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In August this year the Attorney General and I were pleased to announce the names of the successful organisations that will provide twenty-four new children’s contact services at locations around Australia. Funded for $15.6 million over four years, the contact services aim to provide a neutral location for changeovers between resident and non-resident parents and for supervised contact visits. These new contact services, together with those already existing, constitute just part of the government’s activities in this area and are much needed.

This need is highlighted by children's words quoted in the evaluation report for the existing services. One nine-year-old child said "It’s so much better than the police station — that was a bit scary". An eleven-year-old said "This place is so Mums and Dads don’t fight and if they do then people here can stop it". From a seven-year-old: "I come here because they had a fight and they are still mad with each other. My Dad thinks it’s stupid coming here, but I wouldn’t be able to see him at all if we didn’t come here because my Mum wouldn’t take me anywhere else". Or from another child: "When we used to have visits at Grandma’s, Mum would run out and hit Dad’s car, sometimes with us in it." These heartbreaking words make you want to go home and give your own children a big hug. Contact services provide a safe environment where the relationships between parents and children can be rebuilt and where separated parents can start the process of dealing reasonably with each other for the good of their children.

Giving people the skills and support they need to prevent these situations or at least deal with them better is a major theme of the government’s work. We are focusing actively on early intervention and prevention of problems, working with the community to provide better services and support for parents, holistic responses to problems and using existing activities to build better approaches. Such strategies are necessary to ensure we are paying our children the attention they deserve.

Research on the brain development of infants suggests that in the first three years of a child’s life, the brain is uniquely responsive to the environment. Failure to meet developmental needs at this critical time results in changes to brain physiology and leads to more extreme reactions to stress.

Of course children need good nutrition and physical care, but they also need warm, responsive and structured parenting. In providing this, parents benefit from good connections with their extended family and community networks of support. Together, these factors provide protection against a myriad of problems later in life, and most importantly, against abuse and neglect. A major policy question for the Government is ‘How can we provide support for parents to make those years count?’

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family that provided plenty of affection and caring. My wife and I work hard to provide the same good start for our own children. Unfortunately not all children are so lucky.

For this reason, the Commonwealth Government is supporting home visiting programs such as Good Beginnings. This volunteer scheme connects experienced parents in each community with new parents, offering friendship, a role model and emotional and practical support. Their mission is to help new parents build the self confidence they need to give their children a physically and emotionally healthy start in life. The ultimate objective is to ensure that children experience a happy, healthy and loving childhood - from the very beginning. Importantly, Good Beginnings means that the communities themselves provide the solutions, with some funding assistance from the government.

Culturally specific parenting support is also provided through various initiatives. For example, the Department funds a number of Indigenous parenting and family programs. This includes the Aboriginal Child-rearing Strategy which is a series of complementary and innovative children's and family projects developed for Aboriginal communities in the desert region of Central Australia. It will incorporate the unique culture, parenting and learning styles of Aboriginal people. In the first stage of this project, Aboriginal women from more than thirty remote communities will attend a conference in April/May to discuss issues which impact on the care of their children.

Other Commonwealth programs are providing support in the early years. Playgroups have been shown to deliver better outcomes for children and greater community involvement for parents, and the Family Skills Training program teaches parenting skills to particularly disadvantaged parents. Again, the focus is on prevention and early intervention.

Good care extends beyond the early years, and the Government is making progress in this area too. The Reconnect program has proved to be very successful in preventing homelessness among adolescents, by working closely with families who are experiencing high levels of parent-child conflict.

Then there is the Youth Activities Services scheme, for 11-16 year-olds living in disadvantaged areas. These services provide innovative activities during out of school hours, providing an early intervention program for young people at risk of developing patterns of destructive behaviour which may have long term effects on their schooling and labour force participation.

The Government has made a commitment to help Australian families build resilience and strength. The Stronger Families and Communities Strategy reflects this commitment, with the allocation of $240m for early childhood research, more parenting and family relationship support initiatives, and a number of community building initiatives.

Designed to strengthen families and communities, especially families at risk and disadvantaged communities, the Strategy reinforces the Government’s prevention and early intervention policy directions and its belief that it is communities that are often best at finding local solutions to local problems.

For communities, the money from the Strategy will go on things like training for potential community leaders, developing and promoting volunteering and building community capacity so they are able to do more to help themselves.

For families, the focus is on three important issues - the needs of families with young children; strengthening marriages and relationships; and balancing work and family.

The Strategy complements measures such as the new tax system and business tax reform, and the current welfare reform process, which are designed to reduce unemployment and welfare dependency, both key risk factors in poor outcomes for children.

Recognising that new pressures are having an impact on parents’ ability to manage their work and family responsibilities, the Strategy is introducing a range of more flexible child care initiatives which will improve families’ ability to access and choose child care that meets their needs. The new measures are designed to provide greater flexibility, equity and choice. They will particularly benefit shift workers, families working outside standard business hours, those who have a sick child and those who live in rural and regional areas.

Strong families benefit from strong couple relationships. With high levels of relationship breakdown adding to the pressures on our children, and costing the country billions of dollars a year, it is important to do everything we can to better prepare couples for married life. As a result, the Strategy includes an expanded relationship education initiative designed to make relationships education, including pre-marriage education, more available and more effective.

A full range of counselling and related services continues to be supported so that families and couples have every chance to get help with relationship problems before they escalate.

Fathers play a important role in parenting, but some may not feel confident that they are the best parent they can be. The Men and Family Relationships initiative is reaching out for the first time to men and fathers to provide assistance to those in relationships, and if necessary, following relationship breakdown. We want to make sure that men remain well connected to their children because fathers have much to offer.

I recently launched a Commonwealth-funded, first-time fathers’ project run by Burnside at Coffs Harbour. This targets expectant fathers with information on child birth and early development.

Any new father will tell you, and it’s been my own experience, that it can be pretty daunting for both parents when their first child is born. And while the focus is usually on the mother and baby, I think that fathers welcome that extra bit of help to face the challenges at this exciting time.

What’s special about the Burnside project is the support they have received from AMP for ‘I’m a Dad’ kits, which each new father gets straight after his child is born. Because of the extra costs of raising children and with AMP’s involvement, the Burnside service also offers first-time fathers financial planning advice.

Recently the Government also announced a package of measures directed at achieving better relationships between separated parents and encouraging parents to maintain contact with their children after separation. The package will align the benchmarks used to set child support liabilities, as well as providing a fairer basis for determining Government assistance to children of subsequent families and enhancing a parent’s ability to improve the financial position of his or her new family.

I am profoundly concerned about children who are experiencing abuse or neglect.

Child abuse and neglect are usually entrenched in broader social problems and are not able to have a ‘quick fix’ applied. Remedies require the development of long term strategies. Most service delivery related to child abuse and neglect rests with States and Territory Governments. However, the Commonwealth plays a leadership role in this area through initiatives such as the National Council for the Prevention of Child Abuse, and information sharing through the National Child Protection Clearinghouse at the Australian Institute of Family Studies and by supporting a wide range of early intervention and parenting programs such as Good Beginnings.

Another initiative, "Tomorrow’s Children", is Australia’s national plan of action against the commercial sexual exploitation of children. Family breakdown, prior experiences of sexual abuse, poverty, drug use, youth unemployment and social isolation are all factors that place children and young people at risk. The plan identifies what Australia is doing and will need to do in future to tackle these issues further.

These initiatives provide for improvements in our knowledge and contribute towards improved service responses to child abuse and neglect.

I am committed to help support and strengthen families through services to enhance family relationships and lower the incidence of family breakdown, including parent education to prevent child abuse.

The Government’s policy focus is on prevention and early intervention strategies. I see this as most important to help break the generational cycle of breakdown and abuse. Government does not have all the answers and we recognised that communities are often best placed to solve their own problems.

Ultimately, it is about ensuring that our children have the best possible start. There couldn’t be a better motivator than that.

In the last Child Abuse Prevention Newsletter, readers were asked to provide feedback on the usefulness of Clearinghouse services and to make suggestions for improvements or new services. The Clearinghouse wishes to thank sincerely all those who responded and/or who sent in letters of support.

Feedback on Clearinghouse publications was overwhelmingly positive, but some readers were unaware of other services - the web site, the e-discussion list, and the information service. This is a clear message for us to inform people on a regular basis of services being provided, and so, future Newsletters will carry a back page summary of Clearinghouse services.

Respondents made many very useful suggestions, all of which will be followed up, and as many as possible taken up. Many readers asked for information about training courses, so we need people running course to let us know about these.

September 3-9, 2000

As part of National Child Protection Week in September, the Federal Minister for Community Services, Mr Larry Anthony, highlighted some of the important work being done by the Federal Government to raise community awareness about child abuse prevention and promote healthy parenting practices.

Mr Anthony launched the last Clearinghouse Issues Paper, Exploring Family Violence: The Links Between Child Maltreatment and Domestic Violence , which showed that in many families where either child abuse or domestic violence was identified, both forms of violence are likely to be present.

"As a society we must strive to learn more about this subject and continue developing effective child-focused responses," Mr Anthony said. "The report adds to a growing knowledge base we are developing though initiatives such as the Government’s Partnerships Against Domestic Violence Strategy (PADV). Under PADV, $5m has been committed towards addressing the needs of children who are affected by domestic violence. Overall, the Government has committed $50m to this initiative, recognising that domestic violence is an issue of national importance."

"The paper, produced by the National Child Protection Clearinghouse, gives us a better insight into the links between family violence and child abuse. It also provides important information that can be used to develop further initiatives targeted at prevention and early intervention."

Mr Anthony also had opened an exhibition of Indigenous paintings by popular painter Tex Skuthorpe. The paintings were created on behalf of the National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse (NAPCAN), which was responsible for organising Child Protection Week.

Tex Skuthorpe has linked family respect and the importance of nurturing children with traditional stories for each poster. Simple messages conveyed by the posters are part of a program to assist and encourage child health and wellbeing among the Australian community.

• The Goanna and the Red Dragonfly: (Sharing the Schooling)
• The Galah and the Boobunge: (Parenting Tips)
• How the Platypus Cam to Be: (Appreciating Differences)
• Learning and Respect: (Domestic Violence)
• Children are Sacred: (Child Abuse)
• More Top Tucker: (Nutrition Poster)

"The posters are a wonderful way of communicating messages about care and respect for children, about healthy lifestyles and the importance of passing of knowledge and skills from older to younger people," Mr Anthony said.

