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.

Although there have been a number of studies carried out over the years about various characteristics of foster parents, most of them have been undertaken in the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom. Very little research has been done in Australia about foster care in general, recruiting foster parents, or about foster parents of intellectually handicapped children. This lack of Australian research raises questions as to whether findings of studies in other countries can be generalised to all foster care situations. It cannot automatically be assumed, for example, that the Australian foster parent population is the same as abroad, and yet for years workers in Australia have tended to rely on overseas statistics as a basis for decisions on foster care.

This paper will focus on four inter-related areas which it is considered are indicative of emergent trends in the child welfare field, The areas to be discussed are advances in our understanding of child development; how these advances link to social policy issues; factors influencing the delivery of services and finally some training issues which arise from all of these items.

These issues are discussed with a hope to maintain both an historical and comparative perspective, in relation to alternative child welfare systems.

In Australia the family is often used as a model for provision of residential care for children. Associated with this model is an acceptance of the parent role as the appropriate one for residential child care workers. This article explores these ideas, outlining the positive and negative aspects of the family model and the parenting function. The alternative put forward is that of identifying residential child care personnel as child development workers.

The first part of this article, describing the financial reporting system, the Children's Welfare Association of Victoria has developed for Victorian Child Welfare Agencies, explained the motivation in setting the system up, the objectives and achievements of the system, and gave some broad information about funding proposals that have stemmed from the analysis of financial data through the system.

The Community Welfare Act 1982 was passed by the New South Wales Parliament and received Royal Assent on 25 May 1982. However, it is not yet in force: the Act itself provides that it will come into force on a day appointed by the Governor and notified by proclamation. This means it can come into force when the government decides that it should. It is possible for parts of it to be brought into force at different times.

The Act is long and complex. Rather than attempt a general overview of it, this paper will consider what the Act says on issues of special concern to foster parents.

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:

Forty first-time mothers were randomly allocated to two groups, half who received the service of a home visitor and half who did not. The home visitor commenced visitation during the last month of pregnancy and continued until the baby was three months old, visiting or contacting the mother approximately once weekly. Pre and post measures of self-esteem, anxiety, locus of control and acceptance were taken, the only significant difference between the treated and the control group was a lower trait anxiety in the target group. However, the other results were in the predicted direction. While all of the mothers requested the service, those mothers who received the service stated they valued it highly. Three mothers in the target group were identified as being “at risk” and received appropriate treatment; they had not been located by any of the health services with whom they were in contact. The present study raised a number of issues associated with the delivery of such primary prevention services, particularly the need for more adequate program evaluation.

Some people may wonder at the alternative title of this paper. I selected it after considering a number of specimens of the animal world. I could have used the sloth which seems to spend its life hanging upside down, asleep; or I could have used the analogy of any one of the dinosaurs which, as you know, tended to be huge and died when they could not adapt to changing environments. I chose a hybrid made up of tortoise and crab … the tortoise because it is cumbersomely slow and has a hard, seemingly impenetrable shell; the crab because it moves sideways on and has a tendency to devour its parents.

Child care policy must always relate to the wider social context, indeed it will inevitably do so as we are all affected by broader changes in the social structure and changes in ideology. Nonetheless, rates of change in various areas are not always synchronous. Today, I want to look at some broader changes in society and point to some of their implications for child care policy.

If you are the mother of a youngster victim of the hyperactive child syndrome, you need to have certain resources, qualities, and characteristics if you are to survive. You need, for example, the wisdon of a Solomon, the patience of a Job, the physical stamina of a stevedore, and the calm and control of a saint. You will also need some information, some support and understanding from others, and a refuge to which to flee when you have been pushed to the ragged-edge of your endurance and coping. These are the basics, but as your hyperactive child moves along the path of childhood, the additional things you need to be will become readily apparent. You will feel elation with an accomplishment, near despair when your efforts seem abortive, and through all, an overwhelming fatigue and exhaustion. Some will try to understand and to help; others will not even try. Indeed, you will suffer subtle and oblique comments suggestive of the thought that some shortcoming in your mothering ability has caused the problem. Any confidence you had as a mother will be shaken each day. And, as if it were not enough to live and be mother to a difficult child who resists your efforts, you will find yourself in serious contention with your husband and, perhaps, other members of your family. You will feel isolation and live with the suspicion that you are, in some way, a slightly defective mother.

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.

Human service networks are completely unwieldy and changeable, and analysis of them is no simple task. Nevertheless, the examination of two such systems – in Michigan, U.S.A. and in Victoria, Australia – ought to enable some conclusions to be drawn as to the effectivenesss and implications of two alternative implementations of basically similar policies for the protection of children. Such an examination is here attempted, using for comparison the Child Protection Units operating under the auspice of the Michigan Department of Social Services in Michigan, U.S.A., and those operated by the Children’s Protection Society in Victoria, Australia.