In the light of Dave Vicary's review of 40 years of publications addressing out-of-home care (OOHC) issues and current concerns about both the systemic context of child protection and the comparatively narrow range of options for the delivery of care in the sector, a range of people from Australia and beyond were asked for their responses to the question: Where do you see OOHC going in the next 40 years and what do you think our priorities need to be?

At the Victorian Child Trauma service, we are using a sensorimotor framework to help children recover from their experiences of trauma. Informed by the work of Pat Odgen, this approach helps children to feel safe, aware and connected to their bodies and minds. In this article, we will describe the development of a group program incorporating sensorimotor principles, with the aim of helping children to regulate and engage in healing relationships. Group outcomes suggest that the use of sensory elements and principles in guiding our group program helps dysregulated children to establish safety and connection in meaningful ways with those around them.

Kinship care as a form of protective care in Australia has grown considerably over the past decade. The University of Melbourne Family Links: Kinship Care and Family Contact research project comprised a survey of kinship carers and consultations with key stakeholders. Given the significant over-representation of Indigenous children in kinship care arrangements, the project included a nested study of Indigenous kinship care. Research participants stressed the imperative for Indigenous children to be connected to family, community and culture. However, survey responses indicated that in many cases, family and cultural connections were not being assisted by cultural support planning. Indigenous caseworkers described the complexities of facilitating family contact, highlighting good practice as well as dilemmas and shortcomings in culturally sensitive practice. There was much evidence of the straitened circumstances of Indigenous kinship carers and unmet support needs among carers, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Suggestions are made about ways in which children in kinship care might be better supported to maintain their family relationships.

Traumatised children can be easily dysregulated by relational dynamics. These children often experience the sequential or simultaneous stimulation of attachment and defence characteristic of disorganised/disoriented attachment patterns. Expressing their relational needs for proximity and distance can be fraught with conflict, confusion, frustration and fear. Parents/care-givers are often baffled about how to balance boundaries and limit setting with closeness and proximity in a way that is effective for themselves and their children. Additionally, parents/care-givers themselves may have histories of trauma and attachment failure that impair their own ability to balance closeness and distance. Both proximity seeking or closeness and defense or boundary setting actions are organized by innate, psychobiological systems of attachment and defense, and for parents/caregivers, the caregiving system as well. Each action system has to meet particular goals to achieve proximity to and security with a trusted other (attachment system); to defend and protect when needed (defence systems) and to protect and care for offspring (care-giving system). The legacy of trauma and attachment failure, with their consequential neuropsychological deficits, can constrain and disrupt adaptive responses to the arousal of these three systems. This paper clarifies the inborn systems that drive actions of proximity and distance. A case study will explore the interactions of these systems in child/care-giver therapy. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy will be described and somatic relational techniques will be illustrated to address proximity and defence/boundaries in the context of child therapy and care-giver/child therapy.

This paper represents a personal view of the evolution of the Mulberry Bush School and Organisation. I will define three developmental stages, and within these some “core concepts” which, in my view, have enabled our services to evolve. I will illustrate these with case studies.

The neurological, psychological, emotional and social effects of abuse do not stop when the actual abuse has stopped. These affects are likely to be significant, pervasive, and long-lasting. Children who have experienced abuse at the hands of their parents tend to mistrust both their parents as well as subsequent carers who are making efforts to keep them safe. They avoid eye contact, comforting touch, reciprocal activities and communications that might facilitate a sense of safety and the development of a secure attachment. Those caring for such children need to find ways to patiently and gently help these children to begin to experience relaxed, reciprocal interactions with them along with the more intense experiences of comfort and joy.

Finally, when children have begun to trust their carers, but are returned to those who previously abused them, only to be abused again, they are at high risk to have even greater difficulty learning to trust. These more severe symptoms secondary to repeated trauma then cause their subsequent carers much greater challenges in helping them to begin to trust once again. This places the carers at risk for developing blocked care which further compromises the child's psychological development.

Developmental trauma is a term that describes the impact of adverse childhood experiences that results in the loss of capacity to integrate sensory, emotional, cognitive and relational information into cohesive, trusting and safe lived experiences. Infants’ and children's brain, nervous systems and neural development are vulnerable to these traumas. Trauma is stored in the implicit memory and is manifest through body gestures, breath, body behaviours, sensory perceptions, emotions and thoughts. Play therapy, sand tray therapy and creative arts therapy are all offered as interventions for childhood trauma. Work at the Clay Field®, is a sensorimotor art therapy and differs from play, sand and visual arts therapy as it focuses on haptic perception, the use of the hands and touch as a tool of perception. Touch is one of the most fundamental human experiences and is the basis of secure attachment, linked to our earliest body memories. Work at the Clay Field® is grounded in theories of developmental psychology, object relations, sensorimotor therapy and haptic perception. Haptic object relations as skin sense, vestibular sense of balance and depth sense are presented as the underpinning principles of Work at the Clay Field®. Children from the age of 2 years old onwards are enabled through work at the Clay Field to satiate developmental needs, in particular those from the preverbal age of early infancy. They also can complete trauma-related fragmented or incomplete action cycles through safe touch and restore their developmental path.

