This presentation will address key controversies in parental monitoring literature by reviewing the research and then presenting a theoretical model of the influence of parental monitoring on adolescent independent behaviour. Parental monitoring is the widely accepted hypothetical construct used when explaining parenting behaviours, knowledge, or attitudes that are thought to influence adolescents' use of free time. Research has consistently established a relationship between poor parental monitoring and child problem behaviours in the areas of antisocial behaviour, substance abuse, academic achievement, early sexual behaviour, child safety, and self-esteem. Despite the increasing evidence of the importance of parental monitoring, interventions to improve monitoring are hampered by controversy over the directionality of monitoring behaviours. Some researchers claim monitoring will improve when parents increase their vigilance, while others purport that increased parental questioning will only discourage adolescents' willingness to keep parents informed. The implications for intervention research with adolescents will be discussed.

Dr. Louise Hayes is currently leading a project for the Ballarat Health Service which is examining the effectiveness of community-wide early intervention programs for children with emerging disruptive behaviour disorders. Prior to this, she was a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Victorian Parenting Centre. Louise's research interests include parenting, adolescent and child development, with a special interest in working with families who are experiencing child behaviour problems or parenting difficulties. Her specialty research area is parental monitoring of adolescent free time activity.

View Dr Hayes' PDF of Power Point presentation for more details about her research.

The Starting School Research Project promotes the involvement of children in research concerning their transition to school. Using many examples of approaches that have been utilised to engage children as part of the research on their transition to school, this presentation explores some of the philosophical and methodological issues involved in this stance. Approaches including conversational interviews, oral and written journals, drawings, reflections and digital photographs have been successfully introduced in order to empower four and five year old children to express what they see as important as they start school. Issues of equity and inclusiveness demand a variety of approaches such as these. However, as with all research approaches, both challenges and advantages are associated with each aspect. The presentation concludes with a more general consideration of the challenges and rewards for both adult and child researchers of engaging young children in researching important aspects of their lives.

Sue Dockett is Associate Professor (Early Childhood Education) at the University of Western Sydney. Sue has taught in both prior-to-school settings as well as the early years of school. Since 1988, Sue has been involved in teacher education programs at the University of Western Sydney. Over a number of years, Sue's research focus has been children's play, children's thinking and the transition to school. Since 1997, Sue has been co-director of the Starting School Research project, based at the University of Western Sydney.

Australians can be divided into three groups according to their relationship to money and material goods. The first two groups define their life goals by external rewards, especially money. Despite their wealth, most Australians believe that they do not have enough money to afford everything they need. This artificial sense of deprivation has a powerful influence over their daily behaviour and their political attitudes. It is expressed in two markedly different approaches to life. Some believe they must accumulate as much as they can, even at the cost of their personal relationships, in the belief that they will at some stage be in a position to live out the perfect life. This predisposition has been dubbed the deferred happiness syndrome. Another group is also driven by money, but they are more inclined to pursue instant gratification. They are the standard bearers of consumerism and their materialism explains the extraordinary growth in consumer credit. A third group consists of those who have decided to reject money as the measure of success in life and focus instead on their relationships and personal fulfilment. These are the downshifters. Although politically ignored and still socially isolated they represent a radical challenge to consumer capitalism and presage far-reaching change to Australian society.

Clive Hamilton is Executive Director of The Australia Institute, a Canberra-based progressive think tank. Trained in economics, he has held permanent or visiting academic positions at ANU, University of Sydney, and the University of Cambridge. His 2003 book Growth Fetish was a best-seller. Further papers and speeches by Clive Hamilton are available on the The Australian Institute website.

This Social Action Research is a partnership between three Stronger Families funded projects: Albion Park Neighbourhood Association working with two low density public housing estates in a semi rural context, Barnardos South Coast working on a high density Radburn style public housing estate, and Shellharbour City Council (Flinders) working with a newly developed private housing estate.

The research has been conducted over the past 24 months to define best practice models, differences and similarities of practice and community need between three vastly differing communities, the impact of housing type on need / capacity and to determine the impact of socioeconomic circumstances on practice strategies and needs. A model of Child and Family Community Development mapping the key differences and similarities between community development strategies and practice between highly vulnerable communities and communities with high capacity/ social capital has been developed. The key learnings to date have been that community development with highly vulnerable communities looks different to mainstream community development in complexity, intensity and practice strategy. The critical difference between communities is the proportion of strengths / pressures within each grouping within these communities, and the power that this has on defining the core practice strategies utilised. The model has great potential in advising policy makers and funding bodies on future community development projects targeting high needs children and families from a community development perspective. The experience of this project has shown that 'One Size Doesn't Fit All'.

