The aim of this Paper is to delineate a number of principles related to the effective delivery of welfare services at a ‘regional’ level. Regional level is used in this Paper in a general sense to distinguish ‘community’ based planning from planning at State or Federal level (or planning at an interpersonal, agency, specific field or societal level). No attempt is made to distinguish the precise characteristics of the regional level, but in detailed operationalised planning related to a specific area clear distinctions need to be made between the various planning levels and between the particular services being provided at each level.

It is important to seek an accurate working definition of the residential care worker's major tasks. This involves making some arbitrary divisions between aspects of caring functions. Some of these divisions relate to aspects such as physical care functions, creating a total living situation, relating to families, and using resources of specialists. These aspects are presented diagrammatically and discussed. It is concluded that a definition of residential care functions is one key in the future development of residential care services.

The theme of this Conference is All Care and No Responsibility while the title assigned to this paper is All Responsibility and No Care. Consistent with what I understand to be the focus of this title, the paper will examine various aspects of the system of governmental and no governmental care for the child deemed to be in need of some protective care from the state. The paper will concentrate on the present arrangements for admitting a child to wardship and consider possible alternatives to wardship and alternatives to institutional care for wards.

There is no more emotionally searing situation for those in the healing and helping professions than a diagnosis of fatal illness in the child, with death the inevitable outcome. Medical and nursing staffs of hospitals are deeply committed to preserving life for the child, and with advances in medical science, every effort is made to ward off the threatening illness, and achieve increased recession, in the continuing hope that some cure may be found. In this battle for life, the emotional needs of the child himself too often have been denied, overlooked or not considered as part of the total caring programme. It is only more recently that the response and adaptation of the child himself to a life threatening illness are being recognised as requiring the same consideration and skill which is given to the management of the disease.