Examination of telephone counselling records from a youth centre revealed that parents are particularly concerned about their children’s drug taking. Other frequent crisis situations such as overdoses, the type of drugs being used, and information on family and personal circumstances were assessed to provide a profile of those people seeking help. While the success of crisis counselling centres is difficult to evaluate, the community has an obvious need for such services.

With permanency planning taking the spotlight increasingly in the field of foster care, i t becomes urgent to examine the definition of permanency, the effect on practice, and the implications for service delivery.

This paper describes a group support program for separated people. A simple self-report anonymous questionnaire was the only evaluative device used: the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The present program raised a number of issues, in particular – who are the most appropriate personnel to deliver the service; whether volunteer or professional. It is also noted that various researchers view social support as a critical variable for the eventual adjustment of the individual. Given the high number of those affected by separation and divorce, inclusion of such services would seem important as part of any preventive community program.

This article, the second in a series of two, builds on the practice implications of the socio-environmental model of child abuse. The identification in this model, of necessary and sufficient conditions for occurrence of child abuse, leads to the conclusion that effective prevention and management can only be brought about by approaches which create nurturing conditions for all families. Helping programs must be intimately involved in the community of the families they serve – not only by integrating formal and informal networks, but also by promoting community involvement in the definition of community standards of adequate parenting, and in long term support of vulnerable families.

The present articles present some ideas as to how this can be achieved. Social support network theory gives some suggestions of the potential of social supports to provide a variety of resources and to counteract the social supports to provide a variety of resources and to counteract the social isolation identified by the socio-environmental model as an important necessary condition of child abuse. The article concludes by looking briefly at some practice approaches which attempt to maximize the availability and effectiveness of social support.

A review article on prisoner mothers by Dennis Challinger (1982) questioned what, policies there should be for mothers in prison having their children with them. The present article is a personal view by a patient written at her request by a therapist. It deals with the impact of the knowledge that her mother had been in gaol for a year when she was four years of age and some thoughts about the efficacy of being with her and the help they both might have received if facilities had been available.