Almost 100 thousand posters taken from the original paintings are being sent to schools and communities across Australia. Further copies may be obtained from NAPCAN Australia, tel: 02 9211 0224, fax: 02 9211 5676, napcanaus@aol.com or from any NAPCAN office.

Mr Anthony also launched a parenting program developed by Canberra’s Marymead Family and Child Centre. The program is specifically designed to meet the needs of parents from a variety of cultural backgrounds.

"Parenting Between Cultures aims to provide support and strengthen the ability of parents from different cultures to adapt their parenting skills to the Australian environment," Mr Anthony said.

"Getting the balance right between maintaining a strong ethnic identity, and incorporating the positive aspects of Australian society into parenting styles is crucial to developing healthy family relationships, and in turn a strong community."

The implication of the development of an infant's capacity to connect and relate is that the creation of social capital is largely dependent on healthy early childhood experiences. We cannot hope to build strong sustainable families and communities without the members of the community having this critical experience-mediated capacity for social affiliation and connection.

 

UnitingCare Burnside

UnitingCare Burnside is an agency of the Uniting Church in New South Wales that works with disadvantaged children, young people and families.

Burnside provides services including out-of-home care, family counselling, family support, alternative dispute resolution in families, support for young people who are homeless or facing crises, and activities aimed at preventing child abuse and neglect.

Paul Drielsma is a Social Worker with a Masters in Health Administration, and is currently the Senior Manager for Regional Centres within the agency. He is responsible for Burnside’s programs on the Central Coast, the Mid North Coast, and Orana Far West. In 1998, Paul attended the ISPCAN Conference in Auckland, New Zealand, where he first heard Professor Bruce Perry talk about his research into brain development of infants, and the implications for abuse and neglect of children.

This article has developed from that experience and continues the early intervention theme introduced in Minister Anthony's article in this Newsletter.

This article is based on a simple idea: if babies don’t develop the capacity to attach to other living organisms in a meaningful and appropriately intimate way, then those babies as adults are largely incapable of forming social networks, providing social support, and being part of a sustainable civil society. This, in turn, has critical implications for community development work in terms of its scope, the expectations that can realistically be put upon a given local community to build itself into a socially cohesive entity, and the overall emphasis and timing of social policy initiatives aimed at the creation of sustainable communities.

Moreover, the development of sustainable communities is critical for supportive structural networks that enhance the health and welfare of families and children in a way that protects against abuse and neglect of children.

This relatively simple idea is predicated on some not-so-simple concepts. They include the meaning and operation of social capital, an understanding of the new knowledge of how the brain develops in the first three years of life, and the interplay of these two areas of knowledge.

I have often noticed a compartmentalisation of the notions of community development and early childhood services. My organisation, UnitingCare Burnside (which is a child and family agency of the Uniting Church) runs a number of Family Centres which have an early childhood focus. Where these are funded by government, we are sometimes challenged for not having a broad enough focus in terms of a wider community client base. I retort that the absolute ‘best buy’ that we can provide a community in terms of building its social capital is through an early childhood focus — and this is largely the implication of this paper.

While an understanding of personal and social wellbeing, based on attachment theory, is widely accepted by child welfare workers, it remains little known or truly appreciated and understood elsewhere. Rather than a sentimental notion around ‘niceness’ and ‘motherhood’, the contention here is that civil society itself — and the links between one generation and the next, the individual and the social — rests on the quality of the early attachment experiences of infants.

While it is known that babies need looking after both physically and emotionally, this emotional dimension is not widely understood as critical nutritionally (that is, biologically) for survival of life itself, and therefore for the functional survival of the community.

Alongside well-used terms like political, financial, and human capital, the concept of social capital has been proposed as an equally important part of the equation in terms of society and its general wellbeing. Research by Putnam (1995) and Fukuyama (1995) indicates that 'the lack of, or decline in, social capital lies behind the psychological, spiritual and economic malaise in communities throughout the world' (Wilson 1997: 745).

Social capital relates to the strength of the relationship between children and parents, and between the nuclear family and the extended community (Coleman 1988). The literature on social capital has a number of definitive common themes ascribed to the concept (Bullen and Onyx 1998: 3-4):

• Participation in networks: the notion of more or less dense interlocking networks of relationships between individuals and groups;
• Reciprocity: a combination of short-term and long-term self-interest that drives care and kindnesses between people and groups;
• Trust: a willingness to take risks in a social context;
• Social norms: providing a form of informal social control that removes the need for more formal, institutionalised legal sanctions;
• The Commons: the combined effect of trust, networks, norms and reciprocity creates a strong community, with shared ownership over resources; and
• Proactivity: the sense of personal and collective efficacy.

For Putnam, reciprocity is a key concept: the willingness of people to help one another with the expectation that they in turn can call for help.

Importantly, Putnam was not just borrowing the concept of capital to be ‘cute’ about how people get on together — his seminal study on Italian society (Putnam 1993) showed that social capital actually enhances economic competitiveness and overall economic prosperity. This occurs through civic engagement fostering sturdy norms of generalised reciprocity and encouraging the emergence of social trust. Social capital 'promotes business networking; shared leads, equipment and services; joint ventures; faster information flows; and more agile transactions' (Wilson 1997: 746). These networks, in turn, facilitate coordination and communication.

Social capital is about the relations between people and is fundamental for the unleashing of the potential benefits of human capital (that is, the skills and knowledge that people possess). However, because social capital is a public good (in that it is not conceived of as a direct personal gain for individuals), it is consequently not directly invested in by the market or individuals, and is a by-product of activities not specifically designed to produce social capital (there is therefore under-investment of direct resources in building social capital) (Coleman 1998).

An important observation found in social capital literature is that: 'Social capital develops from the core building blocks of the personal capacity for trust, tolerance, value of life, and proactivity. Connections are formed, first within the family and neighbourhood, and later within wider communities' (Bullen and Onyx 1999: 6).

These building blocks are fundamental to strong families and communities, and are implicit in functional social networks and supports between people. They are seriously threatened and diminished by factors such as high growth communities, disappearing extended family support, stressful work-centered and commuting lifestyles, isolation, and the challenging transition to parenthood.

Social capital theorists describe a spiral upwards and downwards for the generation and degeneration respectively of social capital. For the upward spiral to operate, Coleman (1998) asserts that an initial threshold needs to be reached for the generation of social capital to be self-sustaining. Beyond this threshold, voluntary and spontaneous social organisation occurs. When stocks of social capital are below the threshold, the substitution of formal organisation is required to provide a ‘kick start’ to this process. But it is important to first understand what underpins the effective formation of these building blocks to know where the ‘kick-start’ point of intervention should be targeted.

The work of Professor Bruce Perry (Perry 1998) and others (McCain & Mustard 1999; Shore 1997) shows important links between brain development in infants and the formation of social capital and sustainable communities.

The brain does not arrive at birth ‘pre-wired’ — hard wiring of the brain occurs at critical periods during the first few years of life. It was thought that the structure of the brain was genetically determined at birth. It is now known that the experiences that fill a baby’s first days, months and years have a decisive impact on the architecture of their brains and the nature and extent of their adult capacities.

One of the first realisations about the post-natal wiring of the brain came out of the observation that children born with cataracts who had them removed later in childhood still could not see normally. This was because the critical period of sensory input for the neuronal hard wiring of the brain related to visual functionality (occurring during the first months of life) had been missed. This observation about learning and development applies to behavioural, mental and physical long-term health outcomes as well. Adults who started learning stringed instruments at age three show three times the levels of cortical brain activity (related to touch functionality) compared to those who never learned, with those starting to learn at age five having twice the cortical activity (Perry, 1998).

At birth, while the brain has a broad potential that is determined by genetics, experience not genetics is responsible for broad deficits in functioning. The genetic potential through experience may be maximised or minimised. The same child, through differing early childhood experience, may grow to become an aggressive, unattached person, or a creative, self-soothing, flexible one.

The brain develops in a sequential manner from the more primitive brain stem functions (regulating heart beat and temperature) to more complex cortex functions such as abstract thought. In this hierarchical sequential development, optimal organisation of higher order complex functions is dependent on how well earlier, less complex brain organisation has proceeded.

Timing is crucial. In well-organised brains, this development occurs according to a genetically-determined biological timetable and the right experiences given at the right time, matching that timetable, either fulfil or do not fulfil the developmental schedule. The landmarks in the first three years of course mirror the biological timetable of brain development. By the age of three, most of the brain systems are in place and it is more difficult from then to change an already organised system. Missing these windows of opportunity (‘critical’ or ‘plastic’ periods) means missing being able to meet the genetic potential of that system.

Biological relativity refers to the concept that any experience will have much more impact on a rapidly changing system than on a stable system. The developing brain is an incredibly fast-moving system in the first three years of life. At birth, it is consuming about 65 per cent of calorie intake compared to about 15 per cent for mature adults. The rate of change of the brain in an infant is about 100,000 times greater than the rate of change for a mature brain.

This has important implications for the nutritional value of touch. Touch is a trigger for the release, by the brain, of hormones necessary for calorie use. The Spitz studies (Spitz & Wolf, 1946) and the Romanian orphans' experience have shown the importance of human contact for the growing organism. Biological relativity explains why babies can die if they are not touched for a couple of weeks — and leaving babies without this input for hours can be a form then of child neglect on a par with months of solitary confinement for an adult.

The brain develops and organises in a use-dependent fashion. There are about twice the number of synapses in the brain at the beginning of life compared with when it is fully developed (and it is about 85 per cent developed by age three). These synapses either survive or fail to survive based on a sculpting process of these undeveloped and undifferentiated neurons whereby sensory activation of synaptic connections reinforce some over others. The repetitive neuronal experience and activity of the growing brain ensures that certain synaptic connections are maintained through the genetically determined developmental timetable. This sculpting or pruning away of little-used synapses occurs together with the reinforcing of repeated experiences producing permanent synaptic patterns. The process means that positive and negative experiences in the first years of life influence how children will be wired as adults.

Where there is no patterned sensory experience (for example, if the baby is not consistently responded to by being picked up and held when distressed), then the brain does not internalise a positive association for that experience. A brain memory template is formed so that future distress is then interpreted as new or threatening and the child doesn’t learn to self-soothe based on the pattern of 'someone usually comes' (Perry, 1998). The brain hates surprises and treats any new experience initially as negative and stressful until patterned responses set up a positive memory template. So when a healthy 'someone will come' expectation is missing, new experiences are not recognised as positive compared to previous conditioned experience. For social communication and affiliation, the consequence for social connection with new people throughout life is huge here where, as babies, people have missed these positive conditioning experiences. Being connected to each other is then a neurobiologically mediated function (Perry, 1998).