Vivienne Cunningham-Smith is Senior Manager of Barnardos South Coast and a social worker with 20 years experience in government and non government services in the areas of health and child welfare. Her expertise and interests lie in community development its practice and research, management and planning. She has also run her own social work planning and management company specialising in working with community development organisations.

Nick Guggisberg, of the Albion Park Neighbourhood Association, NSW has had a broad range of experiences working throughout Australia with people and communities in building their skills and strengths. These experiences range from performing and running music workshops in remote and urban Aboriginal communities in every State and Territory in Australia, through to working in a Crisis Youth Refuge in Alice Springs, and conducting social research in the Illawarra. Nick is also the Chairperson of the Central Illawarra Youth Services and a member of the management committees for the Illawarra Family Support Service and Kiama Community College.

In this seminar, Dr Morehead develops a new framework to better understand how mothers allocate time for, and maintain the relationship between, their household and their workplace. Data was collected from one workplace (a hospital) and multiple households, including interviews with mothers and fathers, managers, union delegates and a range of other employees.

The framework includes a typology of work arrangements for households where the mother is employed and dependent children are present. The three categories in the typology are: gender skewed work arrangement (where the distribution of paid and/or unpaid work is uneven between parents); gender balanced work arrangement (a more or less even distribution of paid and unpaid work); and sole parent work arrangement (where the employed mother is the sole parent in the household).

Three dynamics underpin the typology: supports, pressures and additional labour. Supports and pressures act simultaneously to help maintain or shift a particular work arrangement within a household. The 'additional labour' that mothers do simply to keep their work arrangement intact is revealed by applying the framework to the data. Other new concepts are also developed as part of the framework, including 'synchronised time', 'lived time' and the 'power of absence'.

The research extends the literature on work and family and on women in paid work. Dr Morehead argues that the gendered dynamics within households are a key contributor to the different labour market experiences of mothers and fathers, and that the household beats the workplace hands down as a site where gender matters and where gender determines what you do.

Dr Alison Morehead is Deputy Director - Research, at the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Before coming to the Institute she was Director of Evaluations and Surveys in the federal Department of Education, Science and Training and prior to that, Director of the Work and Family Unit in the federal Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. In 2001 she spent five months working with the International Labour Office in Geneva on their work and family program. The research presented in this paper was conducted at Sydney University as part of Dr Morehead's PhD studies.

Between 1993 and 1996, the seminar presenter spoke with hundreds of people who were then living and working in the public housing estates of three suburbs commonly regarded as among the most disadvantaged in Australia: Brisbane's Inala, Melbourne's Broadmeadows and Sydney's Mount Druitt. A frequent theme, best expressed by a western Sydney priest who spoke of witnessing 'places of prophecy', was that impoverished families were already living in a future other Australians had begun to fear but not yet know: a future of casualised, insecure employment for men, fading opportunities for the young, and a more and more difficult struggle to find and fund private solutions for common problems. They also spoke of the great challenges to family life that stemmed from men's redundancy and sense of loss, women's overwork, and children's growing sense of hopelessness. At the same time, people spoke of activism and hope, and were exploring solutions to those dilemmas. Mark Peel argues that the assumptions of dependency and inadequacy that inform plans for 'community building' or the rejuvenation of 'social capital' ignore the fact that those who have long known the problems are not only best placed to begin the conversation about solutions and about justice but have already begun the work. Taking the care of children as an example, the ways in which the emphasis on shared parenting and common responsibilities that characterised these communities were explored and the findings offer an interesting perspective on wider dilemmas of parenting and work-family balances.

Dr Mark Peel teaches in the School of Historical Studies at Monash University. His first book, Good Times, Hard Times, told the story of Elizabeth, the working-class outer suburb of Adelaide in which he was born and went to school. His second, A Little History of Australia, told the nation's story in 9,987 words. His latest book, The Lowest Rung: Voices of Australian Poverty, was published by Cambridge University Press in late 2003.

In her quest to understand parental socialization of emotion, Halberstadt has begun a multi-study investigation of parental beliefs about emotion and how parental beliefs and behaviors predict children's affective social competence. This talk will describe several theoretical dimensions of parental beliefs about emotion and how theory meets with the realities of parents' reported beliefs in three subcultures in the United States. The major data set discussed in the talk will be a qualitative study involving 74 parents who self-identified as African-American, European-American, and Lumbee Native-American. Parents participated in two small focus group sessions and discussed their beliefs at length. Both similarities and differences across the ethnicities emerged, as well as enhancements to the theoretical structure.

