This study compares levels of couple agreement about positive and satisfying features of their relationship as reported by a remarried sample (n = 70) couples and a more general sample of couples largely in their first marriage or committed de facto relationship (n = 100 couples). The ENRICH inventory (Olson et al., 1982) was used with the general sample and the ENRICH-Anew inventory (Schultz & Schultz, 1987) was used for the remarried sample, thereby providing the measures of positive couple agreement, which can in turn serve as indicators for strengthening family relationships. There were no statistically significant differences between the two samples, indicating commonalities in stresses and strengths experienced by the two samples. However, there are suggestions in the data that issues related to children and parenting were subject to lower levels of agreement for the remarried couples. The comparison couples produced lower levels of agreement in the areas of conflict resolution and relating to partner's family and friends.

It is now established that there is a relationship between domestic violence and emotional and behavioural disorders in children, with research suggesting that childhood exposure to domestic violence can adversely affect both present mental health as well as adult life. The private setting and nature of such violence makes accurate estimations of the extent of the problem difficult. Such figures that have emerged however, indicate that domestic violence is occurring on a chronic repetitive basis. Elbow states that the violent family is characterized by rigid sex roles, the use of violence to control others, poor communication patterns, isolation both within and outside the family, and the inability to accept responsibility for actions. It is also suggested that the dysfuctional patterns of the violent marriage impair the ability of the parents to meet the developmental and emotional needs of their children.

Between 1972 - 1980, eighteen regional offices were opened by state welfare authorities in Victoria, with the long term prospect that a comprehensive set of programmes would be developed in each region. This is part of an extensive policy change in which the reception of children into care will proceed by more diverse and local arrangements. Safe custody options already include small residential units and foster care and the very term “reception centre” is no longer part of official language. Substantial progress has been made along these lines and of the two central reception centres, Allambie (25-150 residents) is in the process of being closed and Baltara (45-70 residents) is to be redeveloped. In the most recently published planning documents redevelopment of these facilities had been anticipated by December 1990.1 However, not a great deal is known about the population of these two centres, about reception processes and why some children proceed quickly through the process and others do not. This paper examines the present status of reception centres in Victoria and reports upon a preliminary study of the reception centre population for the period 1986-1987. An argument is made that there is a case for revising reception policy and practice not only in existing centres but, in proposed new facilities and for giving more attention to services, for children and families who present with unusual difficulties.

By world standards, human rights, including the rights of children, are relatively well respected and protected in Australia. But, on human rights generally and concerning children in particular, there are significant gaps and areas where we need to do better. This emerges clearly from a review of the state of Australia's children such as that presented in this special journal issue. It is also clear that we need to develop structures to perform just this kind of national stocktake on a national basis, and to have the results translated into effective action.

Working with young people presents some unique challenges for protective services programs. How well equipped are services to meet those challenges? The Burdekin Report on Youth Homelessness graphically illustrates the ways in which both protective services programs and the community at large are failing young people.

One young person's experience of welfare authorities went like this… “they put you in refuges. That's their escape from the subject… But if you've really got a problem they're not (of) very much assistance.”

Intervention in the lives of young people has been alternatively described as neglectful, unhelpful, or damaging and punitive.

Conflict is an integral part of human relationships. As defined by The University English Dictionary conflict denotes a struggle, a clashing of views or statements, a meeting in opposition or antagonism. The position taken in the present study is that a conflict consists of an opposition between two individuals “when one person does something to which a second person objects” (Hay, 1984, p.2). This particular outlook is consistent with that adopted by Kagan, Knight & Martinez-Romero (1982) in their study of children's conflict resolution styles.

Paradoxically, while conflict may be an important aspect of human relations, conflict as evidenced in children's relations has received scant attention. Research has identified possible sex differences in children's conflict with boys engaging in more direct conflict than girls (Miller, Danaher & Forbes, 1986; Shantz, 1986). Boys do appear to use different conflict resolution strategies (namely more threats and physical force as opposed to negotiation) than girls (Miller et al, 1981). Some evidence also exists that there are developmental changes in children's conflict resolution strategies such that from 5 to 9 years there is an increasing use of a reconciliation conflict resolution style (Aboud, 1981).

In the Macquarie Dictionary, a family is defined as “parents and their children, whether dwelling together or not”. To be a couple with no children puts one outside of this category when family is defined in that way. Indeed, it is only recently that the term “single parent family” has been coined and accepted as an alternative type of family structure. Prior to the seventies the reference was to the “single mother and her child” and earlier still, “unmarried mothers” and “illegitimate children” — “fillius nullis”, child of nobody, until the Children's Equality of Status Act in 1977.

Society still appears to hold the nuclear family as the ideal2 that is a male and a female, preferably married with one or more children. A couple remain a couple and are not considered a family until such time as they have a child. For those who wish to have a child but are unable to have one, this constitutes a painful situation, but one towards which society feels compassion and in the view of the author, supports the notion that couples are entitled to a child.

