Parliamentary Inquiries into the adequacy of child protection services, as well as best practice care and service delivery in child protection, have been a dominant feature of contemporary Australia in recent times. The direct voices of children and young people in such inquiries are usually missing, despite them being at the very centre of the child protection system and a range of government policies. In this paper we reflect upon this issue and consider why these voices are absent and what factors and barriers limit their inclusion. A review of relevant literature and empirical data indicates that the structures, agendas and processes of such Inquiries are intrinsically adult-oriented endeavours in which the contributions and inclusion of children and young people are not easily accommodated. Through adopting a shift in perspective, orientation and practice, the voices and experiences of children and young people can be included in child protection Inquiries that have critical implications for the quality of their lives and their life chances. Such inclusions uphold the rights of children and young people and support the implementation of government policy in practice.

This article reviews initial findings from an Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute [AHURI]-funded research project examining housing outcomes among Australian young people who have been in state out-of-home care. Our findings suggest a linkage between incidents of in-care abuse and poor postcare housing outcomes among our research participants, including primary homelessness. Not attending school when leaving care was also highly associated with having experienced in-care abuse. The authors postulate that adverse in-care experiences may have contributed to poor postcare housing outcomes among the research participants; and this article raises a number of specific concerns related to neglect, abuse and assault while in care. It is also argued that support in the transition from care needs to be strengthened to mitigate poor post-care outcomes, as does accountability for in-care adversities.

The Circle Program is a therapeutic model of foster care in Victoria. Oz Child has delivered this model of foster care in partnership with The Australian Childhood Foundation and the Department of Human Services over the last four years. Therapeutic foster care is designed to assist children entering care to heal from the affects of trauma and abuse. A significant benefit of therapeutic care is the provision and emphasis on a supportive therapeutic environment for the child in everyday interactions with the carer. It is through the child's relationship with the carer that healing can begin. In order to provide such an environment carers are trained, assessed and accredited to have a working understanding of the impact of trauma and abuse, and are provided with tools and strategies to therapeutically re-parent these children. Carers are an integral part of the team and work alongside placement workers and clinicians to understand the impact of trauma and abuse. Together they develop strategies and interventions that are therapeutic and address the impact of trauma on all aspects of the child's development and wellbeing. While considering outcomes for children within a therapeutic model it is crucial to identify particular interpersonal and parenting characteristics held by carers. This commentary will consider the defining characteristics required to be a therapeutic foster carer.

Social pedagogy has a longstanding tradition in many European countries. This article outlines its development in relation to culturally specific concepts of children and their upbringing — the pedagogical — and ideas about the relationship between individuals and their community — the social. Both dimensions are closely connected to social pedagogy's ethical orientation, most notably to respect people as resourceful agents, help them develop their potential and support the construction of a more just society. By drawing on historical thinkers in social philosophy and education, the article explains how these two dimensions have shaped social pedagogy as an action-orientated science that requires professionals to work in an ethical manner. It concludes by discussing the need for critical reflection in order to ensure profound respect of people's human dignity and their otherness.

This article aims to bring together perspectives from policy, practice and research in reviewing the experiences of young refugees arriving in Australia. By reviewing international and local research and applying it to the Australian policy context, this article highlights how evidence-based practices for this population are lacking. Risk and protective factors for young refugees are discussed in relation to possible avenues of intervention. In particular, unaccompanied refugee minors are seen as being at heightened risk of social exclusion and mental illness. Quantitative and qualitative literature is integrated to provide an overall picture of young refugees in the Australian context. Studies evaluating psychological interventions and support for refugees, as well as research into how young refugees typically cope with adversities, are used to inform recommendations for school and community-based psychological interventions.

The construct ‘the best interest of the child’ is embedded in child protection legislation in all Australian states and territories. This phrase or construct in its modern iteration that dates from 1973 is constantly evoked when decisions are being made about a child's future following the substantiation of a case of child abuse and neglect. The use of the best interests of the child as a standard for decision-making, even though there is no consensus in law or social science as to what the construct means, needs to be questioned. What often follows from reliance on the best interests of the child is the placement of a child in foster care or kinship care in the hope that this will produce a better outcome for the child than if they remained in parental care. No doubt this is true for some children. Recent outcomes studies of foster care point to less than promising results for many children. As a result it can be argued that placing a child in foster care is a gamble with the child's future life.

Caring for children in home-based care is seen as requiring considerably more time and energy from caregivers than is the case for most other children who are not in care. This article reports on a study that quantified the amount of time, over and above ‘ordinary parenting’, spent by 26 foster carers and prospective adoptive parents of children during a 9-month period in a program offering long-term care. The findings provide information that is potentially useful, not only in the debate about the decline in carer numbers, but also for agencies when they are recruiting, training and assessing prospective carers. Carers in the study spent an average of 55 minutes per day (or approximately 6 hours 22 minutes per 7-day week) on activities over and above the ordinary care of children. Carer time was highest for cases in the first year of placement when the average time was close to 2 hours per day. The tasks that took the greatest carer time, on average, were access visits, meeting with caseworkers, school- and tutoring-related matters, counselling and medical appointments, and organising respite care. Not surprisingly, more time was spent on children with challenging health and behavioural issues. Despite these differences in the average level of time required for each individual situation, the study also demonstrates that most carers experience days that are substantially taken up with their care responsibilities.

