The journal was first established in 1976 with the title Australian Child and Family Welfare (quarterly), and it was known as such for the first 15 years of its existence. It was published by the Children’s Welfare Association of Victoria as the quarterly journal of the Child and Family Welfare Council of Australia. Co-editors were the Rev Denis Oakley and Dr Peter O’Connor. Denis tells us that the funds to get it started came from the Children’s Welfare Foundation. This foundation was an outstanding example of partnership between business and the non-government sector. Not without controversy, Denis performed on television in his clergyman clobber advertising products for Billy Guyatt stores, drawing in funds for the Foundation which were also applied to the establishment of Grassmere, a community-based youth facility, and to some research work into adoption and family law. The book review editor was Mr Cliff Picton, associate editor was Mr Max Liddell, Mr David Thackeray was business manager, Mr Vernon Knight was circulation manager and the committee providing support was Mrs Glenys Craig, Mr John Edwards, Mr Bill Hughes, Canon Neal Malloy OBE and Mrs Patsy Sebastian. It had a group of interstate representatives, Spencer Colliver, Ray Jenkins, Albert Kruipers, Rev Lyn Reilly, George Belchev, Adam Jamrozik, Geoff Aves and editorial consultants Concetta Ben, Prof Peter Boss, Spencer Colliver and Dr Len Tierney. In the editorial in the first issue was the explanation that the journal was being launched as so much was going on in child and family welfare, that there was a need for a forum. Many of the specialist journals failed to appeal to the broad readership in social welfare, whereas this journal would ‘aim for the broad spectrum of people who make up the vast army of workers in the child and family welfare field … Our concern is to open up discussion on policies and practices, to discuss innovations and the raising of standards.’

All who work with broken families know that disputes as to custody and access of children are the most difficult of all cases to resolve and often create great bitterness. Yet the law relating to them is exceedingly simple. It can be expressed in nine words: “The welfare of the child is the paramount consideration.”

Despite its apparent simplicity though, the law and practices relating to custody and access are undergoing a great deal of heart-searching. If legal periodical literature of other countries is an accurate reflection of concern, it seems that very radical re-thinking is occurring abroad. Some of this is likely to rub off on this country. For, whether we like it or not, the world is getting smaller and the welfare of children is becoming more and more an international concern. The ratification by Australia of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is a timely reminder of this. The incidence of child abduction, kidnapping and inter-country marriages, and of course, inter-country adoption, surely testifies to the fact that we should now be looking at the care and well-being of children as a global issue.

David Donnison’s definition is both useful, and relevant to the theme “The Process of Change from within an Established System”. The relevance, I suggest, relates to the words — theory, reality and irreverence. How many of us working within an established system have a sound theoretical base, are in touch with reality, and have an irreverent mind. Such a combination of attributes are considered unusual in bureaucrats — although they can be acquired. However the acquisition requires the bureaucrat to give up some of the conventional attributes of success, or at least, a quiescent life in the organization. People involved in change really do see the world as it is without the assistance of self-interest filters.

The complicity of state and church in the removal and placement of Aboriginal children in Australia has been well documented. Since the investigation by the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, a number of churches have apologised for their participation in these practices. Alongside the apologies, churches have engaged in activities of reconciliation. This paper documents a research project, commissioned by the Minajalku Aboriginal Corporation, to explore the role of churches and church agencies in Victoria.

Robin Clark was an inspirational leader in the child protection and out-of-home care field throughout the 1980s and 1990s in Australia. Robin died in 2001. However her legacy continues due to her mentoring of social workers throughout her career and her numerous reviews and evaluations of child protection systems. This article pays tribute to the lessons Robin Clark taught administrators and practitioners in the design and delivery of child protection and out-of-home care systems.

Living in poverty has lifelong consequences for children. In response to the obvious needs of highly vulnerable, impoverished children and youth in its neighbourhood, Community and Family Services International (CFSI) commenced the Park Avenue Initiative (PAI) which was aimed at addressing the impact of poverty through promoting and testing community-based initiatives in child protection, youth development, and opportunity-creation. Building upon research into the reproductive health (RH) practices of young people in the area, the PAI was expanded to include a new programme addressing RH and the high risk sexual behaviours engaged in by many youth. This article critically examines how poverty is impacting on children. It presents the PAI RH approach as an example of a programme which addresses many of the multiple risks poverty presents for children. The PAI RH programme takes a holistic perspective to address the co-morbidity of poverty risk factors. The programme works with children, their families and the community. The article concludes that programmes need to take an integrated approach to address the multidimensions of poverty and engage with children and their families in actions which are aimed at building individual resilience and strengthening communities.

