Between 2004 and 2006, the State Government of South Australia funded a foster carer recruitment service to increase the number of foster carers within the State. Based on a combination of public advertising, community consultation, and a step-by-step process of assessment, the service was successful in attracting considerable public interest in foster care. However, only limited success was achieved in recruiting new foster carers. To investigate this, a retrospective survey of 347 people who made contact with the recruitment service was conducted. The survey examined several factors that might have acted as barriers to becoming a foster carer, including: perceptions of the quality of the service, the nature of the assessment process, concerns about foster care, and personal characteristics and circumstances. The results showed that concerns about the nature of foster care (e.g. nature of the children, their families and fear of being falsely accused of abuse) discouraged around 30% of respondents, but that the majority declined to continue because of inopportune personal circumstances or a fear of failure. The findings highlight the importance of providing greater community information regarding foster care prior to large-scale campaigns, as well as undertaking more specifically targeted recruitment strategies.

The present interest in US style family preservation services is the focus of this article. The article sounds a cautionary note in relation to the development of these services in Australia. It does this by drawing attention to a recent influential evaluation of these services and to the differences between social work and child welfare practices in America and Australia.

Childhood, its stages, purpose and duration are matters of ongoing debate in many contemporary societies. Much of the debate centres on the interpretations of childhood as a time of being, becoming or a combination of both, with the varying perspectives compounded by the rapidly evolving information age of the 21st century that offer children access to more unregulated information from multiple sources than at any time in history. As such, the adult community is confronted by a conundrum: prepare children for their future or preserve childhood as a time romanticised and defined by freedom and carefree living. In order to advance a policy and research agenda, whereby adults and children can share their expertise, a clear understanding of the contemporary societal view of childhood is necessary. This paper presents the views of a range of adults regarding children between the ages of 8 and 12 years old, the tween years.

This paper reports on one aspect of data gathered in an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project which sought to uncover how children are responded to when their parents are arrested and imprisoned. This paper presents initial specific insights into how Victorian schools understand and respond to these children. Due to the limited research previously conducted in this area of study, a flexible and exploratory approach was implemented. Data were obtained from eight Victorian education staff members, from a variety of professional domains, and were analysed using thematic analysis. Results indicate that a school's ability to respond appropriately to this group of students is shaped by the general and specific knowledge of parental imprisonment held by schools. Access to such knowledge is limited, however, by both the stigmatised nature of the problem and the current, fragmented, service system. More optimistically, it seems that when schools have greater awareness, positive responses can be implemented. Implications for this are discussed, with a particular focus on the need for clear channels of communication and collaborative work.

Although the undesirable child outcomes arising from the chronic over-representation of First Nations children and young people in child welfare care have been broadly acknowledged in Canada, research on this critical issue is just emerging. This paper summarizes the North American literature on ethnic over-representation and structural risks to inform future research directions in First Nations child welfare. Comparisons to the situation of Aboriginal children in Australia are also discussed.

This article focuses on parental drug use and the impact on child welfare. The gravity of this issue is well documented in a number of reports from government and in annual reports from relevant state and territory departments. Yet, there has been little attention to this issue in Australian journals in spite of the fact that this is probably the most critical issue child protection services have had to face for two decades or more. Parental drug use is almost certainly responsible for the rise in the number of children, especially young children, entering out-of-home care. Drug use also creates issues in relation to family reunification. The final part of the article proposes an enhanced three stage model of family reunification that addresses these issues. This model is based on greater collaboration between child protection services, drug treatment agencies, and the legal system.

Over the past decade imprisonment rates in Australia have substantially increased. As imprisonment rates rise, so too do the number of families affected by the imprisonment of a parent. Yet the needs of parents in prison and their families have received little attention in social policies and service delivery practices. As the specific issues faced by parents in prison and their families cross many areas of government and community services responsibility, they all too easily slip from policy agendas. This paper outlines the challenges to, and potential for, restorative practices with families affected by the imprisonment of a parent. It draws on recent research undertaken by the authors into the family support needs of parents in prison and their families.

