This article traces the history of child welfare in Australia, showing the ways in which policies and practices, deriving primarily from Britain, were adopted and adapted in a nation in which jurisdiction was split between colonies/states and further divided, within states, on the basis of race. It argues that child welfare has always been part of the nation-building project, central to national objectives when children could be constructed as future citizens, marginal, and more punitive, when they were more easily understood as threats to social stability. In this second part, it discusses post-war developments in services for non-indigenous children, and indigenous child welfare services. It concludes with a discussion of the historiography of child welfare in Australia arguing that because, to date, historical writing has concentrated on localised or specialist studies, child welfare professionals have limited access to an understanding of the history of the systems within which they work.

The tabloid print media has played a crucial role in recent Australian social policy debates, particularly those pertaining to drug use and child and adolescent welfare. Much of the media's contribution has been around promoting simplistic and often conservative solutions to complex social problems.

This article examines the recent media-inspired furore over so-called ‘safe-sniffing’ practices in a Victorian welfare agency. It is acknowledged that other forms of media such as talk back radio may have had influential roles, as might other factors also. Particular attention, however, is drawn here to the Herald Sun's role in this affair, and to similarities with its intervention in earlier policy debates. Some comparisons are also drawn with the coverage of the affair by the Age and the Australian.

It is argued that the Herald Sun's specific campaign on chroming reflects a broader conservative agenda to undermine progressive social policy interventions including harm minimisation. This agenda may have significant implications for the Victorian community welfare sector given the tendency of politicians – whether in government or opposition – to bow to the demands of the tabloid media.

Persistent neglect is thought to be just as harmful to a child as abuse. However, neglect is often difficult to assess for two reasons: firstly it often resembles poverty; and secondly, neglecting families tend to have disorganised patterns of accessing health care and social support. This article looks at the importance of joint health and welfare input in interventions with families at risk of neglecting their children. The Strengthening Families Program at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital provides a model for interdisciplinary and intersectoral (welfare and health) collaboration, which offers care management to individual families and is working towards systemic changes in the hospital's response to these families.

This article is a follow-up of a paper describing a proposed ‘best practice’ model for a home visiting service for first-time parents (Drielsma, 1998). The results of three years implementation and evaluation of a pilot of that model in a geographically isolated semi-metropolitan high growth area on the Central Coast, NSW are presented and discussed. The service uses paid professionals within the context of a ‘Family Centre’ with a volunteer network to offer ongoing home visiting support to first-time parents who are facing social and geographical isolation and who have few supports and resources to meet their needs. Importantly, the service has relied on close collaboration with child health services and a partnership with other community agencies and the local community itself. The external evaluation used a mix of Action Research and quantitative tools. This showed that the pilot model effectively engaged ‘high-risk’ families in a non-stigmatising way. Further, these families were networked to an array of other mainstream child health and family support services. The essence of this model was described through an Action Profiling process and this correlated closely with the model's structural parameters of operation.

Using a state-wide sample of 122 school counsellors (52 males and 70 females) in Queensland, Australia, factors which influenced their decision not to report child sexual abuse were examined. These factors were a lack of evidence; lack of confidence in the authorities to accurately evaluate or protect sexually abused children; adverse effects on the family's social standing in the community; potential to break up the family; and the fear of breaking counsellor-client confidentiality. Further, school counsellors were not likely to report all cases of child sexual abuse when they suspected it, thus confirming the popular belief that child sexual abuse is under-reported by them.

Wanslea Family Services (WFS), a non-government family welfare agency in Perth, has provided foster care placements for the Western Australian Department of Family and Children's Services for many years. Data about these children and their families is held in a comprehensive electronic database that covers the period 1991-1999. This 9-year data set is unique in Western Australia and may be unique nationally.

An analysis of this data indicates no significant variation across the nine year period for age at admission of children to foster care. In contrast, a statistically significant cubic trend was found for length of episode of care indicating that the duration of foster care placements significantly varied across the nine year period. Analyses of gender for both age at admission and length of foster care showed significant differences but only for particular years. In 1995 females were significantly younger than males while in 1998 males were significantly younger than females. Only in 1998 was length of episode of care significant when it was shorter for males than females. Possible explanations for these results are discussed.