The state government Department for Family and Community Services (formerly DCW) in South Australia is currently seeking to clarify and where necessary change policy in the area of guardianship, long term legal status and related issues. To facilitate this aim in the context of a broader consultation process, a discussion paper was prepared by the author in his role of Chief Policy Officer of DCW in October 1989. The full paper covers a range of issues bearing on the department's role in relation to children and their families where there is a possibility of state care being ordered.

This paper is based on the Keynote Address given by the author at the First National Home Visiting Conference in Canberra, 18-20 August, 1997. The paper explores a range of questions fundamental in relation to the future of home visiting programs in Australia What are home visiting programs? Who visits whom and to what end? What type of relationship develops and what happens during the visit? Where should such programs fit into agencies and service systems? And what about issues such as funding, ethics and evaluation? Last but not least, how can we learn from the home visiting programs of the past to meet the needs of the present and the future?

This paper describes the collaboration between an Aboriginal community and Western Australia's (WA) Department for Child Protection (DCP) in designing and operating a residential child care facility in a predominantly Aboriginal community. Research literature has established that the effective operation of child protection systems in remote Aboriginal communities requires practitioners and policy-makers to have awareness of local and extra-local cultural, historical and contemporary social factors in nurturing children. This ethnographic case study describes how a newspaper campaign heightened public and professional awareness of child abuse in the town of Halls Creek, in WA's Kimberley region. With its largely Aboriginal population, Halls Creek lacked the infrastructure to accommodate an inflow of regional people. Homelessness, neglect and poverty were widespread. Within a broader government and local response, DCP joined with community leaders to plan out of home care for children. Detailed are the importance and complexities of negotiating between universal standardised models of care and local input. Strategies for building positive relationships with children's family while strengthening both parenting capacity and community acceptance, and use of the facility are identified. Key to success was the development of a collaborative ‘third-space’ for threading together local and professional child protection knowledge.

The Pyjama Foundation is an Australian charity working to improve the literacy and numeracy outcomes for children in foster care. The foundation delivers the Pyjama Foundation Love of Learning programme, a learning-based mentoring programme in which volunteer ‘Pyjama Angels’ visit children in care each week to read books, play games and engage in other learning-based activities.

This study surveyed 121 Love of Learning mentors (‘Pyjama Angels’) to assess their perceptions of the relationships they had developed with the children they mentored and of the children's improvement in their literacy skills, a key aim of the programme.

The statistical data analysis based on the structural equation modelling and multiple regression approach showed that several factors had a statistically significant impact on the mentors’ perceptions of the children's improvement in literacy skills: relationship with the child, child's engagement and tenure in the programme, and frequency of meetings. Age and gender of the mentors were not found to have a statistically significant impact on mentors’ perceptions of this improvement, while mentors’ perceptions of their relationship with the children was the most important factor influencing their perceptions of improvement in literacy skills. The study did not include objective measures of the children's literacy outcomes, so its results are limited to the mentors’ perceptions. However, this study offers valuable insights for mentoring programmes working with children living in foster care.

When a child has been abused by his or her father or father-figure and makes the statement ‘I want Dad to come home’, whose voice are we hearing in treatment, how do we interpret and respond to what the child is saying? Understanding and responding to the voices of victims of abuse is a complex issue. This paper explores the issues of listening to and responding to a young vicitm of abuse in the context of the impact of the abuse on this young person, and how these issues emerged and were addressed in the therapeutic process. Amanda, a 13-year-old girl, disclosed sexual abuse by her stepfather. In the initial months of counselling she repeatedly expressed her wish for her stepfather to return home. Amanda’s response to therapy, the short-term and long-term impact issues that were addressed, and the various therapeutic techniques that were used to assist in her recovery, are traced in the context of theoretical considerations.

The authors have, jointly and separately, evaluated twenty-five governmentfunded child and family community-based agencies and programs in Australia and New Zealand in recent years. They argue for more rigorous evaluation of these organisations as a tool for the development of the sector and as a requirement for the receipt of substantial funding from government sources. On the basis of their experience, they point to some of the inherent difficulties in evaluating community-based agencies that have no history of external evaluation. Unlike government departments, these agencies often experience the tension of short term, unstable funding which (realistically or otherwise) staff and management link to the outcome of the evaluation.

