Family law in Australia is an important and unique jurisdiction that directly impacts upon the well-being and future family relationships of children whose families are in dispute over post separation parenting arrangements. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children have the right to participate in decisions that directly affect them. But there are many barriers and tensions to children's participation in the jurisdiction of family law in Australia. Decisions said to be in the child's ‘best interests’ are influenced by value judgments and beliefs that are informed by dominant western discourses on the needs and competencies of children. In practice under the Family Law Reform Act 1995 children remain marginalised without an effective voice. Failure to hear the voice of the child is of special concern for children who have been traumatised by exposure to family violence and ongoing conflict. It is important to develop new understandings about children and the importance of giving children a voice.

The following summary of a literature review on children and young people's participation in the welfare sector was written in response to a need to understand this concept within the context of human services work in New South Wales. This need became apparent through work being done at UnitingCare Burnside around children and young people's participation. Examination of the literature on participation revealed an increase in discussion around the issues. While this has included exploration of definitions, history, practice, models and factors enhancing effective participative practice, there has been a dearth of writing linking these. The literature review attempted to provide a scaffold that could be used to support agency workers as they attempt to build meaningful, effective, strong and reciprocal partnerships with children and young people. This concise summary of the literature review has sought to highlight the major supports found to provide a scaffold for participative agency practice with children and young people.

The use of practice-based short stories as a teaching and learning tool in the education of human service professionals, particularly in social work, is the focus of this article. Based on teaching practice experiences, the use of written narratives is explored in relation to developing both content knowledge and reflective learning capacity. This edition of Children Australia also includes one of the stories used by Social Work students in their second year at La Trobe University as a basis for tutorial and seminar discussion, together with one of the essays received from students in response to the assessment task. Given the encouraging responses of students to the use of practice-based stories as a learning tool for human service professionals, professionals in the field and teaching staff are invited to consider the further development of storying techniques.

The ‘future’ orientation of the out-of-home care research literature which has focused on outcomes of care has risked ignoring children's experiences of care in their ‘present(s)’. In this paper we describe a project, the design of which reflects an alternative to the traditional way of looking at childhood, of which this ‘future’ (adult constructed) orientation is part. We discuss the use of qualitative research methods to identify children's needs in care. The project has attempted to involve children as co-constructors of knowledge around their needs through participatory research methods. These methods have required us to recognise that children and their needs exist within a context of relational structures; to address the power imbalances between adult researchers and child participants; and to be flexible in responding to the consequences of a participative process. Challenges which have surfaced in the implementation of this research and our responses to them are described.

There is a paucity of publicly available information on Australian children in out-of-home care. Data on the characteristics of children in care, their experiences during placement, and the services provided for them are badly needed to monitor service effectiveness, to identify where service improvements can be made and to ascertain how to improve the allocation of resources. This paper provides a rationale for using information collected on the ‘Looking After Children’ (LAC) schedules to generate an Australia-wide database on children in out-of-home care, as well as identifying some of the problems to be overcome if the LAC schedules are to be used to collect aggregate data.

This paper outlines the parameters of the national out-of-home care data collection managed by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. The paper discusses the need for national data, what is included in the national data collection and the current data collection process. In addition possible developments to the national collection are outlined, in particular the proposal to collect the data electronically in unit record format. The benefits of this would include greater flexibility of the data and the ability to analyse how children move through the child protection and out-of-home care systems.