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.

The 2004 Forgotten Australians report is the most recent in a series of enquiries highlighting the prevalence of abuse in Australian child welfare institutions. The final report was heavily reliant on oral evidence from survivors and called for ongoing historical research to investigate the conditions which allowed such abuse to exist. This paper is a preliminary response to that call.

Drawing on the records of a range of Victorian child welfare organisations, it argues that there is evidence in the archives both for the existence of institutional abuse and of individual and systemic responses to the problem. However, the evidence is not always found in the obvious places, nor does it support a simplistic explanation of the prevalence and tolerance of abuse in such settings.

Foster care in Victoria is under strain. As Victoria implements major legislative and service system reforms, we should consider how the future of foster care can be informed by its past. To that end, this paper revisits the document on which Victoria’s current system of foster care was founded, Tierney’s 1973 report ‘Prospects and Tasks in Foster Care’. With reference to that template, this paper examines some of the service system changes that have threatened the viability of foster care, and draws attention to some enduring qualities of foster care that nevertheless are worthy of preservation.

In Australia the number of children removed from birth parents and admitted to State care, i.e. foster care, kinship care, other home-based care, group homes or residential care, continues to rise. Because the number of foster carers (the preferred care option after kinship care) has fallen and the recruitment of new carers has become more difficult, this rise in admissions to care is a critical issue. This paper explores those factors that drive the increase in the number of children that are taken into State care and makes suggestions about how this trend might be reversed. New South Wales is used as the example for this purpose although the points made are applicable in other States and Territories.

Placement breakdown has long been recognised as a serious problem in foster care, particularly for young people whose behaviour is seen as disruptive. This qualitative study conducted in South Australia examined recent unplanned placement changes (n=14) from the perspective of the young people involved Participants were eligible for the study if their social worker attributed their most recent placement move to carer request on the grounds of problem behaviour. There was a high level of agreement between participants and social workers on the problem behaviours, but a divergence of views on the reasons for the move. Participants' contextualising of their behaviour highlighted the complexity of the processes underlying placement disruption. The dominant theme to emerge from this study was the unhappiness of participants. Other problem areas noted were apparent lack of placement options, and exclusion of young people from placement decisions.

Becoming a parent and mother is ‘the irreversible crossing of the boundary from being someone's (daughter) to becoming someone's mother’ (Schmidt Neven 1996) and what we know of this transition for adopted women is still primarily anecdotal. Many women adopted during and after the 1970s in Victoria are still in the parenting life stage, and this paper describes the experiences of three of them. The women participated in qualitative, in-depth interviews that were part of a Master of Social Work research study

This article primarily takes a life course approach in eliciting themes of normative family experiences, delay of identity consolidation until the time of childbearing, the impact of search, reunion and divided loyalties, and the negotiation of multiple family systems (adoptive, in-law and birth). The management of these complex phenomena have demanded a high level of skill and effort by these women as they cope with their own emotional reactions, continue to be responsive mothers and assist their children and partners to negotiate new, extended, family relationships.

The study draws attention to and provides insight for practitioners in this hidden area of welfare and indicates the need for further research.

The paper reflects on developments in leaving care policy and practice in Western Australia (WA) and nationally from the mid-1990s. The review of national and some international literature suggests that current Australian policy and practice shows a ‘systems stuckness’ that requires a more potent form of annual auditing and reporting of jurisdictional leaving care outcomes. The review of mostly Australian publications focusing on leaving care and the risk of homelessness includes reflections on recent developments in leaving care services in England, which recognise and restore relationship-based services for care leavers. Finally, the history, vision and initial impact of the Living Independently for the First Time (LIFT) Project, a case study of learning by doing, is outlined. The authors and their colleagues from the Department for Child Protection and Family Support (Midland District), Swan Emergency Accommodation (now known as Indigo Junction) and the Housing Authority of WA have collaborated to design and develop the LIFT Project. This initially unfunded action-research strategy involves inter-agency policy and practice designed to prevent homelessness of vulnerable care leavers.

There are multiple structural and practical barriers to Aboriginal young people with cognitive disability in remote areas receiving the support and services they need. Multidisciplinary mixed-methods research over the past decade has provided evidence of the ways that many such young people end up with complex support needs and being ‘managed’ by police and justice agencies in the absence of appropriate early intervention, transition support and community-based options. This article presents and synthesises knowledge generated by this body of work and contextualises it within the experiences and trajectory of a young Aboriginal woman with cognitive disability and complex support needs from a remote town. This case study is drawn from a New South Wales linked administrative dataset containing data from health, housing, disability, human services, police, legal, court and justice agencies on a cohort of people who have been incarcerated. The article draws out key principles and strategies to suggest what a community-led, holistic service response could have looked like for Casey.

The problem of child homicide continues to be of major concern to researchers, policy makers and child welfare advocates everywhere. In particular, there is debate around the fundamental issues of defining and classifying such deaths. Here, a revised typology of child homicide is developed, by way of an update of the categories of fatal assault first delineated in Lawrence (2004). Taking into consideration significant advances in the field over the past decade, the typology is based primarily upon the developmental stages of the child, with the concept of homicide as the extreme manifestation of aggregate violence and maltreatment also central. The problem is further placed into the context of (1) child death research and review, it being argued that child homicide should ideally be studied as a sub-set of the entire cohort of child deaths for a particular jurisdiction, and (2) child maltreatment generally, in that wherever practicable child homicide research should consider fatalities in conjunction with other serious or near-fatal cases of abuse and neglect.

