The aim of this paper is to present Family Support as the optimal choice for the long-term well being of children of families in great stress. (This may be the primary professional resource or may be in combination with alternative care).

These families are described elsewhere as “multi deficit”, “multi problem”, “hard to reach”, “hardcore” and “excluded families”, meaning excluded from the day to day services of our community. Not only do these families fear rejection and failure so do not attempt to use ordinary community services and resources such as community houses, libraries, maternal and child health nurses etc., but these services feel uneasy and poorly equipped to handle these families and their perceived needs.

A multi-service agency is required to effect change where there has been an inter-generational cycle of deprivation which gives rise to a “poverty of experience.”

We will demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach through a case study where long-term fostercare seemed a likely outcome.

This paper presents a distillation of the knowledge about families and methods of working with them, that has grown and developed over the past 10 years at Careforce Outer East.

This paper reports on a small study in the south west region of Sydney, in which mothers discussed their experiences as recipients of child welfare interventions for alleged child abuse.

The research methodology is within a feminist framework, utilising qualitative data and placing importance on the impact of the implementation specific public policy on aspects of private functioning.

Data was obtained from focused interviews conducted by students on placement. The analysis highlights major themes of women's experiences of service delivery, using their own words. Themes concern feelings of powerlessness, factors determining the perception of interventions as ‘helpful’ or otherwise and issues of rights to information and access.

The findings of this study are considered in relation to feminist analysis of ‘mothering’ and State intervention; previous research on recipient experiences of service delivery and implications for future policy development and research.

This paper traces the development of services to intellectually handicapped children and their families provided by Dr. Barnardo's North West Division in the U.K.

It has been a journey with and for the families and children. The milestones and lessons of the journey are described. It is a journey with still some way to go. It is a journey of hope - hope for better things for them now and in the future.

Planner-coordinator, catalyst, facilitator, service provider and service funder now characterise Local Government's involvement in children's services and the human services generally.

A 1987 report prepared for the Local Government Ministers, Community Development, Human Services and Local Government presents a national overview of the increased role of councils in human services clearly signalling that the debate of the 70s about whether Local Government should be involved has been replaced with questions about the basis of that involvement and implementation issues.

Family support agencies that undertake work with families where protective concerns are evident, are frequently placed in the difficult situation of deciding whether to involve Protective Services, and if so, how to do this and remain a helping agency in the eyes of the parents.

Alys Key Family Care has found it immensely valuable to meet with a group of service users to consider the issues of (1) passage of information from the agency to Protective Services, and (2) circumstances which warrant involvement of Protective Services.

Unlike many professionals, the client group expressed clear and consistent views about what situations warranted notification to a Protective Service, and as a result, the agency has now developed a pamphlet for all new client families that outlines how the agency handles these issues.

The paper describes the difficult situations faced by professionals in family support services when Protective Services become involved with their client families and a clear and open policy does not exist between the agency and its clientele. It outlines the process adopted by Alys Key Family Care to actively involve service users in the development of agency policy, and describes the specific guidelines for Protective Service involvement generated by the client advisory group.

“Aboriginal people have not … invented childhood.” This statement goes to the very heart of the difference between Western and Aboriginal societies as far as children are concerned. Aboriginal children have always remained part of the adult world.

Separation or exclusion from adult activities was kept to a minimum. Indeed, most of those activities were planned and organised to ensure the maximum involvement of as many children as possible. This applied to hunting and gathering, to dance, song, and many ceremonies. From the earliest age, they were aware of what was going on in the community, and were exposed to the whole spectrum of human relations. The expression “not in front of the children”, which became the title of a TV sitcom some years ago, would not have been used by Murris.

Data has been gathered by the Family Aide Projects Association from family aide services throughout the State of Victoria to enable policy and program decision making within the family aide program to be better informed. The 52 member agencies were canvassed to generate information which gives a more comprehensive picture of the operation of services than previously available. This paper presents a summary of the survey process and outcome.

Gardens and gardenng often mean different things to different people. When I was invited to join a committee about nine years ago for a garden centre for people with disabilities, I was, to say he least, tentative. I knew more about disabled people and their needs and more about volunteers than gardening. I enquired about the centre and the committee. The Centre had been established by an idea sown by Kevin Heinze, the well known television gardener and educator, after he had seen a garden for people with disabilities overseas—one to work in, not just to sit in. He interested many people with the idea of developing such a garden in Melbourne. The Doncaster Council then negotiated with the State Electricity Commission about the use of some land believed suitable in Doncaster, approximately 25 km from the city.

This was in 1979. I accepted the invitation to join the Kevin Heinze Garden Centre Committee just a few months after it had started operating. This paper will describe the development of the Centre and its value for people with intellectual and physical disabilities, and the work of the co-ordinator and volunteers.

