It is now established that there is a relationship between domestic violence and emotional and behavioural disorders in children, with research suggesting that childhood exposure to domestic violence can adversely affect both present mental health as well as adult life. The private setting and nature of such violence makes accurate estimations of the extent of the problem difficult. Such figures that have emerged however, indicate that domestic violence is occurring on a chronic repetitive basis. Elbow states that the violent family is characterized by rigid sex roles, the use of violence to control others, poor communication patterns, isolation both within and outside the family, and the inability to accept responsibility for actions. It is also suggested that the dysfuctional patterns of the violent marriage impair the ability of the parents to meet the developmental and emotional needs of their children.

Working with young people presents some unique challenges for protective services programs. How well equipped are services to meet those challenges? The Burdekin Report on Youth Homelessness graphically illustrates the ways in which both protective services programs and the community at large are failing young people.

One young person's experience of welfare authorities went like this… “they put you in refuges. That's their escape from the subject… But if you've really got a problem they're not (of) very much assistance.”

Intervention in the lives of young people has been alternatively described as neglectful, unhelpful, or damaging and punitive.

This paper incorporates three separate levels of information acquired slowly from clinical experience:

1. a) From clinical research into maltreated children and their parents.

2. b) From the assessment and treatment of maltreated children removed from parental care and adopted as Special Needs Children with unfroseen results.

3. c) From the assessment for legal purposes of the emotional status of parents who have seriously injured or killed their children and who had not received treatment in their own childhood, despite their severe distress levels.

1. Physical maltreatment; 2. Maternal deprivation; 3. Institutionalisation in early childhood; 4. Constant destructive criticism from a parent; 5. Premature demands for parenting behaviour.

The past 30 years has seen the Australian community undergo significant structural and qualitative changes bringing prosperity and unprecedented standards of living to most citizens. But for some people these changes have left them behind and today their plight has reached scandalous proportions such that the nation's sense of social justice is in question.

Today we are only too well aware of the statistics on poverty, homelessness, child abuse and neglect, drug abuse and community violence. Thirty years ago we would not have thought it possible that sectors of the Australian community, apart from Aboriginal communities, would have such a growing sense of hopelessness and isolation from the mainstream of Australian life.

These difficulties are now pressing upon child welfare services and at a time of expenditure neutrality of the public welfare dollar. More and more as the costs of the welfare state approach crisis point, government and the community in general are being forced to turn to the resources of the family to find solutions to problems of social and personal need. In child welfare the notion of turning to the family and seeking resources or building upon inherent strengths is a new direction requiring a new understanding, knowledge and skills.

In the last fifteen years a great deal of material has been published on child sexual abuse. All violence within the home retains a significant element of secrecy, but child sexual abuse has remained a shadowy secret longer than other forms of intra-familial assault. The battle to draw attention to physical abuse of children within the family was hard fought but controversy over child sexual abuse retains its intensity.

There are disagreements over the scale of the problem (Glaser and Frosh, 1988; Search. 1988) and the research findings concerning the effects of child sexual abuse vary ‘wildly’ (O'Hagan, 1989:53). Some myths about the problem however, have been successfully challenged. The stranger is no longer seen as the main danger and it is recognised that most perpetrators are members of the victim's immediate or extended family or known to the victim (Goddard, 1988).

Violence and assault within the home have always occurred in the shadows. Throwing light on the problems has never been easy, with the players in the tragedies disappearing and the action ceasing as soon as they were illuminated. For health and welfare workers now faced with large numbers of child sexual abuse victims the fact that the problem of child sexual abuse remained hidden for so long is difficult to comprehend. The evidence does not indicate a large increase in child sexual abuse, so the uncomfortable reality must be that the victims suffered in silence or their cries for help remained unheard or unheeded. As Hewitt so graphically proposes, the problem has always been:

This article concludes my interview with the established social work writer and practitioner, Kieran O'Hagan, who visited Australia recently. Kieran's most recent book Working with Child Sexual Abuse, examines child sexual abuse after Cleveland.