregivers at some stage throughout their life, with a large percentage of women (75%) being primary carers. Family or informal care has been the subject of extensive research in the past, demonstrating t…
The Diversity of International Students in Australian Social Work Courses
The number of international students in social work courses in Australia has increased in recent years. This diversification of student experiences and perspectives needs to be understood for the effective delivery of social work education. In the exploratory study reported here, using an online survey, the authors examined the characteristics, experiences, and wellbeing of international students in entry-to-practice social work courses. This art…
Independent living transitions for young people with cerebral palsy in Australia
The transition to independent living is a key marker of adulthood for many adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with disability. How families adapt to this highly complex process is an important area for examination, to inform policy and practice that effectively support family life. This study aimed to understand family adaptation processes during the independent living transitions for families of AYAs with cerebral palsy. Semi-structured intervi…
Psychology (18 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Political science (12 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Disaster Response and Management (10 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Disaster Management and Resilience (9 works) · Social Work (9 works) · Psychiatry (8 works) · Psychological intervention (7 works)