As a contribution to the International Year of the Child, an International Colloquium in School Psychology adopted a Declaration of the Psychological Rights of the Child in July, 1979.

The James McGrath Foundation’s Odyssey House is a drug-free, residentialtherapeutic community for the treatment of drug addiction. The programme wasinitiated by Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, a psychiatrist and lawyer, in theUnited States of America fifteen years ago, and has been operative in Australiain New South Wales since October, 1977 and in Victoria since July, 1980. TheVictorian residential facility is located at Lower Plenty in a spacious buildingoriginally constructed by the Roman Catholic Church, situated on nine hectaresof land and now “home” for one hundred and thirty former drugaddicts. There are three specific programmes incorporated within the overallOdyssey programme offering treatment services to adults, adolescents thirteen toseventeen years old and parents and their dependent children. Referrals to theseprogrammes are in general from medical and mental health programmes, socialservices agencies, schools, jails, courts and probation and parole departments.In addition, fifty-two percent of residents are self-referred or referred byfamily or friends.

“To reveal one's own emotional state to someone outside of the family, such as a social worker, or psychiatrist, is foreign to the usual repertoire of responses of Asians when in need of psychological support.” This assertion, made by two Asian-American mental health workers, is supported by the authors, based upon their social work experience with Indo-Chinese refugees in Queensland.

The following articles won for the author, Barbara Walton, the Australian Child and Family Welfare journal award for journalism. The articles were published by the Shepparton News in aseries of three articles in March, 1980. In June, 1980 it was announced that the Coulburn Valley branch of the Children’s Protection Society had received a grant of $32,000. It was considered that the articles by Barbara Walton had contributed to the movement to strengthen the Children’s Protection Society in the area.

The “Children and the Family” forum, jointly sponsored by the Victorian Child Development and Family Services Council and the Institute of Family Studies, was held at the Community Welfare Training Institute, Melbourne, on Tuesday, 31 March 1981.

It was attended by approximately 140 people – representatives of both State and Federal government departments as well as a plethora of voluntary agencies and research organisations involved in the provision and evaluation of child and family services.