“I don't know how they manage,” is the usual middle class response to being told of the incomes of people dependent on pensions and low wages. Genuine concern is tempered by the knowledge that in some way ‘they’ do manage. There is no apparent starvation, few reports of malnutrition. There are no people begging in the streets or living in packing cases, except of course the aborigines, who have always been seen as exceptions.

Under the provision of Section 62 of the Adoption of Children Act (Victoria, Australia) 1964, inspection of records of adoption proceedings is restricted, and Regulations 35 and 36 of the Adoption of Children Regulations 1965 prohibit or restrict access to birth entries relating to adopted children. In November 1976 the Attorney-General of Victoria requested the Statute Law Revision Committee to examine whether these restrictions should apply to an adoptee who has attained the age of 18 years or to the natural mother of an adoptee. The Committee reported in October 1978 and recommended, inter alia, that in any new adoption legislation adoptees should have only a qualified right to access to original birth records on application to a judge. Moreover, any changes in the law should not be made retrospective to cover those already adopted.

Child abuse is now perceived to be a major social problem. It is only in recent years, however, that this phenomenon has become part of public consciousness. Social workers, residential workers, doctors, infant welfare sisters, police and others are apparently spending more of their time dealing with the problem. This increasing demand on the professional's time has been matched by the growth of material written on Child Abuse: Kalisch, (1978), provides some two thousand references, the vast majority appearing in the last twenty years.

The literature, however, is predominantly concerned with identification of the child at risk, the incidence of child abuse, and the establishment of systems dealing with the problem. Unfortunately very little has been written about a central and crucial issue: the safety of the home.

In this article it is intended to describe the activities of a pressure group which was formed with the explicit objective of influencing the course of events in Victoria in relation to the development of child abuse policies and programmes. In the course of this it will be necessary to present something of the recent history of these developments, the place of such policies in the wider policies relating to child welfare, the reasons why it was thought necessary to establish a pressure group and the directions of the pressurising activity. It is also argued that pressure group activity is a necessary and legitimate part of social work activity and can be undertaken whilst recognising the limitations of such an approach in a liberal-welfare, or to give it a shorter name — a conservative economy. This part of the article will be dealt with first.

Preterm birth is a crisis for both baby and family. The long term outcome for both will be greatly influenced by the families’ ability to move from the grief and impotence associated with the loss of expected full-term parenthood through to active involvement as a preterm parent and eventual acceptance of parenthood.

The families' experience of the crisis is described for both normal and special situations. The implications for staff and family of more active participation of the family are discussed and some methods of involving the family are described.

The development of an explicit, formally enunciated, child protection policy in Victoria is only a recent occurence. This paper will trace the development of this policy from the sixties of this century until the present time. [Tierney (1963) made a comprehensive analysis of the development of child welfare policy and administration in Victoria up to the sixties.] Although historically, and currently, the Health Commission (formerly the Department of Health) has influenced the development of child protection policy, this analysis focuses particularly on the policies and practices of the Community Welfare Services Department as well as the relevant legislation. No attempt is made to analyse the policies and legislation administered by other relevant departments such as the Health Commission, Education Department, Law Department and the Police and Emergency Services Department. The policies of the Community Welfare Services Department are considered to be of greater relevance because of its role in administering the relevant welfare legislation, and the increasingly important role it has assumed in the supervision and co-ordination of various agencies involved in child protection.

The Mums' Chums Project is the result of concern, enquiry, thought and preparation to test a preventive method aimed at reducing the incidence of Child Maltreatment.

Adequate Parenting and child rearing are learnt through experience — the parents own experience of being parented. It is not a skill easily gained from instruction in classes! I once read that kids need three things — “love”, “limits”, and “letting go”, and from my years of experience in working with families who manifested their distress through the abuse and neglect of their children, I believe that these parents are unable to love, limit and let go. I found that these three L's were also important in looking at ways of helping the parents themselves.

This is the year after International Year of the Child; most readers will perceive this as an unnecessary statement as there would be few of us who have not been affected by IYC in some way. Some of us would have attended meetings, conferences, seminars and the like to listen to a veritable plethora of learned, witty, earnest and serious speakers discourse on the rights of the child, and participate in the resulting debates. Others of us made ourselves unpopular with friends and relatives alike by extolling the virtues of IYC, T shirts, sweat shirts, car stickers, badges and other gaudy memorabilia, not to mention raucous renditions of the ubiquitous “Care for Kids” song at some largely inappropriate moment.

The term Homemaker has been used to describe roles which range from a friendly visitor, to a teaching role, to that of a domestic or nursing aide (Canadian Council of Social Development, 1971). To avoid any confusion the Homemakers referred to in this article are essentially support workers with a teaching orientation. Their role is to prevent breakdown in the family unit by acting as a resource to the parent in a range of problem areas, but with a specific focus on child rearing. They aim to protect, restore or improve family functioning in the area of physical, social and emotional health. In some situations they may perform practical tasks to help improve the quality of life in the home, but generally their main task is to assist the parent to acquire the necessary skills.

The Family Service Centre, a voluntary social work agency attached to the University of Western Australia first opened its doors to clients on the 16th May 1977.

The idea of establishing a broadbased family centre attached to the Social Work Department at U.W.A. was first mooted in 1974 in the Department's Triennium Submission for 1976-78 to the Australian Universities Commission and still remains a novelty in the Australian social work education scene. The sixth A.U.C. Report, in fact, expressed considerable interest in the idea by stating that "it might support a contribution to the academic staffing of such a development on the same basis as a University teaching hospital". Unfortunately, the lapse of this Report for political reasons, meant that this and other proposals contained in it were either shelved, lapsed or had to be reactivated within a different policy framework.