A current concern of social workers and other professions in the field of child and family welfare in Australia is the development of programmes of family support. Financial counselling has been extensively promoted as one such programme, and under a variety of auspices, financial counselling services have been developed in many parts of Australia. This article provides an historical perspective on the emergence of this type of family support service. The development of interest in and support for financial counselling programmes is traced and discussed, and the current range of activities is described. Finally, the implications of the pattern of historical development for the future of financial counselling as a family support strategy is considered.

The Australian Law Reform Commission’s report, Child Welfare, was tabled in the Commonwealth Parliament in November 1981. Although the report deals with child welfare in the A.C.T., many of the issues which are addressed are the same as those being considered in other parts of Australia. The report covers a wide range of matters, including:

• young offenders and methods of dealing with them;

• children in need of care;

• abused children;

• the licensing of child care services;

• children in employment; and

• welfare services for children and families.

This article will focus on the Commission’s recommendations on the reform of the law relating to abused children and other children in need of care.

Poverty and external stress are often emphasized as the primary precipitants of child abuse. Such a perspective does injustice to the complexity of the interactions between parent and child, to the intricacies of human behavior and to the realities of child abuse. Though social, economic and other deprivations influence, develop and exacerbate physical, mental and emotional difficulties, they do not explain sufficiently why some individuals neglect and abuse children, and others in the same situation do not. This paper will develop ideas about stress and empathy as they contribute to the problem.

Recent revelations in the media about the status of some Taiwanese children adopted by Australians raised again the issue of safeguards, official policies and practice in inter-country adoption. For many of the people significantly engaged in urging a raising of standards, the present situation and future possibilities foreshadowed in official quarters leave little room for optimism. In spite of well documented arguments for a uniform code of practice, responsibilities remain divided, offering loopholes for those who believe they have a special case that puts them outside the laid down procedures for assessment and approval. This paper argues that governments in Australia (State and Commonwealth) must not be allowed to walk away from responsibilities in inter-country adoptions, responsibilities which are firmly established and recognised as appropriate in domestic adoptions.

Recent proposed changes to family welfare legislation in Queensland (Parliamentary White Paper, 1981) include consideration of the extension of the mandatory reporting of cases of suspected child abuse or neglect, to encompass occupational groups other than medical practitioners. At the present time, only medical practitioners are obliged to report cases of abuse or neglect, under Section 76K of the Health Act (1937–1979) and Amendment Act (1980), Division XI B - maltreatment of children.

All the Australian states are either in the process of or have completed reviews of their child welfare legislation. The Australian Law Reform Commission has also completed its report on the reform of the child welfare laws. In Tasmania the Report of the Committee of Review into the Child Welfare Act 1960 and Social Welfare Services (the Roe Report) was tabled in December 1980. The following comments are directed to the two parts of the report dealing with children in need of care and children’s courts and young offenders. A draft bill is in the process of preparation incorporating the substance of these proposals.

Those who looked forward to proposals which seek to meet the criticisms of the welfare approach to juvenile offenders and the assimilation of offenders and deprived children have been disappointed. The report proposes the development of a community welfare orientation by seeking to change the emphasis from remedial institutional services to preventative community based services, but it fails to deal with other fundamental criticisms of the existing system. The failure to reduce crime through the criminal justice system, the hypocrisy injustice and subjectivity of the welfare approach and the ambivalence and confusion inherent in the existing system are not adequately resolved.

The Sexual Assault Referral Centre (S.A.R.C.) was established in January, 1976, as a crisis and support centre for victims of sexual assault. It was Australia’s first hospital-based sexual assault centre and developed out of concern from community groups, feminists and police in Perth about the treatment of sexual assault victims.

The Centre provides a 24 hour per day, 7 day per week service for any victim of sexual assault who is over the age of 12 years. The vast majority of people attending the Sexual Assault Referral Centre have been female but the service is also available for males.