The South Australian foster care system is plagued by problems of both supply and demand. Decreases in the availability of residential care and suitably trained foster carers has led to a shortage of placements to meet current demand. At the same time, increased selectivity in the intake of children into care has led to an over-concentration of more challenging children who either cannot be placed in foster care, or are being placed with the support of significantly higher loadings or payments. In this paper, it is argued that these problems can be understood conceptually using basic micro-economic principles, namely: demand-supply curve analysis, separation of market segments, and supply elasticity. It is argued that the supply of placements has become increasingly price-inelastic due to the nature of demand (the type of child), and that increasing short-term payment rates only serves to magnify the problem by artificially maintaining unsuitable care arrangements. Alternative solutions, such as the introduction of training and professional foster carers, are discussed.

This article reports on a qualitative research study that explored the perspectives and lived experiences of children in a range of New Zealand rural environments. Thirty-six children, aged between 6 and 11 years, were interviewed about living in the country and also contributed artwork and photographs. They came from four specific rural locations, ranging from ‘rural with high urban influence’ to ‘highly rural/remote’. Children expressed positive views about aspects of rural living, such as opportunities for being outdoors and participating in social relationships, confirming a positive discourse of the rural idyll. Their accounts highlighted children's agency under complex and sometimes challenging conditions. Children also, however, experienced some aspects of rural life as dull, dangerous or difficult. The complex and nuanced constructions of rural childhood uncovered in this study point to the critical importance of consulting with children in order to understand their experiences and best meet the needs of rural children and families.

Music media contains high levels of sexual content and children spend a considerable amount of time interacting with it. This poses the question as to whether children internalise and imitate the sexual behaviours displayed by music artists. This study observed the self-presentation of 366 children aged 5–14 years at two Australian primary school discos. Children of all age groups were directly imitating both sexual and non-sexual dress and behaviours seen in contemporary music videos. Approximately one third of children observed presented in a sexualised way, which suggests children more broadly may be adopting sexualised behaviours at an early age. The prevalence and nature of sexualised behaviours by children, and the impact of this on children's socio-sexual development, are matters requiring further investigation.

This paper sets out a series of principles for minimising the trauma of transitions experienced by children in out of home care. It is based on a child centred approach that has as its goal making transition bearable and psychologically useful for each child who must go through it, creating a space where even previous transition wounds might heal. The paper concentrates particularly on the complexities of helping children to move between foster care and permanent care placements.

While a wide array of service providers and academic scholars apply the use of “care” in their work, the concept of “care” itself remains largely undefined. This has widespread implications for applied work with children and young people (CYP), particularly since institutions such as schools and non-governmental organisations are increasingly being expected to care for or about children. In this paper, we use thematic analysis to report on interviews with representatives from four service providers and organisations responsible for the care of children. In our analysis, we explore both how care is defined by these organisations, and the implications for practice when working with CYP.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has uncovered evidence that organisations sometimes provide opportunity for the sexual abuse of children. How do organisations go about preventing this? The authors of this paper consider the case of an out-of-home care (OOHC) agency which failed to protect children. By identifying gaps in practice and culture in this case, the authors suggest that protecting children in OOHC requires a “weave” of organisational structures, staff development and cultural competence. In this case, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the organisation was able to create an opportunity for access to vulnerable young people by using strategies we can now identify as grooming behaviours. He did this by using his positional power. He ignored standards, isolated protective adults and therefore children and young people, rewarded compliance, discouraged reflective practice, used his culture to avoid scrutiny from funding and oversighting agencies, and created an organisational culture of fear and secrecy. In effect, he used culture to trump safety. Even in the stressful conditions of managing an OOHC service, good practice is important, not only because it meets the standards and legislation, but because this is how services maintain the safety of children and young people in care.

Children of parents who abuse substances have become a concern of child protection agencies, family support services, family preservation services and increasingly of drug and alcohol treatment agencies. In the context of a formative evaluation of a specialised intensive family support service designed to address the needs of families at this interface, a literature review has been undertaken. From that review, themes relating to women as substance abusers, the children of substance abusers, and services to enhance parenting in these situations are reported. Implications for intensive home-based practice are identified.

This paper discusses the increasing similarity between Australia’s states and territories in their child protection legislation. The paper deals mainly with the principles underlying child protection laws, definitions of abuse and neglect, and the way legislation deals with the likelihood and severity of harm to the child. The trend is towards adopting a common set of principles, and definitions which are relatively precise in targeting particular ‘types’ of abuse and eliminating status offences. However there are significant differences even between states which broadly adopt this type of legislation, and some states adopt quite different approaches. There is still little consensus on how likelihood and severity of harm are dealt with. The paper, in welcoming the principle of common legislation, notes a wide range of issues in the developing legal paradigm which have been subject to little or no public debate. It is not clear that the increasing ‘homogenisation’ of child protection laws is enshrining the kind of legislation required.

Five years ago, in one of my first contributions to this space at the back of what was then called Australian Child and Family Welfare, I wrote a piece on the abuse of children by those in positions of trust and responsibility. The article, ‘What you see depends on where you stand, what you want to see and what you want to tell others you have seen’, (Goddard 1988) was prompted by two events in my life.