The Families First Pilot Program in the then Outer East metropolitan region of Melbourne began in mid-1991 as an intensive family preservation and reunification service for children on the verge of state care. The service offered was brief (4-6 week), intensive (up to 20 hours per week), home-based and flexible (24 hour a day, 7 day a week availability) and all members of the household or family were the focus of service even though the goals were clearly grounded in the protection of the child. This paper begins with some of the apprehension expressed both in the field and in Children Australia in 1993, and reports upon the now completed evaluation of the pilot, which covered the first 18 months of operation. The evaluation examined implementation and program development issues and considered the client population of the service against comparative data about those children at risk who were not included. The paper concludes that there is room for Families First in the Victorian system of protective and family services and points to several developmental issues.

Children enter state care because their parents are unable to care for them or because of abuse and neglect. Invariably they experience considerable distress and emotional trauma with many having clinically significant mental health problems. Few, however, receive the assessment, counselling and supportive services that they need. When they leave care, many experience extensive problems including mental health difficulties, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, relationship difficulties and lack of social support.

This paper will discuss the findings of a qualitative study utilising in-depth interviews with young people who have been in state care. Illustrations of their pathways to and from care will highlight their experiences, and direct quotations from the participants will provide particular insights into the complex issues they have had to confront.

The paper will outline key opportunities for prevention and intervention approaches at various points along these pathways.

There is a paucity of published information about conceptions of Aboriginal child rearing and development among urban dwelling Nyoongar/Aboriginal people in Australia. We detail the unique findings from an Aboriginal early child development research project with a specific focus on the Nyoongar/Aboriginal community of Perth, Western Australia. This research significantly expands the understanding of a shared system of beliefs and values among Nyoongar people that differ in important ways from those of the broader Australian (Western) society. Consistent with the findings of research with other Aboriginal groups in Australia, and internationally, our work challenges assumptions underpinning a range of early childhood development policies and highlights the implications of cultural biases and misunderstandings among non-Aboriginal professionals in child and family services, education and other settings.

This article focuses on the variability in developmental outcomes of foster children and the implications for foster care research and practice. We first provide a brief overview of our previous work, where we have shown by means of meta-analysis and a longitudinal study that foster children greatly vary with respect to their developmental functioning. We then discuss that it is both the heterogeneity of developmental trajectories and the lack of an accurate model for predicting foster children's development that make the screening and monitoring of foster children's development important. We provide suggestions for screening and monitoring, and discuss the Brief Assessment Checklist as an example of a specific instrument available for screening and monitoring of vulnerable children exposed to severe social adversity. We conclude our article with directions to improve foster care and research on foster care, including a discussion of the effectiveness of and foster children's susceptibility to interventions, support for foster parents and the potential of large national and international studies.

Hoarding is associated with problems engaging in social activities, lower social support, increased isolation and poses substantial challenges to family functioning. The aim of this investigation was to explore the relationship between hoarding severity and family and social functioning variables in 60 treatment-seeking adults with hoarding disorder (HD). Participants completed a battery of self-report measures during a baseline assessment completed prior to treatment. Forty-seven percent of participants reported they live alone. Forty-eight percent of participants reported that family and friends never visit them in their home, and 33% indicated they never had visitors to their home, not even service workers or repair people. Twelve percent of participants indicated they never visit with family or friends outside of their home; however, 55% of participants endorsed phoning family or friends more than 9 times each month. Increased clutter and hoarding severity was associated with a lower frequency of family and friends visiting in the home. Family competence and conflict were both positively associated with hoarding severity. Our results shed light on family and social impairment in HD and their relationship with symptom severity; however, additional research should examine social dysfunction among non-treatment-seeking individuals who may be more impaired or isolated.

The victims of filicide in the context of parental separation and divorce have recently been identified as the largest group among all filicide victims in Australia. Nevertheless, research into this group of victims has been sparse, fragmentary and contradictory, with the consequence that confusion has prevailed. This article critically reflects on the existing research on filicide and argues that it has been insufficiently comprehensive and reliable and, therefore, is not suitable for use as a knowledge base for professional individuals, programmatic and policy interventions, and prevention. The article suggests ways of developing more reliable research for knowledge building and details the data developed so far that underpins their recommendations for a national programme of research.