Resilience is a concept that has captured people's interest in recent years in the hope of being able to readily identify the elements that make young people able to bounce back from adverse circumstances. Coping is an important component of resilience in that it can be conceptualised, operationalised, measured and developed. Since stress and coping have been arguably one of the most widely researched areas in the field of psychology there is a diverse literature. This article provides a brief review of the literature in the field of coping, particularly as it relates to adolescents. It provides a definition of the construct and considers correlates such as age and gender. It draws attention to the paucity of literature on family patterns of coping, such as an exploration of parents and their children's coping. Coping is helpful as part of a person-centred, rather than a situation-centred, approach to risk and resilience.

In the Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection in New South Wales, Recommendation 16.9 states: ‘Carer allowances should be reviewed periodically by an independent body and should more closely reflect the actual costs to the carer of providing care, according to the varying categories of need’ (Wood, 2008, p. 689). In 2000, estimates of the costs of foster children were developed (the Foster Care Estimates) by an ‘independent body’, the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC). Using a budget standards approach, estimates representing the ‘basic’ subsidy were based on the costs of children not in care and adjusted to more closely reflect the day-to-day cost of fostering children in statutory care. Since 2000, the estimates have been updated annually (using the Consumer Price Index). This article examines the changes to levels of allowances for statutory foster and kinship carers in all Australian jurisdictions over the period 2000–2009. It argues that the use of the internationally recognised budget standards approach to estimate ‘actual costs to carers’ has been accepted by government and more than meets the requirements of Wood's Recommendation 16.9.

Social pedagogy is a field of professional practice associated with the care and education of young children, support of young people, and with family support that has an established place in many continental European countries. It has attracted attention in the United Kingdom (UK) for its potential relevance to the policy ambition of improving the generally poor educational and social outcomes for young people in public care. In this article, I discuss some issues arising from the task of establishing the value, or effectiveness, of the social pedagogic approach. Using findings from cross-national studies, I argue that there are various problems with measuring the ‘effectiveness’ of social pedagogy, but that in countries where social pedagogy is well established and supported by a policy and cultural context, its role in supporting children and families is highly valued. I conclude by considering some implications for the introduction of social pedagogy into the UK.

This article describes developments in residential childcare services in Scotland and the influence of various policy trends; in particular, it draws on the work of the National Residential Child Care Initiative, a major government-led review that reported in 2009. The development of small-scale residential units, the emergence of a ‘mixed economy’ of provision and a focus on staff training are key features of residential care for children in Scotland. The sector has received strong central government affirmation for two decades, notwithstanding a gradual reduction in its overall size. The article focuses on developments over the past 10 years and identifies a number of ‘drivers’ that aim to promote improvement, including staff training and the promotion of interprofessional collaboration. The emergence of specialist education and health services for ‘looked after children’ is noted. The relative underemphasis, until recently, on specific theories of care or particular therapeutic approaches is considered. Constraints on improvement are also considered; these include the fragmentation of provision and the operation of markets, the pressure on places and a high level of placement breakdown.

Some commentators have pointed to the United Kingdom (UK) having a tendency towards reducing ‘new’ concepts or practices so much that they bear little resemblance to the original form. This is why I wish to highlight in this article some of the sometimes subtle, yet profound, differences in a social pedagogical approach to child care in order to better understand the potential of social pedagogy for developing practice. There are five main sections to this article: first, I describe social pedagogy and a conceptualisation of a social pedagogical approach; second, the UK context is examined so as to set the scene for the third, fourth and fifth sections, which examine reflection, relationships and the concept of lifespace through a social pedagogic lens, drawing links to existing good practice in the UK. Although this commentary does not discuss Australian practice, I believe there are some important aspects in the way in which the UK has tried to familiarise itself with social pedagogy that can help Australian readers to better understand some of the subtleties and nuances of the paradigm and inspire their own reflections.

This article provides an insight into the under-explored lives of parents with mental illness. In particular, this article considers the experiences of parents with mental illness who grew up with parents who also had mental illness, or experienced issues related to violence, abuse and neglect during childhood. Due to the dearth of research in this area there is minimal insight into how parents experience mental illness and even less significance is placed on exploring how intergenerational mental illness and backgrounds of violence, abuse and neglect impact on parenthood. This qualitative study generates information about how intergenerational family mental illness, and other issues identified in the course of the study, affected the participants' experiences of being a parent.

This study aims to explore the coping strategies of preschoolers, by asking 4-year-old children (N = 46) at an early learning centre in Melbourne to describe their coping strategies when dealing with seven age-appropriate challenging situations. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed. The results indicated that preschoolers could articulate coping strategies that are theoretically clustered into productive and nonproductive coping styles. The capacity to identify a range of coping strategies related to specific situations has implications not only for theory development, but also for the design of effective prevention and intervention programs to help children more effectively deal with life challenges.