A current concern of social workers and other professions in the field of child and family welfare in Australia is the development of programmes of family support. Financial counselling has been extensively promoted as one such programme, and under a variety of auspices, financial counselling services have been developed in many parts of Australia. This article provides an historical perspective on the emergence of this type of family support service. The development of interest in and support for financial counselling programmes is traced and discussed, and the current range of activities is described. Finally, the implications of the pattern of historical development for the future of financial counselling as a family support strategy is considered.

Recent revelations in the media about the status of some Taiwanese children adopted by Australians raised again the issue of safeguards, official policies and practice in inter-country adoption. For many of the people significantly engaged in urging a raising of standards, the present situation and future possibilities foreshadowed in official quarters leave little room for optimism. In spite of well documented arguments for a uniform code of practice, responsibilities remain divided, offering loopholes for those who believe they have a special case that puts them outside the laid down procedures for assessment and approval. This paper argues that governments in Australia (State and Commonwealth) must not be allowed to walk away from responsibilities in inter-country adoptions, responsibilities which are firmly established and recognised as appropriate in domestic adoptions.

Neither State nor private adoption agencies in Australia give preference to childless applicants over applicants who already have one child. This policy is presumed to be in ‘the best interest of the child’, and is based on the belief that being an only child leads to maladjustment. Empirical evidence indicates, however, that in general only children are in fact better adjusted than children from larger families. Consequently, not only has the existing policy no substance but also it denies natural justice to the childless couples who have to wait to start their adoptive family.

In the past two decades there has been a complete reversal of the supply/demand situation in the area of child adoption in Australia. At present, the number of children available for adoption is so small relative to the number of potential adopters, that approved applicants have to wait for up to eight years in N.S.W. before they can expect to have a child allotted to them. The length of this waiting period seems excessive not only in terms of the applicants’ expectations but also in terms of ordinary common sense values of the general community. If the situation is to be remedied, there is a need for a more flexible adoption policy suited to the prevailing social circumstances. A facet of this policy, which could shorten the waiting period possibly by half if adapted to the existing situation, is the proviso that all other things being equal childless applicants are given no preference over applicants who already have a natural or adopted child.

The Children’s Services Sub-Committee of the Consultative Committee on Social Welfare has recently examined the adequacy of out-of-school programmes in meeting the needs of families in the ACT. The sub-committee initially consulted with several organizations that provided holiday care and afterschool care programmes. Child-care workers expressed the view that there is a high level of dissatisfaction amongst users of out-of-hours care programmes. On the basis of this consultation the subcommittee discovered that:

1. (a) some holiday care programmes reported recent changes in enrolment patterns, especially that children who had been attending in the past were no longer doing so, and that the average age of the children attending had declined;

2. (b) some programmes had ceased to operate through lack of enrolments after the first two or three days;

3. (c) many after-school programmes had developed slowly and existing programmes were often under-utilised. Some child-care workers reported that it had taken twelve months to build up enrolments to economically viable levels in after-school care programmes; and

4. (d) there was an awareness by organisations that in most suburbs there were significant numbers of 5 to 12 year olds returning to empty houses after school and that there appeared to be resistance on the part of children to attending programmes, not just reluctance on the part of parents to send their children to such programmes.

There can be few more emotional issues in penology than female prisoners’ relationships with their children. Two situations need to be considered. Firstly, when the child is an infant, say, up to three years of age, there are problems concerning mother and child living together during mother’s imprisonment.