The purpose of this article is to set forth some ethical practice guidelines for human service workers with less than professional qualifications.’ The growing awareness of social, behavioural and mental health problems in our society ranging from hyper-active children who cannot read to depressed housewives who cannot cope, has resulted in the need for more personnel in the human service fields. Increasingly, the helping professionals have been aided and abetted in their work by a growing number of aids or assistants who work undertheirdirection inthefields of psychiatry, psychology, social work, nursing, the ministry, the law and vocational and educational counselling. Sometimes referred to as the “new careers worker” (Golann and Eisdorfer: 1972) or the “new professional” (Dugger: 1975), such workers may have some preparation, some on-the-job staff development, but will have less than the traditional professional training. Among these workers are many individuals, mostly women who are utilized for their nurturing, home-making skills so important in residential settings for children and in foster homes. There are also workers who are indigenous to low-income or minority group areas who possess important knowledge for promoting programs and special skills at case finding. (Pearl and Reissman: 1965) In addition there are volunteers of all kinds, including former clients, working in both conventional and atypical agencies. Honorary Probationary Officers alone number approximately 900 in Victoria in 1980 and constitute a major support for individuals on probation. All of these workers face, just as professionals do, complex and ambiguous ethical questions.

In an earlier article, the developments which occurred in child protective policy in Victoria during the nineteen sixties and seventies were described. This article examines the current policy as expressed in the relevant government legislation and the policies of the Department for Community Welfare Services. The current policy is then compared with the previous policies.

In 1970 a medical student walked out of an examination room in a Radiology Department of a large teaching hospital saying, “I think that is barbaric, holding down a screaming child to have a bladder x-ray”. At the time I thought she was over-reacting. After all, the child needed to have an x-ray examination of the bladder (MCU) and a kidney x-ray (IVP) to assess whether there were any organic abnormalities predisposing her two urinary infections with possible renal damage.

Some time later a mother returned to her referring paediatrician with a very distorted account of what had happened to her three year old daughter undergoing an x-ray examination of the bladder and kidneys.

unexplored area in Australian research. Literature on the topic of military base-host community relations in specific is practically nonexistent, in Australia and elsewhere. Those case-studies which have been made (Barth, 1952; Hunter, 1952; Palmer, 1977) reveal that the military community represents a kind of foreign settlement in a civilian locality, that relations more often than not are uneasy and even exploitative in such matters as housing, and that the military style of life in general thwarts civil-military social integration.

The communal nature of the military organisation in its own right has been noted by Kilmartin (1974; 444):

How the wives and families of servicemen experience service lifestyle, military communalism and isolation from civilian host comunities is the concern of this paper.

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 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.