Australian residential care programs are being increasingly challenged to respond to the therapeutic needs of the young people they service. Staff-client relationships have been identified as an important factor mediating program outcomes. Owing to the paucity of guiding literature, this study sought to understand young men's perceptions of the nature, role and qualities of their relationships with youth workers. In-depth interviews were conducted with 9 young men, who averaged 15 years 9 months of age, residing in the South Australian residential care system. The collation and analysis of data was guided by grounded theory. The young men constructed their relationships with youth workers in globally positive descriptors, although the global properties of this theme are qualified on a number of levels. Distinct staff and client roles, respectively corresponding to ‘provider’ and ‘consumer’, were identified. A number of qualities associated with positive staff-client relationships were identified, with attachment theory guiding the interpretation of themes. Program, policy and research implications of the research are discussed.

Planning for ‘permanency’ or a ‘family for life’ has been an aspiration for many children in the out-of-home care system who are unable to return to live with their parents. It is a concept derived from research, which indicates that children who ‘drift in care’ have generally poorer outcomes than those who find at least a more stable, if not ‘permanent’, home. This article examines the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW] data that reports publicly on child protection and children in out-of-home care to find evidence about how Australian children in out-of-home care are faring against this dimension of the care experience. Little can be said on the basis of this data. The article is written as a ‘think piece’ to raise questions about why, if such a dimension of the care experience is considered important for a significant group of children, the data is so opaque.

Two important documents that address the health, care, protection and wellbeing of children and families, both past and present have been recently published and distributed within the public arena. Here I would like to provide a brief overview of each document. The aim is not to review or critique the publications, but rather act as a summary of their content and intent, with particular reference to their recommendations.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Australian responses to children in need were significantly influenced by the belief that such children posed a threat to society. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, child welfare legislation states that ‘the best interests of the child must always be paramount’ (Children, Youth and Families Act 2005, Victoria). This paper surveys some of the local and overseas influences which directed child welfare practice and policy towards a philosophy in which the wellbeing of the child is central. It suggests that the concept of the child's personal welfare influenced the understandings of welfare officials long before the term ‘best interests’ was widely employed, but also that this transition in thought did not necessarily correlate with marked improvements in the outcomes for children within the welfare system.

The economic effects of the current rural downturn are relatively easy to monitor. This paper looks at the social costs and the impact on farm families. It also discusses the discrimination against farm families within Australia’s welfare system.

To promote the rights, well-being and development of the child, and for the benefit of families and the community, attachment should be a central focus of early childhood intervention (ECI) under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). ECI Key Workers have the opportunity to positively influence parent–child relationships and are encouraged to do so by the ECI national guidelines. This article identifies how elements of the NDIS design and implementation may be counterproductive to fostering attachment security in children. These elements can lead to delayed intervention; increased parental stress; reduced expertise of service providers; and financial disincentives for best practice in working with disadvantaged families. The article highlights the implications for children with a disability and their families in Australian society and identifies lessons for the design and implementation of social policy.

A series of harrowing reports across the 1990s on the past removal of children, black and white, from their families have impacted on children and family policy in contemporary Australia, and on the way in which this is reported by the media and understood by the public. This paper briefly surveys some of these consequences and asks how we, as a community, can learn from the past with respect to questions of the welfare of children, without being burdened by that past.

Teresa Donaczy’s calm presence and quiet sense of humour cannot mask her pain. The memory of removal from her family at the age of five still haunts her. A re-union thirty-four years later, a happy marriage, nine children and thirteen grandchildren cannot erase the hurt.

Born Teresa Kirby on an Aboriginal reserve in the New South Wales town of Balranald in 1936, Teresa recalls how the Aboriginal people hid their children in the bushes to avoid them being taken by New South Wales Government authorities.

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.

In Victoria, and to some extent Australia, the last two decades have seen some clarification in the classification of the various forms of child maltreatment and abuse. Currently, the major recognised forms of child abuse are acknowledged as being:

• physical abuse or non-accidental physical injury;

• sexual abuse and exploitation;

• emotional/psychological abuse; and

• neglect.

Over the last few years the Australian family has again become a focal point for inquiry and intervention. Scholars and researchers, as well as the government, have suggested there has been a breakdown in Australian family life. This has brought in its wake a concomitant increase in divorce and separation, a surge of single parent families, and a decrease in the marriage rate. A broad range of activities has been initiated to both understand the parameters and substance of the subject, as well as to develop means of supporting and strengthening the family.

Children and young people placed in out-of-home care often present with a range of complex and challenging behaviours that place significant stress on carers and other individuals involved in the placement process. The need for practical support, including the facilitation of knowledge sharing opportunities to better support carers and other health care professionals in assisting children and young people in out-of-home care, is of particular importance within the Australian context. This paper is the third in a series of four papers exploring a range of challenging behaviours that may be evidenced in children and young people placed in out-of-home care. The paper focuses on aggressive behaviours in children and adolescents and outlines a working framework to assist carers in responding appropriately to aggressive responses within the out-of-home care context.