In cases of infant abuse or neglect by the primary caregiver, the primary template for interaction is negative and stressful, which is then generalised to all personal relationships.

Such stressful states (which were adaptive for the baby under threat) become maladaptive traits in the adult and the brain develops a sustained position of high arousal or dissociation. Since the establishment of this trait is happening at a time when biological relativity means that the moment is so intense, it follows that survival in the moment becomes the over-riding concern of that individual.

Just as parts of the brain are specifically dedicated to seeing properly, others are dedicated to social affiliation and attachment. Part of the brain is literally activated in response to inter-communication and touch. These experiences can be described for an infant as a ‘somato-sensory bath’ (as important to sustaining life as food and water). The interaction between infant and caregiver (movement, sound, sight, smell, touch) causes patterned neuronal activity that goes to a part of the brain that organises empathy, social affiliation, and responsibility for other people. This development starts in the womb as the foetus experiences the soothing constancy of maternal heartbeat, warmth, and nourishment.

This is all involved in what Perry (1998) calls the 'sphere of concern' of the individual. There is a neurobiology to this part of the brain that is involved in social affiliation and attachment. That the brain is biased to social affiliation and attachment explains our survival as a species. We survived because we were connected, not because we were smart. Attached came first, and smart came later!

‘Sphere of concern’ which makes us feel connected to and responsible for other people is related to attachment, which is related to reward. There is a relationship between the reward part of our brain and the attachment part of our brain. When a newborn baby is picked up by a mother with a healthy neurobiology, reward will be experienced by that mother as an automatic self-reinforcing process. The smell, sound, and touch of the baby all build strong healthy positive attachment crucial for the survival and thriving of the baby. If the mother does not have that healthy neurobiology (and we have all seen this in our work), there is no ‘kick-in’ of this self perpetuating reward and response attachment process between mother and infant. The co-development of the reward and attachment systems is a function of experience. That part of the mother’s brain that is activated by baby’s smile is either there or not, based on the mother’s own early experiences.

Low level of ‘sphere of concern’ can then be a reflection of brain impairment of these systems. It is the same process of adaptive state becoming maladaptive trait that was mentioned earlier. In this case the maladaption affects our communal survival. As the sphere of concern shrinks, we literally are functioning more and more at the primitive levels of the brain — the basic individual survival levels of the primitive brain stem.

The glue of a community is social affiliation and connection which are the building blocks of social capital. Community concern can not be expected when the sphere of concern is tiny. Individuals so affected can not be expected to be ready for cognitive work in terms of appropriate therapeutic intervention, let alone be capable of meaningful engagement in civic interaction and community.

All this has critical implications about things like how long infants should be exposed to television: 30 per cent of their time in front of a TV means 30 per cent less time to experience social affiliation. If 50 per cent of an infant's waking hours is spent vying for the attention of a caregiver who is neither bonded to him/her, nor able to give adequate one-to-one time to ensure this somato-sensory bath at the appropriate times, this can have huge implications for social affiliation and attachment.

Brofenbrenner’s (1979) ecological model of social inter-relationships combines powerfully with the concept of ‘sphere of concern’. Apart from where ‘sphere of concern’ is a diminished trait from early childhood experiences, it can be seen how, for otherwise well developed individuals, the threat to livelihood and wellbeing (for example, through poverty and lack of social infrastructure) can also diminish their ‘sphere of concern’ and thus reduce social capital.

In the light of biological relativity, and the significance of early brain development, there is strong evidence that many more dollars are saved for each spent where interventions are targeted at the early years than later.

So back to our earlier question: where is the appropriate point for the ‘kick start’ of Putnam’s virtuous cycle of social capital formation? I think its clearly in the early years (0—3 years) of child development.

In conclusion, the implication of the development of an infant's capacity to connect and relate is that the creation of social capital is largely dependent on healthy early childhood experiences.

We have to get this link firmly established in the minds of our policy makers to ensure that what we do now has the required positive impact on our social living experience (and indeed our health and wellbeing) thirty years from now.

According to Guntrip (1971: 114): 'If human infants are not surrounded by genuine love from birth, radiating outward into a truly caring family and social environment, then we pay for our failure toward the next generation by having to live in a world torn with fear and hate . . . The importance of security for babies and mothers outweighs every other issue. If that is not achieved, everything else we do merely sustains human masses to struggle on from crisis to crisis.'

Bullen, P. & Onyx, J. (1998), 'Measuring social capital in five communities in New South Wales: overview of a study', Internet transcript (March), (http://www.mapl.com.au/A2.htm).

Bullen, P. & Onyx, J. (1999), Social Capital: Family Support Services and Neighbourhood and Community Centres in NSW, Family Support Services Association, Sydney.

Brofenbrenner, U. (1979), The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Coleman, J. (1998), 'Social capital in the creation of human capital', American Journal of Sociology, vol. 94, Supp pp. 95-120.

Fukuyama, F. (1995), Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, Free Press, New York.

Guntrip, H. (1971), Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy and the Self: A Basic Guide to the Human Personality in Freud, Erickson, Klein, Sullivan, Fairbairn, Hartmann, Jacobson & Winnicott, Basic Books, New York.

McCain, M. & Mustard, F. (1999), 'Reversing the brain drain: Early Years Study, Final Report', Report to the Ontario Government. Available at website: http://www.childsec.gov.on.ca/.

See also ABC Background Briefing, 3 October, Transcript available from: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s57732.htm

Putnam, R. (1993), Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Italy, Princeton University Press, New Jersey.

Perry, B. (1998), Tapes of four presentations as keynote to the Twelfth International ISPCAN Conference, Auckland, September. An example of Perry’s work in print: Perry, B., Pollard, R., Blakley, T., Baker, W. et al. (1995), 'Childhood trauma, the neurobiology of adaptation and "use-dependent" development of the brain: how "states" become "traits"' Infant Mental Health, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 271-291. See also: http://www.bcm.tmc.edu/

Putnam, R. (1995), 'Bowling alone: American declining social capital', Journal of Democracy, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 65-78.

Shore, R. (1997), Rethinking the Brain: New Insights into Early Development, Families and Work Institute, U.S.A.

Spitz, R.A., & Wolf, K.M. (1946). ‘Anaclitic depression: an inquiry into the genesis of psychiatric conditions in early childhood. II’, Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, vol. 2, pp. 313-342.

Wilson, P. (1997), 'Building social capital: a learning agenda for the twenty-first century', Urban Studies, vol. 34, no. 5-6, pp. 745-760.

Paul Drielsma is the Senior Manager, Regional Centres, UnitingCare Burnside in New South Wales. Email: pdrielsma@burnside.org.au

Further reading

Further reading in this area may be found in an edited collection published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies — Social Capital and Public Policy in Australia.

Edited by Ian Winter, this book is the result of a collaboration between the Australian Institute of Family Studies and a group of Australia's social capital researchers and commentators. Its objective is to link ideas about the nature of social capital to the development of public policy in Australia. The collection comprises the following chapters:

• Social capital and public policy in context, by Ian Winter;
• Major themes and debates in the social capital literature: the Australian connection, by Ian Winter;
• Making policy social, by Eva Cox and Peter Caldwell;
• Social capital, active citizenship and political equality in Australia, by David Hogan and David Owen;
• Sources of social capital, by Jenny Onyx and Paul Bullen;
• Developing social capital: a new role for business, by John Murphy and Barrie Thomas;
• Non-profit organisations, social capital and social policy in Australia, by Mark Lyons;
• If only men were angels: social capital and the Third Way, by Mark Latham;
• Building social trust through education, by Philip Hughes, John Bellamy and Alan Black;
• Families, social capital and health, by Fran Baum, Catherine Palmer, Carolyn Modra, Charlie Murray and Robert Bush;
• Trick or treat? Social capital, leadership and the new public policy, by Martin Stewart-Weeks.

Social capital and Public Policy in Australia, edited by Ian Winter, Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2000. 344 pages, $33 plus $3 postage. Contact the Australian Institute of Family Studies on (03) 9214 7888 to order.

• Tell children never to give out personal information such as surname, address, telephone number

• Remind children that people are not always who,they say they are online

• Supervise your child's use of the Internet and become computer literate

• Organisations or schools should never post photos of children with any identifying information on the Internet

• Tell your child never to arrange a face to face meeting with some one they have met on the Internet

• Ask your child to immediately exit any chatroom or shut down from any site that has suggestive, obscene or harassing messages and to report the site to a teacher or parent. Tell them never to respond to such messages

• Use blocking software such as Net nanny and Cyber Patrol that will filter out sites

For further information on Internet safety issues see www.netalert.net.au

Reproduced with permission from ECPAT Australia Newsletter no.59, October 2000, p.5.

Readership and contents

The Newsletter is designed to provide information to service providers, policy officers, researchers, and students in the area of child abuse prevention.

The contents of each Newsletter comprise a mix of contributions from Clearinghouse staff at the Australian Institute of Family Studies and writers in the child abuse prevention area generally. Contributions are concerned with practice, training, research, policy, and legislation, and news or reviews of recent relevant publications are also published. Regular Newsletter features include a literature highlights section on recently published material received by Clearinghouse, and a comprehensive listing of forthcoming conferences and workshops.

Length: items may range from very short contributions such as notices or news items, to essays and research articles ranging from 2500—4000 words.

Graphic material: graphs and tables should be used sparingly and should be uncomplicated and accessible; photographs are welcomed.

Title and headings: a short abstract of the main emphasis of the article should follow the title, and succinct headings throughout are required for the purpose of guiding the reader.

Referencing: the Harvard (author—date) style of referencing is used.

Biographical note: items should be accompanied by the author’s name and affiliation.

Presentation: the electronic provision of material, while not essential, is much appreciated.

The National Child Protection Clearinghouse holds copyright to all articles published in the Child Abuse Prevention Newsletter.

Acceptance of all material is subject to a review process. Consideration will be given to whether articles are relevant, clearly written, jargon-free and accessible. Consideration will also be given to the following criteria: timeliness of article; significance of the topic; factual accuracy; clear presentation and logical organisation of material; conclusions substantiated by convincing analytical argument; argument supported by references; quality and balance of the argument or information presented; and balance and relevance of any policy implications drawn.

Please contact: Judy Adams, Project Manager, National Child Protection Clearinghouse, Australian Institute of Family Studies, 300 Queen Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia. Phone (03) 9214 7812. Fax (03) 9214 7839. Email: judy@aifs.gov.au

A recent investigation in the USA, supported by the Crewwick Foundation, looked at parent support programs and the evaluation research associated with those programs (Bowes, 2000). The questions that initially prompted this investigation were:

Has there been evidence found for parents’ changed attitudes, beliefs, knowledge of child development or changed parenting behaviour as a result of parent education and support programs?

