This article presents the argument for the development of a national research agenda for out-of-home care and what is needed to make this agenda work. The need for a commitment to research, adequate funding and access to reliable data, plus the rapid transfer of research findings, into practice, is outlined. It also reports on the outcomes of a research agenda-building workshop sponsored by the National Child and Family Welfare Research Coalition and held in September 2002. This workshop provided an opportunity to generate a list of research question that researchers, service providers and practitioners saw as significant priorities in a national research agenda.

Speech and language impairment in the context of children who have experienced abuse and neglect is not well documented, with only a handful of controlled studies and research reviews on the relationships between maltreatment and children's communication development. More prevalent in the literature are reports on the deleterious effects of child abuse and neglect on overall childhood development, purporting effects on cognitive, affective, social and neurological development. However, the growth of communication skills is integral to a child's early development and is closely related to cognitive and social-emotional development. The experience of abuse and/or neglect has profound implications for a child's developing communication, supporting the inclusion of speech pathology in approaches to working with children and families in abusive and neglectful environments. This article reviews the literature on the relationship between communication development and childhood abuse and neglect. Data collected during the course of speech pathology intervention for abused and neglected children attending the Abused Child Trust's (Queensland) counselling service is also presented in order to highlight the need for the inclusion of this therapeutic modality in managing the developmental needs of this population of children.

This article examines data regarding three performance indicators that cast light on child protection intake and assessment processes, when children are reported to child protection agencies because of concerns about abuse or neglect. Rates of renotification, substantiation, and resubstantiation are examined. What do the data reveal about whether intervention is effective in keeping children safe from further harm and whether investigative resources are targeted to priority cases? The policy implications are discussed.

The title encapsulates the argument advanced in this paper. The author argues that the associative link between child protection concerns and poverty, although well accepted, is not incorporated into practice with families. The paper presents the results of a small scale qualitative study undertaken in the two North Queensland regional cities of Townsville and Mackay. The author undertook interviews with ten (10) Family Services Officers (FSOs) in the Department of Families (DoF).

Interviews revealed that FSOs agreed that family poverty is a stressor for child maltreatment. Participants differed in the extent to which they ascribed personal or societal responsibility for these family circumstances. The paper concludes with four recommendations to deal with family poverty in a child protection practice and policy context. The paper argues that more can and should be done to help children and families in this regard.

This paper combines clinical and research insights to systematically explore the experiences of infants and children through the course of repeated attachment disruptions and loss. It sets out core findings from a phenomenological study of the experience of multiply placed foster children, focussing on the experience of self that children accumulate in their journeys through long term care, as they lose, find and re-form their primary attachments. Findings point to what constitutes ‘good enough’ foster parenting for children with histories of traumatic attachment and loss.

In this paper, we examine some of the principal findings of a recent 3-year longitudinal study into foster care in South Australia and their implications for addressing the needs of children who experience high rates of placement disruption while in care. A critical finding of this study was that many of the most serious problems in foster care, such as repeated placement disruption, can be anticipated and predicted with considerable accuracy. Children who experience a disproportionately higher rate of placement disruption appear to be readily identifiable at intake. In addition, there appears to be an approximate threshold or point beyond which children subject to placement disruption begin to experience significant deterioration in their psychosocial functioning. This predictability of outcomes suggests the possibility of the early detection of children most at risk in foster care, and a means of identifying children failing to adapt to care. We believe that the extension of this form of analysis to other Australian states, for example, through the development of nationally agreed-upon definitions of ‘at risk’ and ‘harm due to disruption’ in foster care, may significantly enhance current attempts to evaluate and target treatment programs designed for children with challenging behaviours.

Kinship care as a formal placement option has been steadily increasing over recent years, particularly in New South Wales. This paper draws on a report of research on kinship care in New South Wales, in which the two authors participated (Mason et al, 2002). In conducting the research, qualitative and quantitative methods were used to explore both ‘top down’ perspectives (from policy documents and statistics) and ‘bottom up’ perspectives (from child protection practitioners and those who experience policy as service recipients – kinship carers, young people in kinship care and parents of children in kinship care).

In this paper we briefly outline the research and discuss findings relating to definitions of kinship care, the extent of kinship care in NSW, decision making around the placement of children in kinship care, reasons given by participants for kinship care, and support for carers.

This paper discusses the need for a national early childhood intervention policy in Australia, including a universal approach to children's services as a platform for the prevention of child abuse and neglect, supporting families and enriching the lives of all children.

It considers the literature on early intervention, including the theoretical and research base of successful programs and the link between early intervention and the prevention of child abuse and neglect. It examines the way the child welfare and children's services sectors have grown and the imperative at the beginning of the 21st century for a closer alignment of services.

The United Kingdom's ‘Sure Start’ early intervention strategy is considered in so far as it attempts to develop a more comprehensive approach to child welfare by developing programs which are based on the research. Finally the paper asserts that recent strategies introduced by Federal and State Governments to promote childhood health and wellbeing are positive first steps, but need to go further to seriously address increasing numbers of children reported as suffering harm through abuse and/or neglect.