This paper seeks to describe the development of one Brisbane based programme and its search for appropriate responses to the suffering of contemporary youth. Difficulties associated with drugs and alcohol form its major area of concern. A review of such a programme may be of interest to those who work with troubled youth. Wider interest might be established if some tentative links are established with those processes that have occurred during the past decade through which the sufferings of young people have gradually become more accepted as constituting a public and political issue. An important question emerges as to whether there are tangible signs in our community, beyond the relatively marginal responses of programmes such as “The Haven”, that alienated and troubled youth really matter.

In 1972 a group of women met to discuss the growing problem of parents under stress, especially the problem of child abuse. With the increase in single parent families, the escalating number of broken marriages and the disappearance of extended families, the pressure of parents was becoming greater. These women decided to form a group, a self-help group, non denominational and non profit making. Parents Anonymous was born.

A common complaint from people who seek help from Parents Anonymous is that many doctors, infant welfare sisters, or other professional workers do not have the understanding or experience to skilfully guide or refer parents who have trouble coping with their children, especially in times of stress. In most cases, particularly with doctors, it is the general practice to either underrate the problem or to hand out a prescription to “calm poor mum down”. Also, to some parents, doctors and other professional workers represent an “authority” and this inhibits their ability to express themselves. They also fear that by admitting their parenting problems they are “failures” and fear that they may have their children taken from them. As parents are particularly vulnerable at such times, it would be helpful if professionals could be more perceptive of stress situations and their underlying causes, and be able to make parents more comfortable about talking out their problems and needs.

Neither State nor private adoption agencies in Australia give preference to childless applicants over applicants who already have one child. This policy is presumed to be in ‘the best interest of the child’, and is based on the belief that being an only child leads to maladjustment. Empirical evidence indicates, however, that in general only children are in fact better adjusted than children from larger families. Consequently, not only has the existing policy no substance but also it denies natural justice to the childless couples who have to wait to start their adoptive family.

In the past two decades there has been a complete reversal of the supply/demand situation in the area of child adoption in Australia. At present, the number of children available for adoption is so small relative to the number of potential adopters, that approved applicants have to wait for up to eight years in N.S.W. before they can expect to have a child allotted to them. The length of this waiting period seems excessive not only in terms of the applicants’ expectations but also in terms of ordinary common sense values of the general community. If the situation is to be remedied, there is a need for a more flexible adoption policy suited to the prevailing social circumstances. A facet of this policy, which could shorten the waiting period possibly by half if adapted to the existing situation, is the proviso that all other things being equal childless applicants are given no preference over applicants who already have a natural or adopted child.

The Children’s Services Sub-Committee of the Consultative Committee on Social Welfare has recently examined the adequacy of out-of-school programmes in meeting the needs of families in the ACT. The sub-committee initially consulted with several organizations that provided holiday care and afterschool care programmes. Child-care workers expressed the view that there is a high level of dissatisfaction amongst users of out-of-hours care programmes. On the basis of this consultation the subcommittee discovered that:

1. (a) some holiday care programmes reported recent changes in enrolment patterns, especially that children who had been attending in the past were no longer doing so, and that the average age of the children attending had declined;

2. (b) some programmes had ceased to operate through lack of enrolments after the first two or three days;

3. (c) many after-school programmes had developed slowly and existing programmes were often under-utilised. Some child-care workers reported that it had taken twelve months to build up enrolments to economically viable levels in after-school care programmes; and

4. (d) there was an awareness by organisations that in most suburbs there were significant numbers of 5 to 12 year olds returning to empty houses after school and that there appeared to be resistance on the part of children to attending programmes, not just reluctance on the part of parents to send their children to such programmes.

Parents in two families were experiencing difficulties in the management of their children’s behaviour. One particular time of difficulty was at dinner. The specific interventions to decrease this dinnertime difficulty, and the general outline of a behavioural home based approach used with both families are described. Levels of appropriate behaviour increased markedly in both families.

These guidelines are given to medical practioners at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital. They demonstrate how recognition of child abuse is introduced to this group of practioners.

“The index of suspicion must be high”.

We as the front line of this hospital must be aware of parents with the potential to abuse; the child seen by them as sufficiently difficult, who provokes their potential; (it involves all socio-economic groups) and circumstances sufficiently stressful to tip the balance!