Mentoring Mums, a community-based pilot program, exemplifies a model of volunteer home visiting to vulnerable and socially isolated new mothers and their at-risk infants. An evaluation of the program found that positive changes for both mothers and their babies had been achieved, providing the rationale for exploration of elements that made the mentoring role effective. This article undertakes this exploration through the research question: What do mothers, mentors and workers contribute to the conceptualisation of the mentor role with vulnerable mothers and their infants? The article argues that the program's effectiveness resided in a mentor role that shared primary values of befriending and neighbourliness, rather than in mentors enacting a quasi-professional role. Conceptualisation of the mentor role is based in theory and practice, seeing mentors as straddling the formal world of service intervention and the informal world of kith and kin. It presents ‘befriending’ as part of building substitute networks around very isolated new mothers. The very significant problems experienced by these vulnerable mothers made necessary parallel involvement of a professional volunteer coordinator and ongoing case management. Mentoring did not replace professional involvement, but rather was distinguished as providing something different, but much needed for vulnerable new mothers and their babies.

This paper explores the debates surrounding out-of-home care for children who are unable to live with their birth parents and become looked after by the state in England. The historical context for the provision of out-of-home care is considered. Themes, including the use of residential care, foster care, adoption and placements of children from Black and minority ethnic children, are identified. These themes are re-examined in light of the current political and policy context, including the impact of globalisation. The paper concludes some reflections on future trends.

This paper is based on a presentation I gave to the Childhood Trauma Conference in Melbourne, Australia, August 2014.

Children traumatised within their biological families are described as children who have experienced complex trauma, also called developmental trauma because of the profound impact it has on their development. These children present a range of challenging behaviours within their foster or adoptive families. They respond less well to traditional behavioural management and benefit more from regulatory and relationship-based parenting. This is parenting that focuses on helping the children to regulate their emotional experience through the emotional connection between parent and child before attention is given to the behaviour. Developmentally traumatised children have a foundation of mistrust of parents and thus experience management of behaviour as signs that they are going to be hurt or rejected again. These children need parents who can connect with the child's experience before, or when appropriate instead of, discipline. This is described here as ‘connection before correction’. Correction in this context means helping children to develop pro-social behaviours and to find safe ways to express intense emotional experience. This paper explores the difficulties that the children can experience living in families; how this is expressed through behaviours, and how parents can connect in ways that promote the building of trust and allows successful management of their behaviour.

Quality of carer-child attunement is recognised as a significant factor in child development, yet few parenting programmes appear to provide opportunities for whole families to engage in activities exploring sound attunement. Clever Connections was developed by a psychologist–clinician in private practice as an attunement-focused pilot programme to explore a collaborative approach for families with primary-school-aged children. Concepts from critical theories, applied linguistics, sensorimotor therapies, mindfulness, narrative practice and communal practice informed the theoretical positioning which guided the programme's development. The programme, run over four sessions, was trialled with a group of four families. The first session was a three-hour block for the adults only, during which the participants’ positionings and preferences were used to structure the programme. The following whole-family sessions involved a series of cooperative games, creative activities and linguistic tasks focusing on enhancing attunement. Feedback was gathered immediately following the programme regarding content and structure of the programme. Follow-up at six months indicated that sensorimotor and self-regulatory strategies explored in the programme continued to be of benefit to some of the families who participated. The outcomes suggest that further experimentation with this style of family programme is worthy of consideration.

Although the physical punishment of children is overall an ineffective disciplining strategy, has adverse long-term psychological effects, and carries the risk of physical punishment escalating into child abuse, parental physical punishment is lawful in all Australian states and territories within the bounds of lawful correction or reasonable chastisement. What is considered to be reasonable is open to considerable interpretation, which further increases the risk of physical harm to children. Physical punishment of children also contravenes the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Australia has ratified. Although more effective disciplining strategies, such as cognitive-behavioural parenting strategies, are available and have been advocated by professional organisations, the vast majority of Australian parents condone parental physical punishment of children and are opposed to its prohibition. Predictors for this stance include perceived social norms, the belief that physically punishing children is an effective disciplining strategy and a parent's right, a perceived absence of alternative parenting strategies, and fear of prosecution if physical punishment were to be banned. Countries that have phased out the physical punishment of children have demonstrated that, to encourage a shift in parental attitudes and behaviours, public awareness about the detrimental effects of physical punishment and the effectiveness of alternative disciplining strategies needs to be raised. Additionally, parents require support through free and convenient access to evidence-based parenting programmes that promote alternative disciplining strategies; and the defence of lawful correction needs to be repealed, with the aim of setting a new standard, as well as education rather than prosecution.