What has been measured or recorded about parents’ preferences for particular styles of service delivery or for particular types of information about child development and parenting?

There are a number of different parent education and support programs in Australia. The reason that these were not the focus of study for this project is that there are more such programs in the USA and they have been operating over a considerable period of time, many since the 1970s (Family Resource Coalition, 1995,1996). The greater experience with such programs and the more ready availability of research funding in the USA has meant that many of the programs have been evaluated in a scientific way, sometimes following participants over a period of years to assess long-term impact of programs.

In general, limited information has been collected about parental response during and following participation in parenting programs. We need to know more about the mediating effects of parental response to programs to help explain benefits that flow to children. We also need to know more about the community links of families and how these are affected, positively or negatively, by participation in such programs. An argument is made for parental involvement and input from the beginning of programs so that they are more closely matched to needs.

Parents play a key role in children’s development. The way that they care for their children, teach them skills and values, and guide them in their encounters with the world outside the home lays the foundation for children’s later emotional, social and intellectual development.

Most parents undertake the job of parenting with little preparation except their own experiences as a child. Their parenting is also shaped by their own personality,the characteristics of the child and their family and social networks (Belsky & Vondra, 1990). The parenting that they experienced themselves, however, is likely to be a major influence on the way that parents raise their own children (Barnard & Martell, 1995). Even for parents fortunate enough to have had a nurturing upbringing, this previous learning may be insufficient if they are living isolated from family or a network of friends who can assist with advice and support. For new parents who came from a home where they were neglected or abused or if they have experienced institutional rather than family care, new information and guidelines are needed to establish a different way of parenting their children from that observed and experienced as a child.

New parents, except perhaps those who have worked in a closely allied area such as nursing or early childhood education, need a lot of information and advice about their child’s development and appropriate parenting responses to the rapid changes in development over the child’s first few years of life. Parents can seek this information from a variety of sources such as medical professionals, early childhood nurses, other parents, their extended family, child care teachers, their workplace, the media, and a range of parenting publications and videos available for purchase (Goodnow & Collins, 1991).

Not all parents, however, feel confident to ask professionals or paraprofessionals, nor do all have the literacy skills to seek out published information. Many parents of young children do not have family members close by or even in the same country to ask for advice and emotional support during the physically and emotionally demanding years of caring for a young child. Single mothers are particularly vulnerable to lack of social support (Cochran & Henderson, 1990). Communities often do not have places where new parents can meet one another and in modern cities, links with neighbours and friends in a geographical area are often limited (Cox, 1995).

Isolation, whether it be geographical such as in remote areas of Australia or social where parents have no contact with family or friends as happens in many of our cities and suburbs, has been linked to child abuse (Fegan & Bowes, 1999). Lack of information about appropriate behaviour for children at different ages, and lack of monitoring and emotional support from other adults have been seen as factors in the development and continuation of abuse of young children (Daro,McCurdy & Harding, 1998).

The child development information and parenting advice included in most parent education and support programs are seen as crucial elements in interventions that seek to prevent child abuse and neglect and to help parents give their children a firm emotional, social and intellectual start to their lives. Such prevention programs are seen as preferable to crisis management interventions and to be cost-effective for governments in terms of long-term savings in the health, education and criminal justice systems (Hayes & Bowes, 1999; National Crime Prevention, 1999).

Several suggestions have been made about how information about parenting and child development can be made available to new parents before or after they have had a first child. The timing of any intervention is very important so that information is available when parents are receptive and motivated (National Crime Prevention, 1999). One approach has been to set up programs of parent education and support targeted at parents with children of preschool age, recruiting parents as early as possible. Such programs are either set up as universal programs for all parents with young children or as programs available to parents seen to be "at risk" generally on the basis of low income.

Information was reviewed from a range of written materials about 24 US family support programs (Bowes, 2000). Results from that review form the basis of this article with four key programs chosen to illustrate the range of approaches to parent education and support in the USA and the different kinds of focus and findings of evaluation studies. These are the Infant Health and Development project, New Chance, Parents as Teachers and Healthy Start.

The Infant Health and Development Project is focused on low-birth-weight premature infants and their parents from all socio-economic groups. It provides home visits, support for parents and an intensive centre-based educational curriculum and operates in several sites. Like other demonstration and research programs, it provides a high quality service to parents that is an example of "best practice" and employs professionals and paraprofessionals. A summary of the program and its evaluation results is presented below.

Table 1	Infant Health and Development Project
Location	16 sites
Purpose	To reduce the incidence of developmental delay in low-birth-weight infants
Target population	Low-birth-weight premature infants (0-3 years) and their parents
Services provided	Provides home visits, parental support and an intensive, center-based educational curriculum
Personnel	Professionals and paraprofessionals
Parenting component	Home visits
Child development information component	Home visits
Outcomes for children	Program children in the higher low-birth-weight group showed higher IQ scores than children in comparison groups at ages 3 (end of intervention), 5 and 8. Maths scores were higher for the heavier low-birth-weight children than comparison groups at age 8. Fewer behaviour problems were reported for the heavier low-birth-weight children than comparison groups at ages 3, and, to a lesser extent, 5 and 8. These effects were not seen for the lighter group except for higher maths scores at age 3 only. Program children in poorer families were most likely to show enhanced cognitive and receptive language scores (except for multi-risk families with six or more risk factors).
Outcomes for parents	Focus was on child outcomes

Source: Institute for Research on Poverty (1997), Brooks-Gunn (1995)

New Chance

The New Chance project targeted another "at risk" group, teenage mothers who had dropped out of high school. In this program, the focus was on the young mothers rather than directly on their children, with services aimed at helping them to parent their infants and plan future pregnancies but also to give them the life and vocational skills to help them provide financially for the children. The extensive educational component of the project was conducted in a centre rather than through home visits, and child care was provided. A summary of the program and its evaluation results is presented below.

Parents as Teachers

Parents as Teachers (Table 3) is a widespread program in the USA and worldwide that focuses on parents of children in their first three years of life. It provides child development information and parent support through home visits, group meetings and referral to other services. It is designed as a universal rather than a targeted service but has been used both ways.

Table 3	Parents as Teachers
Location	Missouri (in all school districts). Programs operate in 48 other states and the District of Columbia, USA, Australia, Canada, England, Malaysia, New Zealand, and the West Indies
Purpose	To give children the best possible start in life and to assist parents in their role as the child’s first teacher
Services provided	Home visits that offer information about child development and practical ways parents can encourage their children’s development. Group meetings for peer support and for information about child development issues of particular interest to parents e.g., safety in the home for toddlers. Periodic monitoring and screening for undetected learning problems. Referral to other community resources.
Personnel	Specially trained parent educators
Parenting component	Central to the program and linked to child development information
Child development information component	Central to home visits and group meetings
Outcomes for children	At three years, PAT children in the pilot program were significantly more advanced than a comparison group in language development, intellectual abilities and social skills (Pfannesnsteil & Selzer, 1985). At the end of first grade, PAT children scored higher than a comparison group on reading and mathematics achievement tests. Teachers rated them as having fewer behaviour problems (Pfannensteil, 1989) PAT children were found at age three to perform significantly above national norms on language and intellectual abilities, despite being over-represented on traditional risk characteristics. More than half of children with observed developmental delays overcame them by age 3 (Pfannensteil, Lambson & Yarnell, 1991). PAT children were found to maintain their relative level of achievement demonstrated at age three through first and second grade at school, despite the diversity of their preschool, childcare, kindergarten and school experiences (Pfannensteil, 1995).
Outcomes for parents	PAT parents in the First Wave Missouri study of 3-year-olds in the pilot program were more knowledgeable about child rearing practices and child development than a comparison group (Pfannesnsteil & Selzer, 1985) PAT parents of children in grade one in the follow-up to the First Wave Missouri study were more likely to initiate contacts with teachers and to take an active role in their child’s schooling, as reported by teachers (Pfannensteil, 1989) PAT parents in the Second Wave Missouri study showed an increased knowledge of child development and parenting practices when their child was three. There were only two documented cases of child abuse among the 400 families over a three-year period (Pfannensteil, Lambson & Yarnell, 1991) PAT parents in the follow-up to the Second Wave Missouri study demonstrated high levels of school involvement which they frequently initiated (Pfannensteil,1996) PAT families compared to comparison groups in Binghamton, New York had substantially reduced welfare dependence and half the number of suspected cases ofchild abuse and neglect In a study of parents in at-risk situations involving mainly Hispanic parents in Salinas, California, PAT parents scored higher than a randomly assigned control group on measures of parenting behaviour

Source: Stief (1993), Kelly (1996), Pfannensteil, Lambson & Yarnell (1991, 1996), Parents as Teachers (1999).

Healthy Start

Healthy Start (Table 4) is an example of a program with a specific purpose, namely to prevent child abuse. It operates through home visits, parent support groups, community education and case management.

Table 4	Healthy Start
Location	Hawaii (state-wide)
Purpose	To enhance child development, to promote positive parenting, to enhance parent-child interaction, to ensure that all families have a primary care physician, to ensure appropriate use of community resources, and to prevent child abuse and neglect.
Target population	Pregnant women and mothers of children up to three months old. Program continues until children are five.
Services provided	Postpartum screening of newborns in the hospital, home visiting for high risk families (includes assessment of parent-child interaction, parent skill building, child development screening, and a free toy library), case management services and interagency coordination, parent support groups (to increase parents’ self-esteemand reduce isolation) and community education (to enhance awareness of child abuse dynamics and intervention strategies). Some sites offer respite care, male home visitors to work with fathers, and parent-child play sessions.
Personnel	Paraprofessionals do voluntary home visiting. Administered by the Maternal and Child Health Branch of the state’s Department of Health.
Parenting component	Parent-child bonding and interaction and building of parenting skills are the focus of home visits. Parent support groups and community education are concerned with parenting.
Child development information component	No part of the program teaches parents specifically about child development.
Outcomes for children	Very few cases of abuse and neglect. No cognitive gains.
Outcomes for parents	Low incidence of abuse and neglect. Improvements in parenting behaviours and home environment. High risk families lost these gains after program completion. Parents identified the main benefits of the program for them in terms of personal support from the home visitor, assistance in obtaining goods and services, and information about child rearing. The main ways in which parents said that their parenting had changed was in reducing reliance on physical discipline, increasing their understanding and enjoyment of the child, and preventing them from using harsh or abusive punishments. Measures showed greater variability: three quarters of the sample demonstrated knowledge of positive, non-physical methods of discipline, and half of the sample refrained from all physical punishment. Most parents who reported using physical punishment used mild (hitting hand) or moderate (e.g., spanking) physical punishment.

