This article examines the assumptions linking stress and the lack of social support to the need for relief child daycare. The literature reviewed finds support for the view that such daycare can be a useful preventative intervention. It is a valid option to consider among the range of family supports, given accelerating rates of child abuse reports.

Child protection investigations are difficult tasks that many social workers undertake as part of their everyday work. Roles that seem contradictory, use of power and authority, and angry clients all serve to create tension for parents, workers and organisations alike. This paper seeks to address these issues and argues for the conceptualisation of the child protection investigation as the first interview of a potentially ongoing relationship.

In a qualitative study of adult women's experiences of having been sexually abused as children, research participants reported their recollections of their responses, as children, to sexual abuse and of their relationships with mothers and peers.

Childhood responses to sexual abuse included attempts to escape, fear, guilt and shame. Attempts to escape encompassed physical resistance as well as mental processes, such as daydreaming and dissociation. Despite numerous such attempts to escape, in the context of immobilising fear, many still blamed themselves for the sexual abuse. Many also experienced shame, a profound sense of exposure and humiliation. Relationships with mothers were dominated by feelings of loss and betrayal which, in several cases, had persisted into adulthood. Relationships with peers were characterised by isolation, with underlying fear of rejection and humiliation. Physical and verbal abuse, by a wider range of perpetrators, was common.

Several conclusions for therapy with sexually abused children are drawn: Attention to the full range of attempts to escape sexual abuse, in the context of immobilising fear, could help dispel children's sense of guilt about sexual abuse. The experiences of guilt and shame should both be addressed. In not blaming mothers for sexual abuse, any negative aspects of the child's experience of his or her relationship with mother should not be inadvertently minimised. The fear of exposure or rejection underlying poor peer relationships should be addressed as part of attempts at improving peer relationships. Isolation accruing from other forms of child abuse by a wider range of perpetrators needs to be addressed.

Analysis of the issue of abuse in care reveals that common structures and processes for response to allegations operate within a paradigm of minimalist child protection and that this paradigm is inadequate to the effective management of the problem. The paper will argue that a shift of paradigm is required. Concepts of individual pathology and deficiency, conflicts of interest in reporting and investigation and tolerance for all but seriously inadequate care for children must be replaced. A paradigm of duty of care would result in policy and procedure which embraced agencies' moral and legal duties towards children and assessed allegations or harm from this holistic perspective.

With attention focussed on child abuse and measures for child protection in many countries around the world, efforts have been made to understand something of the nature and dimensions that lie behind abuse. Now the time has come to look at domestic violence in its other manifestations - not only parent to child as in child abuse, but also husband to wife or cohabiter to cohabiter. What, however, has been missing from this widening of concerns has been a focus on parental behaviour toward their children which involves the use of physical punishment in child rearing but which may fall short of the legal definition of abuse. This gap is about to be considered with the emergence in Australia of the EPOCH campaign in which Oz Child is to be a leading participant.

Suzanne Jenkins has had over fourteen years experience in the field of child abuse and perpetrator work. She was employed as Senior Therapist at the Gracewell Clinic in Birmingham, England. The Gracewell Clinic had a world-wide reputation for its successful and innovative approach to working with paedophiles and other perpetrators of sexual violence. Since the clinic's closure in late 1993, Suzanne has developed her own therapeutic and training model for working with sexual abuse based on an integrated approach.

The interview was conducted whilst I was on a study tour of Britain supported by a Creswick Foundation Fellowship in Family Relations and Child Development and the Department of Social Work, Monash University.

The interview took place during Suzanne's time with the Gracewell Clinic. In the interview, Suzanne discusses ideas that she has found useful in her experience of working with perpetrators of sexual abuse.