This article presents a brief scoping review of the literature on the educational outcomes of care experienced children and young people in Australia published since 2010. The review also examines key educational issues and the impact of being in care on the educational experience of children and young people. Twenty-five papers were selected for review, key information extracted and recurrent themes noted. Themes include stigma and low expectations, school disruption and absenteeism, issues within the care and education systems and the importance of good relationships with supportive adults. The review found that young people in care often experience much worse educational outcomes than their peers. Conclusions and recommendations include reforming the care and education systems, focussing workers on building strong supportive relationships with young people, helping them to build resilience and prioritising education. Further targeted research is also recommended.

On any given night in Victoria, around 4,000 children and young people live under the care and protection of the State. For many young people, this care extends over a long period of time, sometimes until their 18th birthday. It is well documented that young people leaving State care often lack the social and economic resources to assist them in making the transition into independent living. As a consequence, the long-term life outcomes from this group are frequently very poor. A recent report from the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare in partnership with Monash University estimated that, for a typical cohort of 450 young people who leave care in Victoria each year, the direct cost to the State resulting from these poor outcomes is $332.5 million. The estimated average outcomes of the leaving care population are based on a recent survey involving sixty young people who had spent at least two years in care as teenagers. This paper provides an overview of the economic methodology used to estimate this cost, and provides discussion of the motivation for measuring outcomes in terms of costs to the State.

The title encapsulates the argument advanced in this paper. The author argues that the associative link between child protection concerns and poverty, although well accepted, is not incorporated into practice with families. The paper presents the results of a small scale qualitative study undertaken in the two North Queensland regional cities of Townsville and Mackay. The author undertook interviews with ten (10) Family Services Officers (FSOs) in the Department of Families (DoF).

Interviews revealed that FSOs agreed that family poverty is a stressor for child maltreatment. Participants differed in the extent to which they ascribed personal or societal responsibility for these family circumstances. The paper concludes with four recommendations to deal with family poverty in a child protection practice and policy context. The paper argues that more can and should be done to help children and families in this regard.

This article describes the study design of Parenting Today in Victoria: a representative survey of contemporary parenting experiences, behaviours, concerns and needs of parents. The aims of the study, sample design, survey content development processes, including pilot survey administration, data collection procedures and demographic characteristics of the sample are described. The survey was administered via computer assisted telephone interviewing using random dialling of landline and mobile phone numbers in 2016 to parents of children aged 0–18 years who were living in Victoria, Australia. The response rate was 57% with 2600 parents surveyed (40% fathers). The sample was broadly representative of the Victorian population on major demographic characteristics when compared to data from the Australian Census of Population and Housing (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2011). However, adjustments were made for over representation of younger parents (16–34 years), more highly educated parents and for those living outside major cities. This survey provides rigorously collected, accurate and up-to-date information about the experiences, preferences and concerns of a large and representative sample of parents. Findings will provide vital new insights to inform policy decision making, service planning and future research aimed at understanding parents’ attitudes and behaviours, and the psychology behind their help-seeking.

The majority of literature about children experiencing family violence focuses on reporting ‘problems’ and highlighting detrimental outcomes for children. In contrast, there is little acknowledgement of children's personal resources and capacities in times of crisis.

This article describes a participatory arts-based research project involving 10 pre-adolescent children. The research aimed to explore children's individual resources and to highlight the value of giving voice to children through participatory processes. A collaborative songwriting method sought to co-construct knowledge with children about what helped them to ‘do well’ in their lives. An illustrative example demonstrates the collaborative process of engaging children throughout the data generation, collaborative analysis and presentation of the findings. The children described a range of resources and supports in their lives, such as friends, family, sport, pets, journaling, hope and creativity. Five themes explore the role these resources play in children's lives: seeking refuge, wanting to feel safe, hoping for a better future, feeling cared for and being self-determined. The results emphasise the ongoing need to build upon existing resources in children's lives and to support them to navigate access to additional resources. We advocate for participatory approaches that provide opportunities for children's voices to be heard, fostered and responded to.