Source: Stief (1993), Kelly (1996), Daro, McCurdy & Harding (1998)

Outcomes for children

Outcomes for children are the focus of ultimate concern for all of the programs. The evaluation results have been extracted from reports about parent education programs, from evaluation reports and from journal articles reporting aspects of results for programs. The amount of detail varies according to the source of the information. As a result, this section cannot be seen as a comprehensive review of outcomes for all projects but rather as indicative of the kind of outcomes that have been investigated and the direction of outcomes based on this selected sample of programs.

Outcomes for children have been reported in terms of children’s development in various areas, their experiences at home, their experiences with other services, their success at school and, for a few long-term studies, their lives beyond school (Bowes, 2000). As noted previously, the programs differed in their focus with some very child-centred and others more concerned with providing services to parents to assist them and their children. These differences are reflected in the evaluations of the programs with some programs taking many measures of child outcomes and fewer of parent outcomes and vice versa.

Quality of the evaluations also differs with the larger federal programs able to fund outside agencies to conduct carefully designed evaluations and smaller programs often only able to monitor progress of children and parents themselves, sometimes without the benefit of a control or comparison group. Most programs, however, have a comparison group and unless otherwise indicated, it is the comparison between the program children and the comparison children who did not participate in the program that is reported.

Despite all of the differences in programs and their evaluations, there are some general conclusions that can be made about outcomes for children on the basis of this sample of programs. For children, a major benefit at home, found in several studies, is a lowered incidence of abuse, neglect and use of physical punishment. Children whose families have participated in a program are likely to have fewer accidents requiring hospitalisation and to have better health care including more health screenings and a greater likelihood of immunisation and other preventative health care. They are likely to benefit from more stimulation at home and more interest and involvement from their parents in education and schooling.

While cognitive gains may not persist beyond the early years of school, longitudinal studies show long-term social outcomes for children including higher rates of employment and less criminal behaviour in adulthood. Fewer behaviour problems are seen in program children at school and they are less likely to repeat grades or to be placed in special education classes.

The cost savings to society in major services such as welfare, education and the criminal justice system are clear from this review. These prevention programs in the early years of a child’s life, do appear to have immediate and long-term benefits for children, particularly the disadvantaged children who are generally the target of these programs.

Most programs work through parents to bring about these beneficial outcomes for the children. The interest of this report was to discover what was known about parent response to programs so as to speculate on how programs worked through parents to benefit children. The first point to make is that few programs worked solely through parents. Many brought health and nutrition programs directly to children or included a high quality early childhood education component. Many of the benefits for children may have come directly from these child-focused services.

Outcomes for parents

The focus of the Bowes (2000) report was on parent response to parent education and support programs. Sixteen of the 24 programs reviewed reported outcomes for parents ranging from parents’ changed relationship with their child and their parenting knowledge, attitudes and behaviour to health, educational and vocational outcomes for the parents. Beyond the home, parents’ involvement in their child’s schooling and their knowledge of and use of community resources have been additional points of interest for several of the studies. Only two programs commented on changes in the parents’ peer support networks following participation in the program and none enquired about any engagement in community volunteer work once the program had ended even though some programs encouraged parents to become volunteer home visitors.

Parents themselves reported positive changes in their parenting attitudes and skills, and in their attitudes and behaviour relating to educational qualifications (there was an increase in the percentage with a GED), and there were changes in the amount of reading materials in the homes of participants. Nevertheless, the evaluation of Even Start which was conducted in a more rigorous way than many of the evaluations found few differences between program and comparison parents on a number of measures (Bowes, 2000).

Parenting outcomes

Three studies reported on parents’ changed relationship with their child with one reporting no differences from non-participants in positive parent-child interactions and the others reporting more positive relations and more enjoyment of the child. One aspect of parenting that might be expected to change as a result of the parenting education that was part of most of these programs is parents’ knowledge about child development and about parenting. Parents as Teachers and Healthy Start were two programs that reported positive change in parents’ knowledge, with the Healthy Start program reporting more specific knowledge gains about positive, non-physical methods of discipline.

Eight programs reported attitudinal changes to parenting and all were positive. Parents wanted to be better parents and reported an increased confidence in their parenting and coping abilities. Attitudes to discipline had changed to a less strict and less punitive approach, and parents were more aware of the important part they played in their child’s education.

The aim of these programs, however, is to change the parenting behaviour of parents in ways that benefit their children. Twelve programs reported on aspects of parenting behaviour. Of the results concerned with abuse and neglect of children and the associated use of physical punishment, all found positive changes. Programs such as Parents as Teachers and Healthy Start, Hawaii reported reduced rates of abuse and neglect. Parents’ increased knowledge of disciple strategies was reflected in parents’ refraining from or using reduced forms of physical punishment and their use of more appropriate discipline strategies (Healthy Start).

Other parenting behaviour following program participation included giving children more time and attention, more parent-child negotiation over limits and family rules, more involvement in their children’s learning through reading to their children and involvement in school readiness, and an increase in father participation. Mothers were also more likely to breast feed their infants and have them immunised.

Home and family

Many of the evaluation studies employed the HOME (Home Observation for the Measurement of the Environment) inventory. This gives age-appropriate measures of the home learning environment (e.g., availability of play and reading materials) and of parent child interaction (e.g., frequency of adult contact, emotional climate). As a result of using this observational method, several studies, including Healthy Start, reported a positive change in the home following parent participation in the program.

Another aspect of home and family that was the focus of some programs, particularly those for teenage mothers, was subsequent child-bearing. Programs often included information about contraception and advice about spacing of later children. While some programs reported positive change on these outcomes, New Chance found that despite a rise in the percentage of teenage mothers using contraception, a high percentage became pregnant and gave birth seemingly unaffected by the program’s message, according to the authors of the evaluation (Quint, Bos & Polit, 1997).

Parents’ health and wellbeing

Health information for parents was part of many of the programs and several positive health outcomes were found: reduced smoking and better diets, fewer parents at risk of depression (New Chance), and decreased depression, anxiety and sickness (see Bowes, 2000). Other evaluations, however, found no differences between participants and non-participants in self-esteem, depression or feelings of personal wellbeing. Positive feelings of self-esteem, efficacy, greater control over their lives and greater confidence were reported for parents in three programs (see Bowes, 2000). New Chance found that although the percentage of parents at risk of depression had dropped for participants in the program, the level of depression was still very high, reflecting the poverty-stricken life circumstances of the participants.

Education and employment

Many of the programs included educational and vocational classes for parents. Parents were encouraged to complete a GED (equivalent to a high school diploma) and to undertake vocational training that might lead them out of welfare dependency. Several programs reported that parents were either enrolled in GED education or had completed the qualification. While three programs reported improvements in parents’ basic skills of reading and maths, one reported no difference in literacy gains between participant and non-participant parents. Program participation was linked to higher levels of employment and reduced welfare dependence in five programs and to positive changes in vocational attitudes and skills in another. Again, the New Chance report sounded a word of caution reporting that the increase in employment for the teenage single mothers in that program was often short-term with the large majority remaining poor and on welfare after three and a half years (Quint, Bos & Polit, 1997).

Involvement in society beyond home and work

Four programs reported that program parents were more likely to be involved with activities at their child’s school. Involvement included taking part in transition programs when their child started school, taking part in teacher-parent interviews and attending classroom activities, many for the first time, or with parents initiating contact with teachers.

An important outcome for parents of program participation was often greater knowledge and use of community resources. Parents themselves saw this as a key benefit of participation (Healthy Start Program). By putting parents in touch with community resources beyond the program, programs encouraged parents to take an active role in mobilising resources for their families.

Apart from institutional links in the community to schools and other social service agencies, parents made other links that improved their social support base through participation in the programs. Healthy Start, for example, reported increases in social support through the home visitor. Another index of parents’ more positive role in the wider community is the decreased level of criminal behaviour reported by the Elmira program (Olds et al, 1997), the only program that reported that kind of data for parents.

Discussion

This review does provide some information on parents’ response to such programs.

Many programs have documented changes in parental attitudes and behaviour, particularly in terms of reduced physical punishment of children. Parents reported more confidence in their coping ability following program participation and more knowledge about child development.

These findings are particularly important because unrealistic expectations about children’s behaviour and lack of knowledge about alternative discipline strategies are two of the factors that have been linked to child abuse (Daro, McCurdy & Harding, 1998). The parent outcomes found in this review suggest that education about child development and parenting can lessen the chances of abuse by changing parents’ attitudes and behaviour and their confidence in their parenting.

Parenting and social support

In the design of the programs and their evaluation, there is a surprising lack of attention to the social support links of parents and ways to build social networks.Too often, it seems, families are seen as isolated units without ties to extended family or to friends. All too often these social ties are missing for families with young children.

Many families face the demands of child rearing without support or involvement from outsiders who are in a position to observe what is happening. This isolation can raise the likelihood of abuse. Assisting the development or strengthening of social networks involving parents would seem to be a legitimate activity for programs to achieve their aims. Programs can address the issue of social support through holding group meetings or activities for parents and young children, or through artificially setting up support groups as is done by early childhood nurses in New South Wales when they form "mothers' groups" for mothers with newborn children.

Parenting and employment

Other aspects of parents’ lives also impinge on their ability to parent effectively. In their design, many of the programs reviewed acknowledge the importance to parents of education and employment. The evaluations of programs, however, do not investigate how study and jobs affect parenting beyond assuming on the basis of past research that both are of benefit to family functioning. There is a large body of research that investigates how parents in the paid workforce reconcile the demands of work and home, and how this can have an impact on their parenting (Galinsky, 1999; Hochshild, 1997; Repetti & Wood, 1997; Williams, 2000). Little account has been acknowledged of this research in the design or evaluation of programs for parents in the paid workforce.

Parenting and other external demands

Paid work is not the only external demand on parents. Other aspects of parents’ lives such as substance abuse or care for elderly relatives need to be considered to give a total picture of how an external program can change parenting practices. These considerations of the total context of parents’ lives are no doubt part of the day-to-day operations of a program. Sensitive program coordinators or home visitors make themselves aware of the total picture in order to tailor available services appropriately for parents and children. What is missing is measurement of these additional contextual factors in the evaluative research on the programs beyond demographic details of employment or income levels.

