My first duty is to acknowledge and pay my respects to the traditional owners of this part of the country, the Kulin Nation; it’s a privilege and a great pleasure to make this presentation on your ancestral lands.

In the Submission to the National Inquiry of the Aboriginal Legal Services, Western Australia, they said that the, and I quote:

It is always a bit of a relief to have some guidance and a direction when you are asked to give a keynote or a plenary address. I was asked once to give a commencement address at a university … to be but one of a few such speeches that day. After accepting the honor, I asked the dean, who had nominated me, ‘What should I talk about?’ He replied, ‘Talk about five minutes … and be seated.’ I did. Today, will talk but a bit longer, and hope that afterwards few of you will say, ‘I thought that man would never sit down.’

I also want to tell you what a pleasure it is to talk with an audience that is here because they want to be here … here by choice. The direction that I want to take us in thisbrief time is a look at how we can involve ourselves with children in care, with the overarching goal of reversing some of the negative impacts on their lives that have come along with them and into our foster homes.

This paper was commissioned for this issue of Children Australia to draw together developmental issues for children and young people in care.

This paper sets out a series of principles for minimising the trauma of transitions experienced by children in out of home care. It is based on a child centred approach that has as its goal making transition bearable and psychologically useful for each child who must go through it, creating a space where even previous transition wounds might heal. The paper concentrates particularly on the complexities of helping children to move between foster care and permanent care placements.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Jill Wain, I am and have been married to a wonderful and supportive husband, Greg, for 34 years and we have seven children. Three of my children are the result of our fostering experience and I have four birth children. The children range in age from 7 to 33 years. Up until recently five were still living at home but major house renovations have come up with some creative options that have actually moved two on, but with threats that they will be back when the house is finished. We will wait and see. That fridge with food in it seems to hold the key, or is it something else?

So let me pose the question, what did 1 think fostering was going to be about? On the positive side I guess it was having fun times with kids, playing at the beach, reading stories, games at the park, playing on the tractor and offering a child a few experiences they may not have had, and perhaps there would be the occasional vomit that I would certainly ask my husband to clean up (I am not very good at dealing with this), the odd tantrums and perhaps the poo smeared on the walls as a bit of a balance.

This paper was commissioned for this issue of Children Australia to integrate perspectives of the caring team and its broader social context.

Substantial changes in the nature of foster care during the last few decades place increasing demands not only on foster parents, but also on all members of their family. Some of these changes include the increasing number of children needing foster care and the resultant growth in the number of foster families, the move towards deinstitutionalisation, the use of treatment and specialist foster care and more emphasis on family reunification. Despite this, biological children of carers receive very little attention and recognition of their contribution.

In spite of the extensive literature on the subject of foster care, very little has been written on the impact of fostering on biological children. The literature related to foster care has primarily focused on professional processes, such as assessment and selection of foster families and management of the placement of a foster child. The limited amount of literature available on this topic is mainly from the UK and the US and is mainly related to foster mothers and their perceptions, with very little reference to their birth children. This along with my personal interest and practice experience has inspired me to conduct a literature review and write this paper.

Schools and teachers are increasingly seen to be an integral part of the welfare system and are expected to cope with very challenging children, many of whom are in residential or alternative family care. The longitudinal action-oriented research which is described in this article, highlighted the joys and difficulties which teachers face in supporting these children and their foster, permanent care and adoptive parents. Themes of role, power, control and support in the teachers’ accounts are explored and three implications for practice are suggested.

The United Nations has proclaimed and agreed that everyone is entitled to ail the rights and freedoms set forth therein, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

The United Nations has proclaimed that childhood is entitled to special care and assistance.

The United Nations is convinced that the family, as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community.

The United Nations recognizes that the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding.

The United Nations considers that the child should be fully prepared to live an individual life in society, and brought up in the spirit of peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality and solidarity.

Young people leaving care are expected to become independent at a far earlier age than are young people who are fortunate enough to have supportive families. High rates of unstable accommodation, unemployment, poverty and early parenthood, have been found in research studies into the outcomes for young people leaving care. Governments have a duty of care to provide resources and support to ensure that young people leaving care experience a safe and sustainable transition to independence. Key elements of best practice framework are outlined in this article for this to be achieved.

The Filipino family, the fundamental unit of Philippine society, is confronted with pressures of a rapidly changing society. Over the past decades, there have been significant changes in its composition, size, structure, support systems and organization arising from demographic, social and economic changes. Poverty and rapid social change have created stress situations that affect the family’s ability to perform its function of caring and nurturing of children. Of particular concern is the displacement of families arising from rural-urban migration, high unemployment and underemployment and overseas employment. Such displacement has contributed to family instability and disorganization as manifested in reported increases in child abandonment, abuse and neglect, street children, prostitution and family violence involving children as victims.

The International Foster Care Organisation (IFCO) has been a significant vehicle of change within the steadily evolving field of foster care. In two decades of international transfer of knowledge, the organization has examined critical and controversial issues such as the colonization of indigenous people, the insensitivity of ‘Westernized’ systems of care to the kinship networks of children of color, and the needs of families stricken by poverty, dysfunction or oppression. Concurrently, the exchange of knowledge and skill on case planning, dynamics of change, legal issues, foster parent training; and systems of administration led to greater understanding between people working in foster care systems of different countries. IFCO became a moving and reconstituting global village of committed individuals, families, groups and organizations that transcended national boundaries.

British social workers at the sharp end of foster care and social work practice have experienced a flood of official reports in recent years (Association of Directors of Social Services, 1997; Utting, 1997; Warren, 1997), mostly, though not exclusively, highlighting the problems of too few placements for an increasingly challenging number of children and young people. In addition, British and North American foster care research over the past twenty years has shown how children in public, including foster, care have been:

The purpose of this paper is to provide a view and understanding of the nature of the Internet, and the possible benefits in assisting foster caregivers, foster care agencies and persons in out-of-home care.

The Internet has been with us for most of this decade. Its original role was to ensure that computer-to-computer communication proceeded in a decentralised fashion, in the event of catastrophes. Such computer-to-computer communication has become so widespread and we now refer to it as the Internet. Alongside the technological development, has been the development of means of placing information on the web for all to view and its access by anyone connected to the Internet, anywhere. Further, communication between people through the use of e-mail has also developed.