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 paper discusses the need for a national early childhood intervention policy in Australia, including a universal approach to children's services as a platform for the prevention of child abuse and neglect, supporting families and enriching the lives of all children.

It considers the literature on early intervention, including the theoretical and research base of successful programs and the link between early intervention and the prevention of child abuse and neglect. It examines the way the child welfare and children's services sectors have grown and the imperative at the beginning of the 21st century for a closer alignment of services.

The United Kingdom's ‘Sure Start’ early intervention strategy is considered in so far as it attempts to develop a more comprehensive approach to child welfare by developing programs which are based on the research. Finally the paper asserts that recent strategies introduced by Federal and State Governments to promote childhood health and wellbeing are positive first steps, but need to go further to seriously address increasing numbers of children reported as suffering harm through abuse and/or neglect.

All children have the right to have sexuality education in order to enhance their self-understanding, their developing maturity and their self-concept. In the past, parents and some schools have provided this, usually as formal school programs. However, many children receive sexuality education informally from other sources such as peers, television, magazines and books. The technology available in the information age provides yet another source. The Internet has a growing number of sites specifically for sexuality education for children and pre-schoolers. Here, a selection of relevant sites is identified and presented for their developmental appropriateness. The opportunities these promote are almost limitless for children's enhanced personal understanding and knowledge-base upon which further development will occur in their teenage years and beyond.

At a recent New South Wales forum about the future of residential care, various speakers cited what they thought were the key themes that should guide thinking about the development of future residential programs for ‘at risk’ youth. The themes were that these programs must be small, local and, somewhat less confidently, that they should only be used as a ‘last resort’ when all other ways of addressing the care and treatment needs of these young people have been tried. It was also noted that funding for programs should reflect the level of staff expertise required when programs are treatment rather than accommodation focussed, although what this might mean in practice was not explored. These are all themes that are part of any discussion about the future of the residential component of the out-of-home care system.

The contention of this paper is that these themes are based on unfounded assumptions. When used in service planning to guide future services these assumptions contribute to the abandonment of ‘at risk’ youth to either no service or services that are less than adequate. The themes are explored by applying them to services in other sectors that also deal with ‘at risk’ youth, namely, health, education and criminal justice. The conclusion is that these themes should be replaced with others that will enable community service organisations to develop more appropriate services for ‘at risk’ youth.

The use of practice-based short stories as a teaching and learning tool in the education of human service professionals, particularly in social work, is the focus of this article. Based on teaching practice experiences, the use of written narratives is explored in relation to developing both content knowledge and reflective learning capacity. This edition of Children Australia also includes one of the stories used by Social Work students in their second year at La Trobe University as a basis for tutorial and seminar discussion, together with one of the essays received from students in response to the assessment task. Given the encouraging responses of students to the use of practice-based stories as a learning tool for human service professionals, professionals in the field and teaching staff are invited to consider the further development of storying techniques.