In child protection, ‘status indicators’ typically describe the status of children in care in regard to reason for coming into care, length of time in care, racial or ethnic identity and whether specific bureaucratic milestones have been reached. With Indigenous children, status indicators are broadened to encompass explicit requirements arising from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle. Our contention is that this approach serves administrative decision-making and not the needs of Indigenous children.

We propose a different process for evaluating the effectiveness of foster care for Indigenous children that considers their well-being rather than their status as cases. This paper examines ‘well-being indicators’ for Indigenous children in care that emphasise foster family capacity to fulfil basic developmental, health, educational, social, cultural, spiritual, housing (Fisher, Pecora, Fluke, Hardin & Field, 1999) and economic needs. The paper concludes with recommendations for practice research on well-being indicators in Indigenous families.

This paper reviews the introduction of the UK Looking After Children practice and management materials in a number of Australian States and Territories against the background of a comparative analysis of UK central government systems to prescribe standards of service and to monitor outcomes for children in care. The writer argues that the UK Labour government commitment to a ‘whole of government’ interventionist set of activities and processes is significantly more successful in driving child welfare initiatives than the more fragmented and secretive systems in Australian States. Finally, the writer reflects on the central influence of commissioned research in informing needs and service outcomes for vulnerable children and their families.

In the arena of social welfare it is not unusual for practitioners to endeavour to give a voice to the disadvantaged by working to empower clients; placing value on each individual member in a family; helping communities care for each other; advocating for the rights of children and women. No doubt this is all familiar rhetoric to most welfare and social workers. However, in the area of foster care a voice that has seldom been heard is the voice of the ‘children who care’. The natural children of foster carers are valuable members of the caring team and whilst many foster parents are aware of their own children's contribution in caring for foster children, foster care agencies and social workers/caseworkers have not formally acknowledged them or accorded to them the support they deserve. Better outcomes for children in foster care and for families who care will be achieved if practitioners consult with, support, and acknowledge the ‘children who care’.

All children have the right to have sexuality education in order to enhance their self-understanding, their developing maturity and their self-concept. In the past, parents and some schools have provided this, usually as formal school programs. However, many children receive sexuality education informally from other sources such as peers, television, magazines and books. The technology available in the information age provides yet another source. The Internet has a growing number of sites specifically for sexuality education for children and pre-schoolers. Here, a selection of relevant sites is identified and presented for their developmental appropriateness. The opportunities these promote are almost limitless for children's enhanced personal understanding and knowledge-base upon which further development will occur in their teenage years and beyond.

This study was conducted in response to the concerns of staff within Anglicare Victoria about the presenting problems of boys aged 9-12 years across the various agency programs and the lack of systematic data about them. Under the umbrella of the Anglicare Victoria/University of Melbourne Social Work Partnership Program, a study was undertaken with the assistance of social work students on placement within the agency. A census-style survey was completed by AV staff members for any boy aged 9, 10, 11 or 12 years in an agency program during a three-month period. Non-identifying survey forms were returned for 203 boys and this article reports the major descriptive information and service implications derived from those returns.

Placement breakdown has long been recognised as a serious problem in foster care, particularly for young people whose behaviour is seen as disruptive. This qualitative study conducted in South Australia examined recent unplanned placement changes (n=14) from the perspective of the young people involved Participants were eligible for the study if their social worker attributed their most recent placement move to carer request on the grounds of problem behaviour. There was a high level of agreement between participants and social workers on the problem behaviours, but a divergence of views on the reasons for the move. Participants' contextualising of their behaviour highlighted the complexity of the processes underlying placement disruption. The dominant theme to emerge from this study was the unhappiness of participants. Other problem areas noted were apparent lack of placement options, and exclusion of young people from placement decisions.

Research to date has found that natural parents may be an important source of identity and support for children in and young people leaving out-of-home care. There has, however, been limited research on natural parents themselves, both internationally and in Australia.

This paper provides a justification for a research focus on parents, documents what is known from research to date, highlights current issues for parents and their children in out-of-home care, and concludes by identifying future research priorities in the area. The paper calls for recognition of the need to maintain positive links between natural family members in order to ensure best practice outcomes for children and young people in care.

At a recent New South Wales forum about the future of residential care, various speakers cited what they thought were the key themes that should guide thinking about the development of future residential programs for ‘at risk’ youth. The themes were that these programs must be small, local and, somewhat less confidently, that they should only be used as a ‘last resort’ when all other ways of addressing the care and treatment needs of these young people have been tried. It was also noted that funding for programs should reflect the level of staff expertise required when programs are treatment rather than accommodation focussed, although what this might mean in practice was not explored. These are all themes that are part of any discussion about the future of the residential component of the out-of-home care system.

The contention of this paper is that these themes are based on unfounded assumptions. When used in service planning to guide future services these assumptions contribute to the abandonment of ‘at risk’ youth to either no service or services that are less than adequate. The themes are explored by applying them to services in other sectors that also deal with ‘at risk’ youth, namely, health, education and criminal justice. The conclusion is that these themes should be replaced with others that will enable community service organisations to develop more appropriate services for ‘at risk’ youth.