Such information could lead to useful insights into the design and flexible use of programs as well as contributing to understanding of the factors that affect parenting and the ways in which parenting is affected.

Limits of family support programs

Some of the program evaluators made the point in their reports that no matter how good programs are, they cannot counteract the effects of poverty on families. The total life circumstances of families and the stresses flowing from those circumstances will often override the efforts of the best-intentioned parenting programs (Daro, McCurdy & Harding, 1998; Quint, Bos & Polit, 1997). This limiting factor needs to be kept in mind. Parenting programs are often designed to help parents work within existing constraints by focusing on parent-child interaction and parenting skills. Changing life circumstances through education and employment training, however, has been a focus of many of the programs. Wider social policies will ultimately have the greatest effect on parenting.

Results of the investigation

The first of the questions that guided this investigation was:

Has there been evidence found for parents’ changed attitudes, beliefs, knowledge of child development or changed parenting behaviour as a result of parenting education and support programs?

The conclusion of the review of 24 programs was that change has been documented on all of these dimensions. The programs can affect parents’ confidence as parents as well as their skills. A wider range of approaches to dealing with problem behaviour in children accompanied by a knowledge of appropriate behaviour for children over their development as well as a decrease in the incidence of physical punishment of children have been shown to result from these programs. Parents have also been found to increase their involvement beyond the home in activities that benefit their children such as participation in school activities.

The second question was:

What has been measured or recorded about parents’ preferences for particular styles of service delivery or for particular types of information about child development and parenting?

In this sample of program documents, there was no information to help answer this question. It seems that programs generally employ a "top-down" approach at least in terms of development of information for parents. Parents may be asked what they would like to have discussed at a group meeting but this level of program description was not available to check the extent of parent involvement in choice of topics.

Some programs come with curricula for parents and/or children. The Parents as Teachers program, for example, has suggested topics and activities for home visits and parent handouts on a variety of topics, according to the age of the child. Like some other programs, the PAT program makes an effort to make information accessible for parents by preparing handouts at different reading levels and in other languages, as well as the use of short videos for use during home visits.

The Wellness Guide

The only example found of a parenting resource for parents designed from the "bottom up" is The Wellness Guide for Families prepared through the University of California, Berkeley. The contents of the guide that gives information about child development, parenting, employment, and resources in California for families, was developed in a dialogue between individuals, parent groups and researchers from the Division of Public Health, Biology and Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley as well as experts in the field.

The Guide (Penhoet, E. E., Syme, S. L., Neuhauser, L., Martin, S., Tatmon-Gilkerson, M., Fadem, P. S. Fleitas, G., & Margen, S., 1999) is an easy-to-use 80-page book that incorporates a telephone referral system developed in association with telephone companies in California. Distribution of the Guide to families through health clinics, parenting and child care centres, schools and prisons was followed by research on its use. The research showed that most recipients kept the Guide and used it, significantly improving their health knowledge and attitudes and making changes to lifestyle on the basis of information in the Guide (Neuhauser, 1999).

Directions for future research

More information about what parents want and find sufficiently relevant and useful to change their parenting attitudes and behaviour is potentially available from current parenting programs. The research conducted on many of these programs has, of necessity, been limited to evaluation of whether or not programs were achieving their aims. How they are achieving their aims is the next research question.

An insight into changes in parenting as a result of parenting education and support programs must in the first instance come from parents themselves. Information is needed about which aspects of the program made an impression on them and how they changed their parenting as a result. Parent preferences for different kinds of services or resources are also largely unknown. In the Healthy Start program in Hawaii, parents were interviewed about their response to the program.This and some other programs suggest that the relationship with the home visitor or other key staff in the program is a key to change in parenting. The role of the home visitor and parental response to home visitors and the support and information they provide is an important area for future research.

This report has discussed results of program evaluations that have compared program participants with non-participants. Yet within program participants there will be some who benefit from the program and others who show no benefits. Some evaluations investigated different effects of the program on subsets of participants. The Infant Health and Development Study, for example, compared families with infants who were of heavier and lighter weight in the low birthweight range and found benefits mainly for the heavier group.

More research needs to be done on which parents, families and children gain most and least benefit from the programs, and the factors that contribute to any difference in response. It is particularly important in a multicultural society like Australia to design programs and examine their effects for different cultural groups.

Finally, a group that received little mention in program descriptions and evaluations, is fathers. The extent to which fathers are involved in programs, directly or indirectly, needs to be investigated, and the effects on them and their families assessed. The important role that fathers play in children’s development is widely acknowledged in the child development literature (e.g., Parke, 1995). Many programs do reach out to involve fathers (Family Resource Coalition, 1996) but little research has been done on fathers’ response to parent education and family support programs.

Conclusion

There is a need for more information on parent response to parent education and support programs. Such information is important to help us understand how such programs benefit children and the mediating role played by parents in the process. It also assists in the planning of such programs - planning that should involve parents at every stage.

References

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Belsky, J., & Vondra, J. (1990). Lessons from child abuse: The determinants of parenting. In D. Ciccetti and V. Carlson (Eds.), Child maltreatment: Theory and research on the causes and consequences of child abuse and neglect, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Bowes, J. M. (2000). Parents’ response to parent education: A review of selected parent education and support programs in the USA: Report to the Creswick Foundation, Macquarie University, Sydney.

Brooks-Gunn, J. (1995). Strategies for altering the outcomes of poor children and their families. In P. L. Chase-Lansdale and J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), Escape from poverty: What makes a difference for children? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Cochran, M., & Henderson, C. R. (1990). Network influences upon perception of the child: Solo parenting and social support. In M. Cochran, M. Larner and C. R. Henderson (Eds.), Extending families: The social networks of parents and their children, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Cox, E. (1995). A truly civil society: 1995 Boyer lectures, ABC Books, Sydney.

Daro, D. D., McCurdy, K., Harding, K. (1998). The role of home visiting in preventing child abuse: An evaluation of the Hawaii Healthy Start Program, National Committee to Reduce Child Abuse, Chicago, IL.

Family Resource Coalition (1995). Family support programs and the prevention of child abuse, Family Resource Coalition, Chicago, IL.

Family Resource Coalition (1996). Guidelines for family support practice. Family Resource Coalition, Chicago, IL.

Fegan, M., & Bowes, J. M. (1999). Isolation in rural, remote and urban communities. In J. M. Bowes and A. Hayes (Eds.), Children, families and communities: Contexts and consequences, Oxford University Press, Melbourne.

Galinsky, E. (1999). Ask the children: What America’s children really think about working parents, William Morrow and Company Inc., New York.

Goodnow, J. J., & Collins, W. A. (1990). Development according to parents: The nature, sources and consequences of parents’ ideas, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hove, UK.

Hayes, A., & Bowes, J. M. (1999). Children, families and communities: Looking forward. In J. M. Bowes and A. Hayes (Eds.), Children, families and communities: Contexts and consequences, Oxford University Press, Melbourne.

Hochshild, A. R. (1997). The time bind, Henry Holt and Company, New York.

Institute for Research on Poverty (1997). Early intervention, cognition and school achievement: Findings from two generations of model programs. Focus, vol. 19, pp. 12-17.

Kelly, J. (1996). Developing a statewide family support agenda: Options for planners, Family Resource Coalition, Chicago, ILL.

National Crime Prevention (1999). Pathways to prevention: Developmental and early intervention approaches to crime in Australia. National Crime Prevention, Attorney General’s Department, Canberra.

Neuhauser, L. (1999, July). Keynote address at the conference, Making it Happen for Australia’s Children, Canberra.

Olds, D.L., Eckenrode, J., Henderson, C.R., Kitzman, H., Powers, J., Cole, R., Sidora, K., Morris, P., Pettit, L.M., & Luckey, D. (1997). Long-term effects of home visitation on maternal life course and child abuse and neglect, Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 278, pp. 637-643.

Parents as Teachers (1999). PAT documents: A partial list of evaluations of the Parents as Teachers Program, Parents as Teachers National Center, St Louis, MI.

Parke, R. D. (1995). Fathers and families. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting, vol. 3, pp. 27-63, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.

Penhoet, E. E., Syme, S. L., Neuhauser, L., Martin, S., Tatmon-Gilkerson, M., Fadem, P. S. Fleitas, G., & Margen, S. (1999). The Wellness Guide, University of California, Berkeley, CA.

Pfannensteil, J. (1989). New parents as teachers project: A follow-up investigation, Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Jefferson City, MO.

Pfannensteil, J. (1996). The Parents as Teachers Program: Longitudinal follow-up to the second wave study. St Louis, MI: Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and Parents as Teachers National Center Inc.

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Quint, J. C., Bos, J. M. & Polit, D. F. (1997). New Chance: Final report on a comprehensive program for young mothers in poverty and their children, Manpower demonstration research Corporation. http://www.mdrc.psiweb. com/Reports/

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Smith, S. (1995). Two generation programs: A new intervention strategy and directions for future research. In P. L. Chase-Lansdale and J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), Escape from poverty: What makes a difference for children? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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Dr Jennifer Bowes is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Early Childhood, Macquarie University, Sydney Australia 2109. Email: jbowes@iec.iec.mq.edu.au

This article is an edited version of a paper presented at the Seventh Australian Institute of Family Studies conference, Family futures: issues in research and policy, held in Sydney on 24-26 July 2000.

Readers may be interested in publications from the Australian Institute of Family Studies which also examine parenting programs.

One of these is the Clearinghouse Issues Paper No. 10, Valuing parent education : a cornerstone of child abuse prevention by Adam M. Tomison. This paper provides an overview of parent education and the various forms it may take, in conjunction with a summary of what is known about the effectiveness of parent education interventions. Parent education is advocated as a significant component of any comprehensive framework for the prevention of child maltreatment.

The second is Evaluation of the National Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy: Primary Prevention and Early Intervention: Technical Report. Volume 2 . by Penny Mitchell. This report includes the evaluation of activities in the areas of parenting eduation and support funded by the National Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy. Projects funded by the Strategy and discussed in this report are:

• Programs for Parents
• Resourceful Family Project
• Exploring Together Program
• Community Volunteers supporting Families (Home-Start)
• Family Wellbeing

The third publication is in press, the National Audit of Child Abuse Prevention Activities 2000, previously referred to on page 18

Families, Youth and Community Care Queensland has recently released a Child Abuse Prevention Public Speaking Kit. The Kit was developed by the Department’s Positive Parenting Coordination Section, in response to an identified community need for resource support in the provision of education and information on child abuse and its prevention.

