This paper is a study of foster care in Sweden, and considers foster care practice in the light of research findings. The paper raises useful questions for child welfare practitioners in Australia. The author herself identifies some of the current issues in Australian Child Welfare practice. As the author notes, the difficulty of obtaining Australia wide statistics of child care leaves us with the potential of many gaps in our knowledge.

In 1979, the Children’s Bureau of Australia, a non-government research and advocacy body, undertook a national survey of substitute family care provided by non-government child care agencies. The report of the Survey, “Particular Care” was published by the Bureau early in 1982.

For the first time in Australia, comprehensive data is available on children being cared for in children’s homes, foster care, and homes for physically and intellectually handicapped children. While the study was restricted to non-government organizations, these organizations in fact care for more children than do government agencies; indications are that the picture obtained in the survey would also be typical of that for government sponsored care.

It has been known for years in the residential child care field voluntary agencies are severely handicapped by the fact that the way one agency records its income and expenditure is quite different from the next agency. The most immediate effect is that since little sense can be made of what it really costs to keep a child in care, it is virtually impossible to organize a case as to how current government subsidies should be varied which will convince ourselves, much less the Victorian State Treasury.

In 1974 – 75, notwithstanding this limitation, the Children’s Welfare Association of Victoria (C.W.A.V.), through its “Survival Committee”, was able to negotiate substantial and largely positive changes to the then subsidy system, although limitations in what was developed were obvious before the new scheme was implemented. It must be recognized, however, that the “Survival Committee” belongs to another era. Here are just a few reasons why:

A child's schooling is a vital aspect of his life and his adjustment to school indicates his probable future adaptation and adjustment to life. The child who receives severe burns and requires hospitalisation, frequently faces difficulties in returning to school and resuming his former place in his peer group. Active intervention at the local school by hospital staff may ease the return to school and assist the child to overcome these difficulties.