Prof. Halberstadt's research interests include emotion experience and expression; family relationships through the lifespan; affective social competence and gender issues through the lifespan. She is co-author (with Ellyson, S.L.) of two books on Explorations in Social Psychology and Social psychology readings: A century of research and is author of many journal articles. Further details and publications.

The average hours worked by full-time employees in Australia have increased since the late 1970s. This, combined with increases in female labour force participation, has led to concerns about the impact of long work hours on family life. This paper explores the relationship between fathers' work hours, their own wellbeing and that of their families using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. The analysis is restricted to full-time employed fathers with a partner and dependent children. Overall, satisfaction with work hours decreases as the number of hours worked increases. However, long work hours are not necessarily, or even on average associated with pervasively lower wellbeing. Work hours are negatively related to only two of the thirteen measures of wellbeing examined. For fathers working very long hours, their satisfaction with their work hours is found to be very important to the relationship between work hours and wellbeing.

Lixia Qu is a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Her current research work includes demographic trends analysis; the living arrangements of older people and personal wellbeing; couple formation issues including links between premarital cohabitation and marital stability; changes in and determinants of labour force participation of lone and couple mothers; and factors contributing to fertility decision making. Ms Ruth Weston is a Principal Research Fellow at AIFS; Dr Matthew Gray was Principal Research Fellow at AIFS until May 2004 while Mr David Stanton was the Director of AIFS from May 1999 to January 2003.

It should not be assumed that parental drug misuse necessarily leads to negative outcomes for children. However, the presence of biological and family environmental risk factors increases the likelihood that children exposed to parental drug misuse will develop their own psychosocial or substance abuse problems. Such children commonly experience neglect, family violence or abuse, and lead disrupted and unpredictable lives. It is estimated that over 60,000 Australian children have a parent in drug treatment. Despite treatment being a time when parents are often highly motivated to make broad changes that will impact on their whole family, drug and alcohol agencies are seldom resourced or trained to address parenting or children's needs. Consequently, an opportunity for preventative or early intervention work is missed. Unless these children come to the attention of child protection services, many will remain nobody's clients.

The 'Nobody's Clients' Project was a targeted prevention and early intervention program for 4-13 year old children whose parents accessed treatment for their substance misuse. Supported by a $200,000 grant from the R E Ross Trust, the two year project aimed to identify and then address the needs of these children. Over 220 individuals were involved in the project, either as clients, or as part of the consultation process. Using an action research model, project staff members worked intensively with more than 48 children and over 70 members of their extended families for between 3 and 12 months. Results from the project highlight the experiences of these children, as well as the views of their parents, other carers, and workers. Recommendations include more child inclusive services, family support, and parenting training within the drug and alcohol sector, and improved collaboration with the child and family welfare and education sectors.

Dr. Stefan Gruenert was the Project Manager for the Nobody's Clients Project which recently won a National Drug and Alcohol Award for excellence in serving a special target population. Stefan has worked as a clinical supervisor, senior counsellor, and youth worker in a range of settings including generalist and student counselling services, and at Odyssey's residential Therapeutic Community. He has conducted research on men's issues, intimacy, and family work, especially the needs of children and the role of fathers. Stefan has also lectured and run tutorial sessions for Psychology courses in counselling, statistics, drug and alcohol work, family work, personality disorders and communication and has presented his work at several National and International conferences. Menka Tsantefski and Samantha Ratnam were co-authors and project officers for the Nobody's Clients Project.

The report from the project titled 'The Nobody's Clients Project Identifying and Addressing the Needs of Children with Substance Dependent Parents' is on the Odyssey website: http://www.odyssey.org.au/institute/projects/full_report.pdf (PDF 2.1 MG)

The report is co-authored by Bruce Smyth and Elly Robinson

Mental health issues permeate the family law system - at least according to anecdote. Yet such issues are rarely mentioned in family law research, policy and practice. This presentation brings a population health approach to this area. It outlines the prevalence of mental disorders in the general population, their contribution to disability and their impact on quality of life. The interaction of mental health problems with family separation is then discussed. Short-term (acute) effects of separation and long-term (chronic) consequences are described, including the increased rates of suicide in divorced men and women. We argue that the family law system can make a contribution to improving the mental health of adults during and after marital separation and, through this, can help improve the long-term outcomes of children affected by parental separation. The system has an important role to play in mental health promotion and prevention.

Practical suggestions are made for how organisations and professionals in the family law system can help clients with mental health problems, including minimizing their stressful experiences in the system, providing information, encouraging clients to deal with mental health problems, assisting with problem solving, referral to specialist services, and dealing with clients who are suicidal. The family law system as a whole can support such initiatives through helping to build better information resources, developing best practice guidelines and staff training, and lobbying for the necessary resources for these initiatives.

