This special celebratory issue of Children Australia marks a milestone in the commitment, tenacity and vision of many people across the last 40 years. Academics and professional practitioners, alike, have contributed their expertise and wisdom in a variety of roles – from writing and editing to financial backing and administrative excellence. Without this range of knowledge, and the determination to keep the journal alive and responsive to our changing world, we would not be in the strong and vibrant position we find ourselves in 2015.

We have great pleasure in introducing three of our new Editorial Consultants to readers in this Issue of the journal—Dr Neerja Sharma from New Delhi in India, and Drs Antoinette Lombard and Liana le Roux from South Africa.

For 40 years, Children Australia (and previous incarnations) has provided an enormously valuable space for research, practice and policy to delineate challenges, successes and innovation on issues pertaining to the wellbeing and welfare of children and their families. Articles published in the Journal during this period have been incredibly influential and have added to our collective knowledge of children, young people and their families. Nowhere has this been more evident than the area of out-of-home care (OOHC). This paper will explore and reflect on some of the issues that have been articulated in papers published in the journal over the last 40 years – with a specific focus on Australian Kinship, Foster, Residential and Therapeutic Residential Care. Past issues that are still presenting current challenges will be described and opportunities for change and future improvement identified.

This paper is a reflective commentary that highlights some of the issues that impacted upon my thinking and perspectives as a social worker working in the child, youth and family sector. The paper takes the form of a narrative with some accounts of incidents that were memorable and challenged the ways I thought about myself and issues we face in the sector. My concerns are that, while there are many aspects of the work done in this sector in the past that we don't want to repeat, there are also features of service delivery that we overlook in the contemporary tendency to want quick solutions and pursue trends. The conclusions I have come to include the need for community-based, co-located services for parents and children who need supports and out-of-home care responses (OOHC).

Jennifer Lehmann, in her reflections on out-of-home care (OOHC) in the preceding paper, offers an important contribution to this special issue of Children Australia (Lehmann, 2015). We are honoured to be involved and to provide this response.

In the light of Dave Vicary's review of 40 years of publications addressing out-of-home care (OOHC) issues and current concerns about both the systemic context of child protection and the comparatively narrow range of options for the delivery of care in the sector, a range of people from Australia and beyond were asked for their responses to the question: Where do you see OOHC going in the next 40 years and what do you think our priorities need to be?

This paper represents a personal view of the evolution of the Mulberry Bush School and Organisation. I will define three developmental stages, and within these some “core concepts” which, in my view, have enabled our services to evolve. I will illustrate these with case studies.

This paper explores the debates surrounding out-of-home care for children who are unable to live with their birth parents and become looked after by the state in England. The historical context for the provision of out-of-home care is considered. Themes, including the use of residential care, foster care, adoption and placements of children from Black and minority ethnic children, are identified. These themes are re-examined in light of the current political and policy context, including the impact of globalisation. The paper concludes some reflections on future trends.

Dr Howard Bath was most recently the Northern Territory Children's Commissioner, first appointed in 2008 and re-appointed in 2012. Trained as a Clinical Psychologist, Howard has studied and worked in both Australia and the USA. He has worked as a youth worker, manager, Agency Director and clinician and was the inaugural Chair of the Child and Family Welfare Association of Australia, the peak body for service providers representing all states and territories. Howard has presented widely at conferences and training seminars and has authored numerous research reports and articles on topics including family preservation services, out-of-home care, behaviour management and child protection. Howard joined the Anglicare NT Board in April 2015 and now provides consultancy services through Allambi Care in NSW. He has been a longstanding supporter of the Children Australia journal and his generosity over the years in helping with a range of journal-related tasks, including being a former Editorial Consultant is very much appreciated.

Foster care has been available in Australia for almost 150 years. Carers have long been recognised as “the ultimate volunteers” who care for the most traumatised, emotionally disturbed children in the nation. Given that they provide the foundation stone of the child protection system, one might expect carers to be supported and valued. Numerous studies have shown otherwise. Warning signs over the years have been ignored by child welfare authorities resulting in carers leaving the service faster than they could be recruited and the most needy young children being placed in caravan parks, cheap motels and group homes supervised by occasional, inadequately trained, generalist carers employed on seven hour contracts by agencies.

In all countries where the evidence is available, the educational performance of children looked after away from home falls markedly below that of their peers. In the recent years this has become a subject of intense debate. Is it an inevitable consequence of the adversity they have suffered before coming into care, and only to be expected given the characteristics of their families of origin? Or does the care system itself bear some responsibility? This question is not simply one of academic interest. Longitudinal research on social exclusion has shown the strong association between low levels of education and negative adult outcomes which disproportionately affect those with a background in care. This paper argues that efforts to narrow the gap in achievement between children in public care and their home-based peers will meet with little success as long as the problem is only tackled at the individual level. In an attempt to bring about systemic change, the English government in 2006 introduced a new concept: the Virtual School for “looked after” children. The Virtual School encompasses as pupils all children and young people in a particular area who are in public care, but has no physical existence other than an office base. The children continue to attend their own schools, which are responsible for their progress. Initially a difficult concept to grasp, the model now seems to be fully accepted and all local authorities in England are legally required to appoint a Virtual School Head (VSH). The article reviews the limited available research and offers an illustrative case study. In conclusion, it suggests that the virtual school may be a model with potential to help raise the attainment of children in care in countries other than England.