The Kit is designed to assist those who work in government departments, community organisations, parent groups and other areas where there is a need to present material about child abuse prevention and the role of the community. It can be used with a range of audiences, and is particularly appropriate for presentations to the general public, parents, foster carers and those who work directly with families and children. Trainers who use the Child Abuse Prevention Public Speaking Kit are not required to have a sophisticated knowledge of child protection procedures — the materials for presentation are self-explanatory and a list of agencies and departments is provided for people requiring further information or assistance.

The Kit includes: Tips on public speaking; Session plans for workshops; Activity sheets; Overhead transparency masters and handouts; A list of available services and agencies; A guide to contact and referral and; Evaluation forms. At the end of the presentation on child abuse prevention, participants will have a stronger understanding of what constitutes child abuse and neglect. They will be able to:

• Identify behaviours considered harmful to children and some of the causes, contexts and consequences;
• Identify a range of approaches to understanding child abuse;
• Identify risk factors and warning signs of child abuse and neglect;
• Promote preventative procedures and positive parenting strategies for care providers;
• Identify the benefits of early identification and intervention;
• Promote a wide range of child abuse prevention activities that can be undertaken by communities and;
• Be aware of the range and function of services which offer support to families.

The Child Abuse Prevention Public Speaking Kit is available for purchase from the Positive Parenting Coordination Section at FYCCQ — Tel: (07) 3224 7588. The price of the Kit is $40 (plus GST & postage). It will also soon be available on the Department’s website — http://www.families.qld.gov.au/

The new Clearinghouse Child Abuse Prevention Programs database is now available for searching at http://www.aifs.gov.au/na2.htm

Created as part of the recent National Audit of Child Abuse Prevention Programs conducted by the Clearinghouse with the cooperation of the Australian States and Territories, the database contains descriptions of nearly 1,300 programs currently operating throughout Australia. The database updates and replaces the Prevention programs database that has been in operation since 1997 and ensures that the most up to date information is avialable to Clearinghouse stakeholders and the wider community.

The database may be searched by any words used in the item, such as name of program, organisation name, target group, or program type. If you would like the Clearinghouse to search the database for you, contact the information service using the contact details below.

Below is an example of the database entry for one of the programs included in the Audit.

Program	Male Adolescent Program for Positive Sexuality (MAPPS)
Organisation	Adolescent Forensic Health Service
Address	900 Park St, Parkville VIC 3052
Phone	03 9389 4272
Fax	03 9389 4365
Email	mapps@ozonline.com.au
Commenced	1996
Ongoing	Yes
Description	The MAPPS program provides an early intervention, assessment and treatment service to all young male adolescents placed on supervised juvenile dispositions who have been convicted of a sexual offence. The program also aims to provide education on the nature of adolescent sexual offending behaviour and disseminate this information across all agencies coming into contact with children and young people.
Targets	Children and young people 0-24 years; Professionals or paraprofessionals
Age Groups	Adolescents (13-18 years)
Populations	Offenders
Geographical Area	State/ Territory wide
Abuse Type	Sexual
Prevention Type	Primary; Tertiary
Program Type	Community Education; Offender Programs; Child Focused Programs
Keywords	Child protection; Early intervention; Gender issues;
Products	Juvenile Justice - Evaluation Report, Male Adolescent Program for Positive Sexuality, 1998, Vic Government, Department of Human Services
Evaluation?	Yes
Evaluation Type	External (independent)
Involved	Pretest and post-test comparison
Description	Evaluation Report 1998
Entry Updated	September 2000

A ‘State Of The Nation’ report on child abuse prevention, based on the Audit findings, is currently in press and will soon be available. The report describes the range and scope of child abuse prevention activities throughout Australia, identifying trends and innovation in child abuse prevention. Copies of the report will be provided to all agencies/groups who participated in the Audit; copies will also be made available to other interested parties, on request.

Contact details: National Child Protection Clearinghouse, Australian Institute of Family Studies, 300 Queen Street Melbourne VIC 3000; tel 03 9214 7871; fax 03 9214 7839; email fic@aifs.gov.au

Conference papers available

The Seventh Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference, Family futures: issues in research and policy, was held recently in Sydney on 24-26 July 2000. Here is a sample of conference papers which are available via the Australian Institute of Family Studies web site.

The national child protection data collection: what does 10 years worth of data tell us? By H. Johnstone. http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/afrc7/johnstone.html

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has been collating the national child protection data since 1990-91. These data are provided to the Institute by state and territory community service departments who have responsibility for child protection matters. The national collection includes three separate data collections: child protection notifications, investigations and substantiations; children on care and protection orders; and children in out-of-home care (collected since 1995-96).

This paper analyses the last 10 years of the national child protection data, focusing mainly on the data on child protection notifications and substantiations, but some data on children on care and protective orders and children in out-of-home care are also included. The comparability of the data is examined and some of the major differences between jurisdictions in child protection systems and in the child protection data are highlighted. Trends in the number and rate of children in the child protection system are then examined on a state by state basis. The likely impact of policy changes and other factors in explaining trends in child protection are discussed. Trends in the number and rate of Indigenous children in the child protection system over the last 10 years are also examined.

The link between children's services and child protection: the perspective of directors of children's services, by K. Fisher, C. Thomson & M. McHugh. http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/afrc7/fisher.html

The NSW Department of Community Services (DoCS) Office of Childcare commissioned the Social Policy Research Centre in 1999 to examine the relationship between children's services for children under school age and the DoCS child protection function. The project also investigated the effectiveness of children's services as a protection and prevention strategy for abuse and neglect.

The study comprised three components: a literature review, a survey of directors of children's services and focus groups with workers in child protection's services. The survey with directors of children's services included questions on details of children at risk of abuse and neglect placed in a service as well as the effectiveness of communication with DoCS from initial placement through to case closure. The survey contained a number of open-ended questions in relation to children at risk including: whether the care differed from care given to other children; record keeping in the service; adequacy of meeting needs of children from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-English speaking backgrounds and children with a disability; demands on primary contact carers; training in child protection; prevention programs; abuse in care; and, the effectiveness of a placement as both a prevention and protection strategy. This paper reviews the findings from the survey of directors of children's services highlighting some of the strengths and weaknesses of the present system from the perceptions of workers in the field.

Compiled by Joan Kelleher, AIFS Librarian. To borrow or obtain photocopies of any of this material, provide details to the library where you work or study, or your municipal library. Your library will obtain the material from the Clearinghouse for you.

Aborigines

Indigenous Australians: a new deal for a new century?, by M. Cadd, In, Work, wages and welfare: selected papers from the 1999 ACOSS Congress, Strawberry Hills, NSW, Australian Council of Social Service, 2000, pp. 83-90.

This paper provides background information on the Secretariat of the National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) and information on the development of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children's services, including the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency and the Indigenous Child Placement Principle. An overview of issues for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service provision is presented, including: combating poverty and preventing child removal, juvenile justice and rates of detention, and Kids Help Line and problems for young people of child abuse, bullying and homelessness. The National Families Strategy, the Draft Document on Reconciliation and national strategies, and the role for non-government organisations are issues discussed.

Maori, the media, racism and neglect, by A. Blank, Social Work Now, no.14, 1999, pp. 41-45.

The Breaking the Cycle public awareness campaign was developed to meet the directive from the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services to promote awareness of the unacceptability of child abuse. In this article the author discusses the ramifications of raising awareness and influencing Maori attitudes towards child abuse and neglect through media campaigns, including the Breaking the Cycle campaign, the 1998 Alternatives to Smacking campaign and the 1999 Neglect Prevention Programme.

Adoption

Adoption policy in the United States: a word of caution, by L.D. Hollingsworth, Social Work, vol. 45, no. 2, 2000, pp. 183-186.

In order to protect the health and safety of children recent adoption policies in America have attempted to expedite the termination of the rights of parents who have been charged with child maltreatment. These policies also aim to make it easier for people who wish to adopt these children to do so. This article comments on the risk of the legislation actually causing further disadvantage to poor children and their families. Recommendations are made for addressing these issues.

Bullying

Persistence of bullying from childhood to adolescence - a longitudinal 8-year follow-up study, by A. Sourander, L. Helstela & H. Helenius, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no. 7, 2000, pp. 873-881.

The objective of this study was to examine the factors associated with bullying and victimization from age 8 to 16. It was found that if bullying and victimization were still happening at age 16 it was associated with a wide range of psychological problems at both age 8 and age 16. It is suggested that preventive measures should be targeted at those children who are characterized by both psychological disturbance and bullying.

Child abuse

Child abuse and neglect: part 1 - redefining the issues, by M. James, Canberra, ACT, Australian Institute of Criminology, 2000.

There are few social issues that evoke such extreme emotive responses, both publicly and privately, as child abuse and neglect. Although the issues surrounding family behaviour are primarily regarded as private, legislative and institution reforms have provided for a public response to any report of child maltreatment. Questions that have been raised include: how successful have academics and legal professionals been in placing this item on the political agenda; how has welfare practice responded to the problem; what has been the response of the criminal justice system; and has society in general improved the situation of those children who are the victims of abuse and neglect? This article looks at the emerging issues, discusses the incidence and prevalence of child abuse and neglect, and outlines issues dealing with identification, intervention and prevention, and the legislative and legal processes.

Child maltreatment 1998 : reports from the states to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, Walter R. McDonald & Associates & United States, Children's Bureau - Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000.

The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) is the primary source of national information on abused and neglected children known to the State child protective services agencies. In 1998 in the United States, nearly one and a half million children received preventive services, 20 of every 1,000 children in the population.

Child maltreatment, other trauma exposure, and posttraumatic symptomatology among children with oppositional defiant and attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, by J.D. Ford, R. Racusin & C.G. Ellis, Child Maltreatment , vol. 5, no. 3, 2000, pp. 205-217.

Children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), comorbid ADHD-ODD, and adjustment disorder controls were assessed for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Results showed that ODD and (to a lesser extent) ADHD were associated with a history of physical or sexual maltreatment. PTSD symptoms were most severe if (a) ADHD and maltreatment co-occurred or (b) ODD and accident/illness trauma co-occurred. These findings suggest that screening for maltreatment, other trauma, and PTSD symptom may enhance prevention, treatment, and research concerning childhood disruptive behavior disorders.

The role of friends, in-laws and other kin in father-perpetrated child physical abuse, by C. Coohey, Child Welfare, vol. 79, no. 4, 2000, pp. 373-402.

