While a great deal of effort has been directed toward the diagnosis of the battered child syndrome, perhaps Australia should direct the majority of its effort and money toward the implementation and evaluation of treatment programmes. It is proposed that the more effective treatment programme is based in the home of the family with initial daily home visits by the therapist to implement and teach proven techniques.

At least 160,000 Australian men and women are single parents as the result of separation, divorce, death of the spouse, or birth out of wedlock (Social Welfare Commission, 1976). With the custody, care and control of approximately 282,000 children, these single parents can face an array of social problems and, as Schlesinger (1972) observed, warrant greater attention from the helping professions.

It is the present trend in dealing with youthful offenders that diversion techniques be utilized whenever possible. Staff and administration of existing treatment centres are to be commended for their efforts to reduce the number of youths placed in those institutions for treatment. However, there remains continual pressure from various areas to view these institutions as a desirable placement for any youth having behaviour problems in the community. Every effort should be made to view placement at these institutions as a last, and in most cases, an undesirable alternative treatment. It has been noted by various persons that while institutionalized, a youth learns “new and better techniques for committing additional delinquent acts upon his release (Wittey and Lawrence, 1973 p. 15).” Further rationale for discouraging placement in these institutions have been noted by others in stating that youths are labelled delinquent by being placed in such institutions and that once a youth acquires such a label, there is no effective way to remove it (e.g. Faust, 1973 and Elssuer, 1969).

In my twenty years experience in social work, my particular interest has always been working with children. I know many of you are from children’s homes and I feel very much at home among child-care workers having spent 9 years as social worker at Pallister Girls’ Home which was then an ‘open’ home for Court Committed school girls. I also spent several years in an adoption agency which brought me in touch with unmarried very young girls — children really — and a certain number of older children who were surrendered for adoption.

This comprehensive and important document has now been released for general reading and debate.

Child maltreatment was first recognized as a health problem in Victoria in the early 1960's and several Committees of Investigation have met since that time to study the subject. This Report is the result of the latest of these, a Workshop, which commenced following a 2 day seminar in February 1975. At the Seminar there were more than 100 people who shared an interest in child maltreatment. They were drawn from many sections of the community — doctors, lawyers, social workers, teachers, sociologists, nurses, police welfare officers, psychiatrists, kindergarten teachers and voluntary groups.

Epilepsy is one of the oldest and most mysterious conditions known to man. Although as long ago as 460 BC, Hypocrates claimed that seizures were due to afflictions of the brain, the myth has persisted until modern times that epilepsy is a manifestation of devil possession or a punishment of sin by God. The sudden onset of attacks and equally sudden disappearance only confirmed the long held view that supernatural powers were at work.

‘A Child’s Heart’ is a short story written by Herman Hesse concerning an eleven year old boy. As an account, in the first person, of the child’s emotions it provides an insight into child development.

The child, for reasons unknown to himself, stole dried figs from his father’s study on finding his father absent. There followed manifold expressions of guilt such as misery, remorse and resentment. Hesse describes his attitude toward his father as one of “reverence and rebellion” which “contested in my overladen heart.”

The purpose of this paper has two major aspects. First, it provides an opportunity of presenting an overview of some of the innovations and recent developments in the field of Child Welfare in Victoria. Second, it poses a challenge to make some comment on what these developments might actually add up to; in other words, it begs the question of whether one can make some sort of sense of what is going on. When you are working “in the field”, or as we would say with equally telling imagery in the U.K., “at the coal face”, you cannot always be aware of the implications and ramifications of what you are doing. True, the managers and the planners of your operations must, and do, give thought to this, but for the majority of us, beset by the problems of everyday work routines, it is hard to lift one's glance beyond the eye-level plane; what is more, one is too exhausted to read the unabating volume of reports and articles and statements that are around.