The author presents the results of an experimental program initiated for the purposes of providing comprehensive psychiatric assistance to abused and neglected children and their families. Designed jointly by Massachusetts’ U.S.A. Departments of Mental Health and Social Services, the projects are also a demonstration of interagency case collaboration. The paper briefly describes the program philosophy, service delivery strategy, and staffing pattern. Through analysis of data of 332 families and 1,118 individuals treated in the first year, profiles of the abusing/neglecting family, their children, and the adult perpetrator of the situation are developed. Implications for mental health care, the cooperative endeavours of mental health and child welfare agencies, and difficulties in measuring treatment outcomes of this population are discussed.

To many accountants the idea that welfare agencies would require computerised accounting may seem incongruous. However, Children's Welfare Association of Victoria have found, as a welfare field response to the standardised financial reporting system that they developed during 1981/82, that the need for such a system is clearly established. This mainly resulted from the focus of the reporting system on functional accounting which had not been addressed fully by many welfare agencies prior to the implementation of this system. In 1982 the Victorian State Government expressed a clear commitment to programme budgetting for all Government departments and as the voluntary child welfare field is heavily reliant on Government funding, it is expected that all agencies will need to respond to this commitment as if they were Government organisations. Programme budgetting needs as its base, a clear functional classification of income and expense. Therefore, the need for this form of accounting has become more obvious over the last twelve months.

This is the second part of a two part feature on hyperactivity. The first part was published in the Winter 1983 edition. It focussed upon how to recognise hyperactivity and parenting the preschool child who is hyperactive.

In this second part, the focus is upon introducing the hyperactive child to kindergarten and later to school. The authors offer practical suggestions on how to work with the child and his/her teachers to help the child through a difficult time.

There is a folk-tale about three blind men who were trying to picture what an elephant looked like. One felt the elephant's ears and said: ‘An elephant is similar to a winnowing basket’. Another felt the strong legs of the elephant and thought that the elephant looked like a big, solid pillar. The third felt its tail and to him an elephant was akin to a riding crop.

‘How do we understand that which we seek to act upon?’ Theory puts things which we see or know or hypothesise about into a system in order to make sense of what otherwise would be inscrutable in order to spot gaps and biases, and also to challenge the illusion that we know answers which we do not yet have. Some people become very uneasy by the fact of multiple points of view or the absence of complete agreement. They choose one point of view and they seek to destroy or denigrate all others. Or they may repudiate all concepts and use only intuition, common sense it's called. I suppose that the middle ground might be meriting our attention. I don't think that in our complex field of human relations and services to parents and children that it is very easy to simplify. You remember the comment There's a solution to all human problems. It's neat, and it's obvious and it's wrong'.