Community Services Victoria (CSV) is assessing the skill requirements of effective practice in its client contact workforce through the Skills Enhancement Project. Staff and clients were asked to identify the skill elements of good practice. This material was then converted into draft competency statements which were validated by other staff groups. Finally, the material was placed in questionnaire format and over 4,600 staff were surveyed about the skills involved in effective client work.

Children Australia will progressively reproduce a number of the Project’s effective practice write-ups and report on conclusions arising from the Project. Further information is available from Bob Burgell at CSV. Telephone (03) 412 7140.

In 1991 Denmark launched a major information campaign on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. No less than four different publications were brought out, each of them targeted at a specific group, with free copies to all schoolchildren. The youngest children received a picture book, the intermediate age group a newsletter and for the oldest pupils there was a newspaper. A book was available to adults for a small charge.

“The child citizenship project” is a thrilling experiment which has taken place for over a year in five Danish municipalities. The objective is to give the fellow citizens a better chance of being actively involved in local activities. There is a desire for letting the children exercise an influence on all aspects of their everyday life. They should be given larger possibilities to be heard and to have a voice in planning, the contents and the implementation of activities. In these processes, the children should become visible as fellow citizens. One of the most important functions of the whole project is the dialogue between child and adult.

If you go down to the woods today…

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), the nineteenth-century English poet, wrote about the live murmur of a summer’s day’, presumably referring to bees, birds and other bugs humming around the countryside. A twentieth-century American (whom I believe to be a poet though not all would agree) wrote that The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1963). Nowhere have they changed more than in the English countryside. In 1991, it was the ‘live murmur’ of the summer’s night that was more likely to be heard. Out in fertile rural England the English people have discovered crop circles in their cornfields.

It is good to be in England in (the admittedly all-too-brief) summer, but quiet evenings in cornfields sleeping off the effects of English ales are a thing of the past. These days, find a cornfield and you will find half the media and a sizeable chunk of the English population. In some country areas, they say, it is quieter sitting in the middle of the road because you avoid the crowds. Crop circles in cornfields have seized the imagination of the public.

A recent study which investigated the relationship between a range of measures of psychological well-being and stress in a group of 109 Melbourne mothers (Rodd, 1992), unearthed some surprising but not unexpected findings. In fact, the research into maternal stress was initiated following many years of working with parents, running parent support and education programs and discussions with a range of professionals who provide services for families. The end result of the examination of this observational and anecdotal evidence pointed to the fact that mothers of young children are stressed - not just slightly or moderately stressed - but experiencing extreme levels of emotional stress in relation to their parenting role!

It is extremely hard to escape from news of the Royal Family. Even apparently liberal (with a lower-case ‘l’) British newspapers like The Guardian subject readers to articles that suggest that Charles and Diana enjoy different breakfasts. I cannot remember who liked what, but I can remember being irritated with myself for reading the piece. It has been especially difficult to avoid the Royals in recent months.