This article reviews the interdisciplinary field of interpersonal neurobiology and its view of developmental trauma and wellbeing. Issues related to the mind, brain and relationships are discussed along with a working definition of both the mind and mental health.

Dr Howard Bath was most recently the Northern Territory Children's Commissioner, first appointed in 2008 and re-appointed in 2012. Trained as a Clinical Psychologist, Howard has studied and worked in both Australia and the USA. He has worked as a youth worker, manager, Agency Director and clinician and was the inaugural Chair of the Child and Family Welfare Association of Australia, the peak body for service providers representing all states and territories. Howard has presented widely at conferences and training seminars and has authored numerous research reports and articles on topics including family preservation services, out-of-home care, behaviour management and child protection. Howard joined the Anglicare NT Board in April 2015 and now provides consultancy services through Allambi Care in NSW. He has been a longstanding supporter of the Children Australia journal and his generosity over the years in helping with a range of journal-related tasks, including being a former Editorial Consultant is very much appreciated.

Over the past three decades, an accepted “given” of adolescent sexually abusive behaviour assessment and treatment has been that the more serious the sexual acts committed, the more entrenched that adolescent's behaviours are likely to be, with a likely progression from minor assaults through to more serious, intrusive acts. We assume youth engaging in the sexually abusive behaviour may have become both desensitised to the harm they are causing, whilst needing to engage in more severe offences to gain the level of arousal originally achieved through lesser acts. This conceptualisation suggests a somewhat causal relationship between the duration of the sexually abusive behaviour; the severity of the behaviour and the length of treatment required to manage and treat the issue.

Has pornography consumption potentially impacted the assessment and treatment of youth who sexually harm? Does a relationship exist between the severity and the entrenchment of the sexually assaultive acts committed, or has viewing pornography and re-enacting what has been viewed altered this relationship? This article explores a number of these themes and questions.

Although many researchers have demonstrated that music videos contain high levels of sexual connotation, none have specifically investigated music videos accessible to young children. This study analysed 405 individual music videos broadcast on Australian free-to-air television in time periods classified PG/G to identify the types and frequency of sexualised display. Results showed that these music videos contained relatively high levels of sexualised content, with particular genres and artists displaying higher levels of sexualised material. The findings indicate a need for a review of the current Australian classification system.

The research aim was to discover the circumstances, if any, in which contact with the parent who had abused them, could help survivors of intrafamilial child sexual abuse (ICSA) to recover from the inherent relational trauma. Thirty-five (31 female and 4 male) participants were recruited from across Australia and New Zealand to speak about their experience of post-abuse contact. The research methodology was primarily qualitative, and analysed in a contextual framework. In the Pre-Contact stage, themes such as the need for empowerment versus the fear of the response, linked to motivations for and against contact. Emotional reactions, and issues of acknowledgment and apology were core themes in the Contact stage. Post-contact themes related to evaluation of the overall experience. The majority of participants believed that their contact experience had helped more than hindered their recovery. Participants articulated the need for more public education about the complexity of ICSA, more options for dealing with the crime, and access to non-judgmental professional help for all the family at disclosure. The emergent themes provide a valuable guide for future research, policy and practice and perhaps most importantly, insight into the needs of victims and their recovery processes.

In Australia, many researchers and policy makers believe that statutory child protection systems are overburdened and ineffective. The way forward, they suggest, is a public health model of child protection. A public health approach comprises four steps: (1) collecting surveillance data; (2) establishing causes and correlations; (3) developing and evaluating interventions; and (4) disseminating information about the effectiveness of intervention activities to the public health community. However, in Australia there are no reliable surveillance data. There is no information about ‘person’. Information is not collected about the characteristics of children (e.g., ethnicity) and parents (e.g., mental illness) reported to child protection services. Data are not comparable across place. This is because the states and territories have their own child protection legislation, definitions and data recording methods. Data are not comparable over time. This is because many jurisdictions have introduced new data recording systems over recent years. This paper concludes that it is essential to develop an effective child protection surveillance data system. This will ensure that services are located in areas and targeted towards populations in greatest need. It will enable large-scale evaluation of the effectiveness of prevention and intervention activities.

Foster care has been available in Australia for almost 150 years. Carers have long been recognised as “the ultimate volunteers” who care for the most traumatised, emotionally disturbed children in the nation. Given that they provide the foundation stone of the child protection system, one might expect carers to be supported and valued. Numerous studies have shown otherwise. Warning signs over the years have been ignored by child welfare authorities resulting in carers leaving the service faster than they could be recruited and the most needy young children being placed in caravan parks, cheap motels and group homes supervised by occasional, inadequately trained, generalist carers employed on seven hour contracts by agencies.