The aim of this paper is to present Family Support as the optimal choice for the long-term well being of children of families in great stress. (This may be the primary professional resource or may be in combination with alternative care).

These families are described elsewhere as “multi deficit”, “multi problem”, “hard to reach”, “hardcore” and “excluded families”, meaning excluded from the day to day services of our community. Not only do these families fear rejection and failure so do not attempt to use ordinary community services and resources such as community houses, libraries, maternal and child health nurses etc., but these services feel uneasy and poorly equipped to handle these families and their perceived needs.

A multi-service agency is required to effect change where there has been an inter-generational cycle of deprivation which gives rise to a “poverty of experience.”

We will demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach through a case study where long-term fostercare seemed a likely outcome.

This paper presents a distillation of the knowledge about families and methods of working with them, that has grown and developed over the past 10 years at Careforce Outer East.

Planner-coordinator, catalyst, facilitator, service provider and service funder now characterise Local Government's involvement in children's services and the human services generally.

A 1987 report prepared for the Local Government Ministers, Community Development, Human Services and Local Government presents a national overview of the increased role of councils in human services clearly signalling that the debate of the 70s about whether Local Government should be involved has been replaced with questions about the basis of that involvement and implementation issues.

Data has been gathered by the Family Aide Projects Association from family aide services throughout the State of Victoria to enable policy and program decision making within the family aide program to be better informed. The 52 member agencies were canvassed to generate information which gives a more comprehensive picture of the operation of services than previously available. This paper presents a summary of the survey process and outcome.

Gardens and gardenng often mean different things to different people. When I was invited to join a committee about nine years ago for a garden centre for people with disabilities, I was, to say he least, tentative. I knew more about disabled people and their needs and more about volunteers than gardening. I enquired about the centre and the committee. The Centre had been established by an idea sown by Kevin Heinze, the well known television gardener and educator, after he had seen a garden for people with disabilities overseas—one to work in, not just to sit in. He interested many people with the idea of developing such a garden in Melbourne. The Doncaster Council then negotiated with the State Electricity Commission about the use of some land believed suitable in Doncaster, approximately 25 km from the city.

This was in 1979. I accepted the invitation to join the Kevin Heinze Garden Centre Committee just a few months after it had started operating. This paper will describe the development of the Centre and its value for people with intellectual and physical disabilities, and the work of the co-ordinator and volunteers.

There is a Yorkshire expression, that many people are fond of quoting, to account for strange behaviour: “There's nowt so queer as folk”. Some folk, always other folk and never oneself, are more queer than others (and many Englishmen would claim that Yorkshire folk are stranger than most, but that's another story).

The expression came to mind when I read a column in Icaro, the magazine of Varig, the Brazilian airline. I am not fond of flying at the st of times and finding a magazine called Icaro in the seat pocket of a fully-laden jet increased my anxiety. Icaro, presumably, is Portuguese for that legendary character Icarus who, in attempting to escape from Crete, flew so high that the sun melted the wax that held his wings on with the consequence that he fell in the sea. A stranger title for an airline magazine would be hard to find.