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The purpose of this paper is to describe the impact of a trauma-informed care (TIC) training programme on practice at the individual and workplace level in mental health and drug and alcohol services and to examine the implications of using training alone as a strategy for achieving system-level practice change.

A total of 271 clinicians and managers from public mental health and drug and alcohol services in Western Australia who had undertaken TIC training were invited to complete an on-line survey 12 months after training. Individual survey items were based on a five-point Likert scale with opportunity being provided for additional comments from respondents.

One year post-training, both clinicians and managers reported that training had increased their awareness and knowledge and had a positive impact on their attitudes towards TIC. Clinicians reported a moderate impact on their individual practice and both groups reported very limited success in bringing about change in their workplaces. Workforce development and organisational factors were identified by both clinicians and managers as being barriers to implementation.

Only 30 per cent of the training participants responded to the survey and it is not possible to determine whether they differed from non-respondents. Findings were based on a self-report survey with no objective measure of behaviour change.

This “naturalistic” study examines the longer-term impact of training, from the perspective of clinicians and managers, on changing practice at the individual clinician and workplace level. It highlights the critical importance of understanding and addressing contextual factors where collective, coordinated behaviour change is needed in order to effect organisational change.

This chapter explores women leaders’ outward appearance in the male-dominated world of rail, through the lenses of postfeminism and neoliberalism. Drawing on 31 interviews with women leaders in rail, it maps how a postfeminist logic is evident in women leaders’ narratives of aesthetic femininity. Aesthetic femininity refers to women leaders’ outward appearance which they describe as feminine. The research participants justify their feminine ‘work style’ through postfeminist themes of individual choice, natural sex differences, irony, personal initiative, skill and empowerment. The findings also show a patterning of justification around aesthetic femininity that fits a neoliberal self-governance as enterprise, self-flexibility and self-confidence. It is argued that whilst these iterations of aesthetic femininity are rooted in postfeminist and neoliberal contexts, they have consequences for sustaining gendered inequalities and traditional feminine norms in the highly masculinised culture of rail. Women’s narratives, whereby gender inequalities are acknowledged then subsumed into individualised agency through dress and appearance, do little to challenge the gendered culture in this sector.

This investigation/report/reflection was motivated largely by the occasion of the first Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) “Summer School” in North America.¹ But its roots reach down as well to other recent reflection/investigation pieces, in particular, Mathews (1997), Gray (2002, 2006), and Deegan and Soltys (2007). The last of these authors note (p. 82) that CSEAR Summer Schools were initiated in Australasia, at least partly as a means to spur interest and activity in social and environmental accounting (SEA) research. So, too, was the first North American CSEAR Summer School.² We believe, therefore, that it is worthwhile to attempt in some way to identify where SEA currently stands as a field of interest within the broader academic accounting domain in Canada and the United States.³ As well, however, we believe this is a meaningful time for integrating our views on the future of our chosen academic sub-discipline with those of Gray (2002), Deegan and Soltys (2007), and others. Thus, as the title suggests, we seek to identify (1) who the SEA researchers in North America are; (2) the degree to which North American–based accounting research journals publish SEA-related research; and (3) where we, the SEA sub-discipline within North America, might be headed. We begin with the who.