In a recent article in Children Australia (16:2, 1991) Moore points out how our system of social services and community work reinforces traditional concepts of family (especially mother) responsibility for the care of children with disabilities. This same attitude reflects a fundamental ambivalence in our society towards the provision of state assisted child care. Like care for the disabled, out-of-home care for young children is assumed to rest within the private sphere, so that state assistance in any form becomes gratefully accepted as a generous gift.

Child care in Australia moved into the political realm with the enactment of the Child Care Act in 1972. This legislation described the conditions under which the Commonwealth Government would distribute funds for capital expenses, and provide some wage supplements to non-profit groups delivering child care services in formal centre settings. Since that time, promises of increased Commonwealth funding to meet increasing demand have become more and more ambitious – 20,000 spaces were promised in 1984; 30,000 in 1988; and by 1990, the promise had expanded to 78,000 new child care spaces to be funded by the Labor Party. As it turned out, many of the 78,000 spaces promised during the 1990 election campaign were not ‘new’ at all, but represented already existing private spaces, now made eligible for funding by a change in policy. The bulk of the spaces meanwhile were targeted for after-school care (much less expensive to fund), when research clearly indicated the dearth of spaces and critical need for infant care (very expensive to fund).

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.

Child abuse allegations in the context of parental separation and divorce have long been seen as merely weapons fashioned by angry and vindictive parents involved in separation and divorce wars. They have been disregarded on the basis that they were unlikely to be real.

However recent research from Australia and overseas has shown that this picture is not true. Child abuse in this context is real and it is serious. Moreover the research has shown that the socio-legal system does not serve children caught in this situation at all well.

The Magellan program, a world first experimental program to overcome the problems for these children and their families as they progress through the socio-legal system, was introduced by a consortium of agencies in Victoria recently. This article reports on the program and its outcomes, and considers implications of some of the components of the new program for the various professionals working with this issue.

Peer attitudes towards children with asthma can significantly impact on their self-confidence and, hence, their social acceptance. It can be difficult for children with asthma to spend their time in class with peers who do not understand their situation and physical limitations. This paper investigated the attitudes of peers towards children with asthma, and explored factors affecting their attitude scores. A literature search failed to locate any instrument that measured the attitudes of school-aged children towards peers with asthma. Therefore, a new scale was developed by generating a list of items based on existing attitude measures; confirming the content validity by an expert panel; and pre-testing the scale with three primary school children. The main study invited children to complete an asthma knowledge test and the attitudes scale as a class activity. A convenience sample of 545 children without asthma from 16 primary schools participated in the study, of which 507 children completed the attitude towards children with asthma scale. Responses were coded and entered into SPSS 17.0 software for analyses. Approximately 80 per cent of children scored 8/10 or more on the test, suggesting a highly positive attitude expressed by children towards their peers with asthma. Two factors affected the attitude scores – being a female, and having higher asthma knowledge score. The study provided information about the proportion of children who have positive attitudes towards peers with asthma and the factors that affected their scores. The investigation led to the development of the Peer Attitudes toward Children with Asthma (PACA) scale.

This article is based on a study about young mothers' experiences of parenting and their suggestions for child protection and family support strategies. This paper disputes the notion that young mothers are deficient parents, and instead highlights the social stressors faced by many young families. It is argued that, rather than focussing on the individual family or young mother, family work could be better oriented toward resourcing and supporting adolescent families to care for their members.

In the past 20 years, social change and expectations for both maternal and paternal responsibilities have highlighted the need for services for families to better understand the role of a father in family relationships. In Australia, as well as internationally, there have been many contested understandings about what constitutes ‘good fathering’ in research, social media and in the political sphere. More specifically, there has also been an emerging trend to understand the challenging task of recruiting and maintaining men's involvement in child and family services programmes, particularly those fathers who are deemed a risk to children and mothers, violent or have been separated from their children. That many child and family/welfare services have exercised dedicated effort to work with fathers is still a relatively recent phenomenon, and has only emerged following criticism that services have been too geared towards working only with mothers. Despite this increasing interest, there is still ongoing need for more research to be undertaken in Australia. An important area of focus is the views of professionals about their perception and engagement of fathers, particularly the views of fathers who are described as being absent from family-based services. The purpose of this article is to report briefly on a study undertaken to examine how child and family welfare workers engage fathers in their work. First, this paper will describe some of the social and health benefits to fathers and their children, focusing on the key role of attachment through play. Research into effective service delivery involving fathers will then be presented, concluding with key practice factors necessary for fathers to be involved in family life.