This paper incorporates three separate levels of information acquired slowly from clinical experience:

1. a) From clinical research into maltreated children and their parents.

2. b) From the assessment and treatment of maltreated children removed from parental care and adopted as Special Needs Children with unfroseen results.

3. c) From the assessment for legal purposes of the emotional status of parents who have seriously injured or killed their children and who had not received treatment in their own childhood, despite their severe distress levels.

1. Physical maltreatment; 2. Maternal deprivation; 3. Institutionalisation in early childhood; 4. Constant destructive criticism from a parent; 5. Premature demands for parenting behaviour.

Governments in Australia, as in most comparable countries, are now committed to the development of a better educated population and to new ways of managing public school systems. These new ways of managing combine strengthened central policy direction with devolved responsibility for the operation of schools. The commitment to a better educated population is for the most part economically motivated, resting on the assumption that this is a key element in raised productivity. It also, however, necessarily has a strong social justice component as it seeks to widen educational success beyond those social groups in which it traditionally has been high. Newly developing directions in the operation of public school systems clearly reflect pressures to ensure value for taxpayers' money. But they also have important educational justifications which cannot be overlooked.

All who work with broken families know that disputes as to custody and access of children are the most difficult of all cases to resolve and often create great bitterness. Yet the law relating to them is exceedingly simple. It can be expressed in nine words: “The welfare of the child is the paramount consideration.”

Despite its apparent simplicity though, the law and practices relating to custody and access are undergoing a great deal of heart-searching. If legal periodical literature of other countries is an accurate reflection of concern, it seems that very radical re-thinking is occurring abroad. Some of this is likely to rub off on this country. For, whether we like it or not, the world is getting smaller and the welfare of children is becoming more and more an international concern. The ratification by Australia of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is a timely reminder of this. The incidence of child abduction, kidnapping and inter-country marriages, and of course, inter-country adoption, surely testifies to the fact that we should now be looking at the care and well-being of children as a global issue.

The history of the provision of child protection services in Victoria, and the lack thereof, is a long and complex one. Yet another twist in the tale occurred recently.

A report by Mr Justice Fogarty and Mrs Delys Sargeant, entitled Protective Services for Children in Victoria: An Interim Report, was released in January 1989. This report (hereinafter the Fogarty Report) was commissioned by the Victorian Government in August 1988:

“… to inquire into and advise it upon the operation of Victoria's child protection system and on measures to improve its effectiveness and efficiency.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau is arguably the grandfather of the modern discussion amongst educational theorists regarding the rights of the child. His own childhood was by contemporary standards a disaster and that of his own children even more so; nevertheless Rousseau laid down a programme for the education of one fictional male child, Emile. The proposal was radical in as much as it implied a child-centred focus for learning rather than a content-centered approach associated with the classical and mediaeval curriculum. Writing just before the dawn of modern democratic practices and two centuries before conventions of human rights, this romantic rogue reformer, was midwife to the tradition in education which focusses on the child. The discussion of this paper emerges from that tradition.

The position of single parent families in Australia is examined from a historical perspective, and this is a prelude to a discussion of service provision in maternity hospitals and Baby Health Centres in New South Wales, which are now staffed under the auspices of the Community Health Program. The paper is concerned with issues raised by criteria used to predict child abuse. These criteria are examined from two methodological perspectives; the first applies to the welfare critiques of social control to health service delivery, and the second is an epidemiological critique that notes an extremely high error rate in predicting child abuse at one maternity hospital.

Some data from the New South Wales Maternal/Perinatal Statistics Collection on low birthweight and hospital status is used to discuss some implications of this critique related to service delivery and social class of both providers and recipients of health services.

The past 30 years has seen the Australian community undergo significant structural and qualitative changes bringing prosperity and unprecedented standards of living to most citizens. But for some people these changes have left them behind and today their plight has reached scandalous proportions such that the nation's sense of social justice is in question.

Today we are only too well aware of the statistics on poverty, homelessness, child abuse and neglect, drug abuse and community violence. Thirty years ago we would not have thought it possible that sectors of the Australian community, apart from Aboriginal communities, would have such a growing sense of hopelessness and isolation from the mainstream of Australian life.

These difficulties are now pressing upon child welfare services and at a time of expenditure neutrality of the public welfare dollar. More and more as the costs of the welfare state approach crisis point, government and the community in general are being forced to turn to the resources of the family to find solutions to problems of social and personal need. In child welfare the notion of turning to the family and seeking resources or building upon inherent strengths is a new direction requiring a new understanding, knowledge and skills.

This article explores changes in the patterns of marriage and family formation which preceded and now accompany the growth in inter-country adoption in Australia since 1975. It also describes the major aims and the overall plan for a follow-up study of inter-country adoption in New South Wales.