Participation in parent education appears to be becoming more acceptable and legitimate for many Victorian parents over the past decade. The experience of parenting or ‘being a parent’ has been recognised as potentially confusing and difficult for many adults (Allen and Schultz, 1987: 14). In response to parents' perceived difficulties and expression of need for assistance with the parenting role, professionals who work with children and families have devised a diverse range of approaches to working with parents from informal, often unstructured, individualised, needs based reading and/or discussion type programs to the more formal and structured approaches which employ the often imported pre packaged programs with groups of parents in a variety of settings. Although little systematic information is available concerning the basis and nature of the burgeoning parent education programs currently operating in Victoria, Allen and Schultz (1987) described the current status of parent education in Australia as diverse in theoretical orientations, emphases, topics and settings. However, it appears that many programs currently operating cannot be described as systematic and theoretically based. Fine (1980: 5) defined parent education as “instruction on how to parent” and argued that this definition properly applies to organised, structured programs rather than to more informal discussions.

We are all familiar with Donald Horne's descriptive phrase “The Lucky Country” as applied to Australia. It was coined during the resources boom years of the late 'sixties. It referred to the luck we have to be living in a country so rich in mineral resources – all we had to do was to dig it out of the ground and sell the raw stuff to equally boom economies overseas. Actually those economies then converted the stuff into manufactured goods – cars, fridges, television sets, plastic toys and so on, which they then flogged back to us … and we could afford to buy – much of the money our wealth generated went to make already comfortably-off people more comfortable - not much went to the not so comfortable or to the really poor. But in line with the optimistic theories in economics, the trickle effect of the boom years would ensure that the poor too got a gnaw at the bones thrown to them; distribution of wealth already distorted, stayed distorted. Then came Gough and a new era was about to dawn, the new wealth would be used toward producing a more egalitarian society and an enhanced infra structure of welfare sevices, a spanking new health service, a broadening of the social security system, more job opportunities, free tertiary education, the Australian Assistance Plan, and the list went on. But history has a mischievous, even misanthropic turn of mind, and no sooner was Gough crowned than the resources market turned sour and the money started to dry up, the dream faded and you know the rest. The Fraser years were years of cutback and belt-tightening, of dour and unglamorous attempts to keep the ship afloat. No more vision of building a new Jerusalem in Canberra's green and pleasant land.

There is a Yorkshire expression, that many people are fond of quoting, to account for strange behaviour: “There's nowt so queer as folk”. Some folk, always other folk and never oneself, are more queer than others (and many Englishmen would claim that Yorkshire folk are stranger than most, but that's another story).

The expression came to mind when I read a column in Icaro, the magazine of Varig, the Brazilian airline. I am not fond of flying at the st of times and finding a magazine called Icaro in the seat pocket of a fully-laden jet increased my anxiety. Icaro, presumably, is Portuguese for that legendary character Icarus who, in attempting to escape from Crete, flew so high that the sun melted the wax that held his wings on with the consequence that he fell in the sea. A stranger title for an airline magazine would be hard to find.

The idea of respite care is of recent origin, having come about largely as a result of the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1960's and 70's.

Before that time, it was generally not expected that families keep a disabled member at home: and there is considerable evidence to show that those families who chose to do so, were expected to cope with the consequences on their own. No-one asked how they did it; and only the provision of crisis orientated counselling indicated that care providers recognized that these families might sometimes have hardships.

In an earlier article in this journal (Bates, 1988a), I concluded that the decision of the House of Lords in Re B (a minor Wardship: Sterilisation (1987) 2 All E.R. 206, would not be the end of a judicial process dealing with the enforced sterilisation of apparently mentally incapable young women. This has proved to be totally correct and, unfortunately perhaps, has meant that the issues raised by Re B have come to be litigated in two recent cases in Australia. At the outset, it should be said that both of these cases, for various reasons, confirm the decision in Re B in that the sterilisation was ultimately authorised. At the same time, it must also be emphasised that the judgments in each case were detailed, canvassing many of the central policy issues which are bound to arise in such cases.

Perhaps the best definition of foster-care is that of the influential, and extremely carefully drafted, Standards of Child Welfare League of America:

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen” (Orwell, 1949). The opening lines of 1984 have passed into the collective consciousness, gathering the familiarity that is reserved for great works of literature. The ‘Ministry of Truth’ was Winston Smith's employer and the name is now applied by journalists to the Victorian Government's media unit.

Much science fiction has been treated with condescension and the label of approval, ‘literature’, has been applied sparingly, if at all. I have enjoyed the genre since reading The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. The terror and adventure of the story of the invasion by Martians held me enthralled, but the real thrill for me as a schoolboy was that much of the early action took place where I lived.