This paper aims to give an overview of out-of-home care in India. It looks at the history and culture of extra-familial care in the country, the urgent need for organised out-of-home care, and tries to understand the role of the state, including legislation and policies. The belief that individual families should solve their children's problems is deeply ingrained. There are different support systems that cater to the children's needs and right to healthy living in home and with family. While the government and community choose and decide for the children of the country, the government drags its feet in drafting policies which recognise that large number of children are growing up without families. More research is needed to look at the need and quality parameters for out-of-home care. Action from both government and non-government organisations (NGOs) will require a large number of institutions that, in turn, will require sufficient budgets and trained staff to ensure an environment of protection, support and appropriate development for an estimated 20 million children in need of good quality out-of-home care in India.

At the present time in Australia, there is much discussion about attachment and trauma-informed therapeutic residential care (TRC) programmes. The discussion includes a continuing reference to the high cost of this form of care by comparison to foster family care. This comparison assumes that both services serve the same population which this paper disputes. The emergence of TRC as one option in the continuum of care also raises issues about how a residential care (RC) workforce might be educated and trained for these programmes. This is particularly important given the mental health and behavioural difficulties the population of young people referred to TRC programmes, frequently display.

Robyn is a UK-qualified social worker who has a deeply held passion for, and some 30 years of experience working with disenfranchised and/or vulnerable people and children and young people in care. She has a strong interest in social pedagogy and residential childcare both operationally and strategically. Since 1995, she has been in a variety of management positions and has developed and delivered training, conferences, workshops and consultancy on children's social work and social care for the statutory, voluntary and independent sectors. Her work has aimed at improving both the experiences and outcomes for children and young people in or on the edge of care and raising the profile of those affected by, and working within, the social work and social care sectors.

This article gives a brief overview of the Spiral to Recovery practice framework as it is being used at Catalyst child and family services in far north Queensland. The Spiral is an evidence informed framework for therapeutic residential care (TRC), designed for children and young people with complex and extreme emotional and behavioural difficulties who reside in out-of-home care (OOHC) placements. The Spiral is a stage-based framework where the initial aim is to establish actual and felt safety before young people meet the challenges of healing and growth. The framework rests on a theoretical base of trauma, attachment and socialisation theories. The article also describes how the Spiral framework has been implemented at Catalyst, demonstrating the need for congruence between organisational and practice frameworks.

Despite the emphasis within Australian child protection upon family-based care as the preferred placement option, it has been increasingly recognised that some young people may be best served in specialist care placements, such as residential or therapeutic care. This paper presents a thematic analysis of 20 interviews undertaken with professional carers who, at the time, were working in a specialist care programme in South Australia known as Individual Packages of Care. The analysis suggests that three key issues were at stake for participants: (1) the impact of role conflict between engaging in caring relationships with young people and maintaining professional boundaries; (2) the impact of additional stakeholders (such as mental health professionals) upon the stability of the placement; and (3) the use of restraint as a form of behaviour management. The paper concludes by discussing the interesting relationship identified in the data between caring relationships and the use of restraint, and makes recommendations from the data for issues requiring further consideration with regard to specialist care placements.

When children are removed from their homes in an emergency situation they leave behind some or all of those familiar items they consider their own. The loss of this sense of ownership, combined with the shock of moving to an unfamiliar foster environment, can leave them afraid, traumatised and emotionally scarred. A group of volunteers addressed this by forming the Love and Care project in Brisbane, Australia. The aim of this project is to provide kits to children from birth to 17 years of age upon them being placed in foster care. These care kits, containing clothing, school supplies, toys and other items, fill a need for the children to have something they can hold on to and call their own. This paper demonstrates the value of an external support service that can play a substantial part in maximising better outcomes for children transitioning into foster care. It aims to describe the structure and practices of Love and Care and, from the lessons learnt through observation of the project practices that created and sustained it, to make recommendations. It also briefly addresses the importance of including external services in the evaluation and research of foster children's outcomes.

This paper identifies a sizeable group of vulnerable children who suffer discrimination and under-achievement on a daily basis in Australia, with particular attention to NSW out-of-home care (OOHC) practices. The purpose of the paper is to highlight the gaps in services specifically relating to the education of children in OOHC, care leavers and young carers. The paper identifies the extent of the issue, the ways that OOHC children suffer discrimination and possible solutions. As OOHC children are not a specific equity group targeted for support by governments, their identity, numbers, problems and issues are not recorded or singled out for specialist support. The paper recognises that further research is required, but offers some ways forward giving examples of widening participation in education. However, it comes to the conclusion that OOHC children are not given a “Fair go”.