This article (the first of a series of three) reviews the research and literature on the connections between non-biological care (adoption, permanent care, foster care and residential care) and mental health and relates this to the policy context in Victoria.

The implications of the over-representation of children who have experienced non-biological care in a mental health setting are explored.

Some families need to place their disabled child in long term out of home care, due to a high care burden. Foster family care is increasingly the only option available. While published research is sparse, there is evidence that rostered staff models of care are more appropriate for some children, and the potential gains from family care are overstated. Questions are raised about foster care successes overseas and locally, particularly as care options are restricted to in home support or alternative family models. Rostered staff models can promote a child’s involvement with the birth family, and should be developed further. Planners need to foster diversity, which allows flexibility and promises new knowledge.

During 1997 researchers at the University of South Australia conducted qualitative and quantitative research with 663 students from a diverse range of secondary schools in the Adelaide metropolitan area. The research focussed on how 13 to 15 year old adolescents view and handle conflict with their peers and conflict with adults at school, such as teachers and counsellors. This paper reports on Phase 1 of the research, and on comments gathered from adolescents in Focus Groups about their experiences of conflict. Comments about the high level of aggression and violence in some secondary schools would indicate that broader, community-centred approaches may be needed before conflict management strategies, such as peer mediation, can work.

Societal tolerance of violence perpetrated between family members is evident in the generally unchallenged views condoning parents’ physical assault of children in the name of ‘discipline’. The authors suggest that such views reflect society’s devaluation of children and a denial of children’s basic human rights. This paper addresses the following areas related to the sanctioned physical punishment of children: the ‘fuzzy’ distinction between physical punishment and physical abuse; the law; the power of words; the media’s role and impact; parental explanations and motives for using physical punishment; the effects of physical punishment on children; the alternatives to physical punishment; and the reason this issue is so important, both for children and for society.

Comprehensive research undertaken in 1995 and 1997 clearly establishes the educational needs of at-risk young people. Research by Webber and Hayduk (Leaving School Early) and Brooks et al (NYARS report Under-age School Leaving) establishes indicators contributing to under-age school leaving which are discussed in relation to the responsibility of schools in meeting the needs of at-risk students. Without revisiting the tenets of the deschooling movement which have been canvassed in detail in the pages of many books and education journals, the discussion explores the validity of alternative models to mainstream schooling. The paper assumes a certain inability of schooling to meet the needs of at-risk student; indeed it could be argued that the purpose of schooling generates and selects at-risk students. In a schooling culture which propagates the ideology of integration, the paper suggests the validity of an alternative and exclusion-based model of education. One such model has been established in 1997 in the Australian Capital Territory and this alternative education program is evaluated.

Social workers and other welfare workers daily work with many people who live in poverty. Sadly, little of what they see and hear reaches the broader population. A recent book, by Nick Davies, extends the tradition of what we now call investigative journalism. Davies meets some children who are selling their bodies on the streets of Nottingham, listens to their stories, and embarks on a journey of exploration into a world of child prostitution, drugs and housing estates full of despair. The early stages of the current election campaign in Australia suggest that there is little cause for optimism for the most disadvantaged.