I am sure you will forgive me if I do not deliver a formal lecture on an occasion like this. It would be easy to be heavy and serious with a theme such as the one chosen for this week, and the title “The Switchblade Mentality” scarcely leads you to expect an after dinner entertainment. I always feel mildly disappointed after speaking on topics like this when kind listeners come up and say “Thank you, I enjoyed that”.

A previous issue of this journal has been devoted to child abuse, and of course there is endless discussion in many places of the pros and cons of mandatory reporting laws. But non-lawyers must find it difficult to see the general picture of the laws relating to child abuse. Here is an attempt to provide one.

The present study presents an evaluation of the effects of birth order and family size on the self-concept as measured by the 29 scores of the Tennessee Self Concept Scale (TSCS). One hundred and seventeen middle and upper class 18 to 22-year-old female American university students were administered the TSCS and divided into the following birth-order groups: only, first, middle, and last; and family-size groups: subjects that came from two-child families, three or four-child families, and five-or-more-child families. Analysis of variance and t test statistical procedures showed the only-born to have the most favored birth-order position in terms of self-concept and tendencies to avoid the characteristics associated with pathological disorders. The most favored family size (in terms of self-concept and tendency to avoid the characteristics associated with pathological disorders) was three or more children with the least favored being a family with two children.

While a great deal of effort has been directed toward the diagnosis of the battered child syndrome, perhaps Australia should direct the majority of its effort and money toward the implementation and evaluation of treatment programmes. It is proposed that the more effective treatment programme is based in the home of the family with initial daily home visits by the therapist to implement and teach proven techniques.

The purpose of this paper has two major aspects. First, it provides an opportunity of presenting an overview of some of the innovations and recent developments in the field of Child Welfare in Victoria. Second, it poses a challenge to make some comment on what these developments might actually add up to; in other words, it begs the question of whether one can make some sort of sense of what is going on. When you are working “in the field”, or as we would say with equally telling imagery in the U.K., “at the coal face”, you cannot always be aware of the implications and ramifications of what you are doing. True, the managers and the planners of your operations must, and do, give thought to this, but for the majority of us, beset by the problems of everyday work routines, it is hard to lift one's glance beyond the eye-level plane; what is more, one is too exhausted to read the unabating volume of reports and articles and statements that are around.