Bryan Rodgers is a Senior Fellow at the Family and Community Health Research Unit, Centre for Mental Health Research, The Australian National University, and a NHMRC Research Fellow. Bryan's research interests include the personal and social antecedents of mental health problems. Much of this research adopts a life-span developmental approach using data from prospective longitudinal studies. Several projects on childhood adversity focus on parental divorce/separation. Recently, he has examined the interface between the Family Law System and mental health problems. With Jan Pryor, he is author of the book Children in Changing Families: Life after Parental Separation (Blackwell, 2001).

Additional information about the project, Mental Health and Changing Families, run by Ms Elly Robinson and Dr Bryan Rodgers, previously available at: http://www.anu.edu.au/cmhr/changingfamilies.php. The article by Bryan Rodgers, Bruce M Smyth and Elly Robinson 'Mental health and the family law system' has been published in the Journal of Family Studies, v.10 no.1 Apr 2004: 50-70. Information about the journal is available at: http://jfs.e-contentmanagement.com/archives/

The Columbus Pilot project (Columbus) conducted in the Family Court of Western Australia (FCWA) during 2001-2003, was established to deal with cases that are characterized by violence. Within the context of Columbus, the Family Court of Western Australia, and in particular the counselling service of the Family Court (FCCS) are in a unique position to identify the needs of parents in terms of the most appropriate interventions to address issues ranging from anger management, dealing with a violent partner, or 'customising' parenting skills for a parent who has been living with an abusive partner. The role of the social scientists in assessing risks and needs, developing appropriate interventions and assisting clients, be they the perpetrator or the victim (adult or child) to develop new skills, is central to the concept of the individualised case management approach inherent in Columbus.

The Columbus Pilot project has not only acted as a catalyst for a number of changes in the Court including an emerging culture of reflective practice as both the judicial officers and the counselling service staff develop new skills and knowledge, and refine their joint practice in this very difficult area of family litigation and dispute resolution. This seminar discusses how the Columbus process of jointly chaired interdisciplinary conferences in the FCWA has influenced the evolution of such a model of reflective practice.

Dr Lisbeth Pike is Associate Professor of Community Psychology at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. Dr Paul Murphy is a postdoctoral scholar in the Centre for Psychological Research at ECU. The authors have been assisting the Family Court of Western Australia with the evaluation of the Columbus Pilot project for the past two years. They are presenting their findings at the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts Conference in Texas next month.

This paper attempts to account for the existence of parallel systems of values in families where grandparents condemn divorce, yet act to support their adult children when they face relationship breakdown. Rather than dismissing this as hypocrisy, the paper seeks to understand the context in which values are formed and how they can gradually become more complex and contradictory as social and personal contexts change. It also seeks to understand how the idea of divorce can change over time from shameful secret to a modern rite of passage. The paper explores change across two generations of family relationships in order to add to the debate on whether commitments within families are in decline.

Carol Smart is currently researching the influence of divorce on wider kin relationships, transnational kinship, gay and lesbian 'marriage', and contact and residence disputes concerning children. Some of her most recent publications include: The Changing Experience of Childhood: Families and Divorce, (2001) with B. Neale and A. Wade, Cambridge: Polity Press; Family Fragments? (1999) with B. Neale, Cambridge: Polity Press; and The 'New' Family? (1999) edited with E. Silva, London: Sage.

In 1979 and 1980, I undertook fieldwork with Kuninjku people in central Arnhem Land who live at small remote communities called outstations on Aboriginal-owned land. In this region people continued to live off the land, maintaining many elements of their customary economy. This initial research was published in a book Hunter-Gatherers Today: An Aboriginal Economy in North Australia (1987) that highlights the family-based residence and relations of production of these people. In 2002 and 2003, in collaboration with a team of natural scientists and another anthropologist, I replicated elements of this earlier research and found that the customary economy remained dominant and sustainable.

This seminar examines continuity and change over the 25 year period that I have worked in Arnhem Land. While much of my comparative research aims to focus on economic issues, and especially the nature of the hybrid economy (with customary, market and state sectors), in this seminar I focus on social and cultural issues, especially family and gender relations, and seek to explain the sustainability of this very unusual economy in modern Australia, the social relations that underpin it, and its future prospects.

Jon Altman is Professor and Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at the Australian National University. He has an academic background in economics and anthropology and has undertaken research on a range of Indigenous economic development and social policy issues in Australia. More information about Professor Altman and a detailed listing of his research output is available at: http://www.anu.edu.au/caepr/StaffProfiles/altman.php.