This study compared 35 physically abusive fathers with a sample of non-abusive fathers. The study aimed to show the relationship between the structure of social ties and the function of those ties. It was found that the physically abusive fathers received significantly fewer emotional and instrumental support from their friends, in-laws and other kin than the comparison fathers. Physically abusive fathers were found to be only weakly linked to members of their social networks. These are the people who might have been able to discourage the fathers' aggressive impulses or provide additional support to them and their families.

Child abuse in New Zealand, by B. Atkin, In, M. Freeman, ed. Overcoming child abuse: a window on a world problem, Aldershot, UK, Ashgate, 2000, pp. 305-327.

Child abuse may always be a problem with no perfect solutions. This chapter deals with the issue of child abuse in New Zealand and outlines the overall statutory framework and the process for dealing with child abuse. Questions are raised such as How is the safety of children assured when abuse becomes apparent? What are the resources available for dealing with abuse in families? How are false allegations of abuse handled? These questions suggest that major responsibility rests on the state and the community. The author asks where the balance is between an intrusive and culturally insensitive governmental agency and one which appears to be backing away either through lack of resources or for ideological reasons. In New Zealand the balance is tilted in favour of minimal intervention, with concerns being raised that economics are given priority over care of children, that unless a case is one of the most compelling kind of abuse, it will be not be investigated and that social workers are inadequately trained and resourced.

Failure-to-thrive, maltreatment and the behavior and development of 6-year-old children from low-income, urban families: a cumulative risk model, by M. A. Kerr, M.M. Black & A. Krishnakumar, Child Abuse & Neglect , vol. 24, no. 5, 2000, pp. 587-598.

The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between failure- to-thrive (FTT), maltreatment and four aspects of children's development: cognitive performance; adaptive functioning at school; classroom behavior; and behavior at home. The findings suggest that cumulative risk is more detrimental to children's development than the presence of a single risk factor. These results underscore the importance of interventions to prevent both FTT and maltreatment during a child's early years.

Affective, organisational, and relational characteristics of maltreating families: a systems perspective, by P.W. Howes, D. Cicchetti & S.L. Toth, Journal of Family Psychology, vol. 14, no. 1, 2000, pp. 95-110.

In-home structured interactions of 42 maltreating families and 23 low-income comparison families with preschool-aged children were examined to determine whether maltreating and nonmaltreating families could be distinguished by system-level processes. Family interactions were videotaped and coded for ratings on affective, organizational, and relational features of each family unit. The importance of family climate and structure, above and beyond individual maltreatment acts, were noted. Implications for treatment and social policy directions are discussed.

Child abuse prevention

Child sexual abuse prevention programs: a meta-analysis, by M. K.Davis & C.A. Gidycz, Journal of Clinical Child Psychology , vol. 29, no. 2, 2000, pp. 257-265.

This article looks at a meta-analytic evaluation of the effectiveness of school-based child abuse prevention programs. Analysis of moderator variables of twenty-seven studies revealed significant effects for: age; number of sessions; participant involvement; type of outcome measure; and use of behavioral skills training. It was found that programs presented over 4 or more sessions that allowed children to become physically involved produced the highest effect sizes. The importance of these findings for future child sexual abuse prevention programs is discussed.

Child sexual abuse prevention programs: do they decrease the occurrence of child sexual abuse?, by L.Ed. Gibson & H. Leitenberg, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no. 9, 2000, pp. 1115-1125.

The objective of this study was to determine whether school-based child sexual abuse prevention programs affected the rates of child sexual abuse. The study found that these programs are associated with a reduction in the incidence of child sexual abuse. A secondary aim of the study was to determine if there were differences in sexual satisfaction or avoidance of sexual activity between those women who had participated in such a program and those who had not. The study found no evidence that prevention programs decreased sexual satisfaction or led to avoidance of sexual activity in adulthood.

Creating the future: a resource kit for children about domestic violence and abuse, by Jannawi Family Centre (New South Wales), Lakemba, NSW, Jannawi Family Centre, 2000, unpaginated handbook, 60 minute video, compact disc, stickers, poster.

This kit aims to assist children and families to talk about their experiences of domestic violence and abuse, to understand the effects on their lives and relationships, and to develop and strengthen positive relationships based on equality and respect. It is based on a feminist analysis of domestic violence, and is suitable for use by workers whose clients are 5 - 12 year old children and their families in health, welfare, educational and therapeutic contexts. The kit includes a leader's handbook, a video divided into seven sections, an activity book for each section or story, the audio soundtrack for all the stories, and a poster which features all the puppet characters.

Development of the Stay Safe programme, by D. MacIntyre, A. Carr & M. Lawlor, Child Abuse Review, vol. 9, no. 3, 2000, pp. 200-216.

This article describes the development and implementation of the Stay Safe programme which was developed in the Republic of Ireland. The programme includes modules for teachers, parents and children. Liaising with local child protection and child health professionals is an integral part of implementation. The curriculum includes: disclosure training; assertiveness training; coercion management training; enhancing self-esteem; and the promotion of peer support.

Evaluation of NAPCAN: final report, by Keys Young, Milsons Point, NSW, Keys Young, 2000.

The key aim of the evaluation reported in this document was to examine the effectiveness of the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN)'s child abuse prevention activities over the last five years. The evaluation focused in particular on: community education materials; coordination of National Child Protection Week, held annually in September; and media campaigns. The evaluation also sought to examine NAPCAN Australia's role and achievements in conducting other activities such as lobbying and policy work and holding professional conferences. Methodology comprised three key components: a postal survey of agencies which use NAPCAN's materials; phone interviews with 38 service providers, 15 research/ policy/ peak organisations, and ten individuals currently holding official positions within NAPCAN; and, telephone interviews with 24 parents who had used NAPCAN materials or participated in NAPCAN activities, and three discussion groups with a total of 16 parents.

Making a difference: recognising and reporting/ notifying child abuse and neglect, by NSW Child Protection Council. Sydney, NSW, NSW Child Protection Council, 1998, kit (1 40 min. video, looseleaf training manual, booklet, 1 audio tape).

This training package presents a training manual and video which cover face-to-face training, and a self paced learning kit which includes a audiotape. The manual is designed for use and presentation by supervisors, team leaders, directors, coordinators or other nominated staff who wish to equip agency workers with the knowledge and understanding to fulfil their responsibilities in recognising and reporting or notifying child abuse and neglect. Developed by Carolyn Quinn, the manual includes workshop outlines, trainers resource materials and background information. The video (Executive Producer: NSW Film and Television Office) has three parts: Recognising abuse and neglect; What's your responsibility? What happens next? It includes dramatised scenes and interviews with professionals. The self paced learning kit was developed by Eleanora De Michele. It includes information about child abuse and neglect, including definitions, dynamics, effects, indicators, reporting / notifying, role and responsibilities. It is stated that completing both parts of the training package is the minimum required for workers to have an understanding of the complex issues that surround the recognition of child abuse and neglect and the child protection response.

Prevention is better than cure: exploring strategies for the prevention of child abuse and neglect, by A. Tomison, Keynote address presented at the 1999 Xi'an International Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect (First ISPCAN Chinese Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect), Xi'an, China, November-December 1999, and Online http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/papers/tomison2.html

Focusing on systemic issues in child protection and child abuse prevention, this paper aims to provide a context for the work of health, medical and social welfare professionals, and to suggest ways forward for the development and enhancement of systems for the prevention and protection of child abuse and neglect. Some of the key components of a child abuse prevention framework, based on current trends in western communities are presented and the relevance of some of these prevention strategies for the Chinese community is considered. The role of community education and health promotion for child abuse prevention in China is discussed. Professional education on child maltreatment and effective interagency coordination and communication are issues which, it is suggested, need to be considered when developing child abuse prevention service networks.

Prevention of child sexual abuse: implications of programme evaluation research, by D. MacIntyre & A. Carr, Child Abuse Review, vol. 9, no. 3, 2000, pp. 183-199.

After reviewing 30 child abuse prevention programme evaluation studies, it was concluded that child abuse prevention programmes can lead to significant gains in children's, parents' and teachers' safety knowledge and skills. A set of best practice guidelines were established from the review. It is suggested that the curricula for parents' and teachers' programmes should cover child protection issues, as well as local child protection procedures. It was found that it is better to run longer programmes which are conducted by trained staff. Such staff may include teachers, parents, mental health professionals and law enforcement officers.

Using video vignettes to evaluate children's personal safety knowledge: methodological and ethical issues, by B. Johnson, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no.5, 2000, pp. 811-827.

This study aimed to assess children's personal safety knowledge by seeking their responses to video simulations of child maltreatment. In this article, the author chronicles the methodological and ethical difficulties that were encountered in the development of the video vignettes used in the evaluation of the Protective Behaviours personal safety program. The main objections to the approach were that it could harm participants and that parents needed extensive information about the study in order to exercise informed consent.

Child care

Childcare with gloves on: protecting children and young people in residential care, by J. Horwath,The British Journal of Social Wor, vol. 30, no. 2, 2000, pp. 179-191.

This paper presents the findings of a study under-taken in three residential children's units. The study sought to explore the impact of abuse scandals on worker's perceptions of what constitutes abusive behavior. Two key findings which raise issues for the social work profession are discussed and recent government policy documents are evaluated in the light of these findings.

Child custody

Revealing the existence of child abuse in the context of marital breakdown and custody and access disputes, by T. Brown, M. Frederico, L. Hewitt & R. Sheehan, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no.5, 2000, pp. 849-859.

There has been little attention given to child abuse within the context of legal and de facto marriage breakdown. Recently however, concerns about child abuse allegations have emerged from family courts as a result of experiences with child custody and access disputes, now often termed residence and contact disputes. This article reports on research into the way the Family Court of Australia dealt with such cases. The study sought to discover who were the families bringing these problems to family courts, what precisely the abuse was and how the courts dealt with it. As a result of the research, a new specialised intervention system was developed.

Child emotional abuse

Evaluating and reporting emotional abuse in children: parent-based, action-based focus aids in clinical decision-making, by S. Hamarman & W. Bernet, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, vol. 39, no. 7, 2000, pp. 928-930.

This article examines the difficulty in evaluating and reporting the emotional abuse of children. One of the main difficulties arises from there being no consensus on the definition of emotional abuse. Seven categories of emotional abuse are presented and explained. Severity of abuse and recommendations for clinical practice are discussed.

Child neglect

Impact of a multidimensional intervention programme applied to families at risk for child neglect, by L.S. Ethier, G. Couture & C. Lacharite, Child Abuse Review, vol. 9, no. 1, 2000, pp. 19-36.

Parents who were assessed as being at risk for child neglect were assigned to two intervention programmes. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of each of these intervention programmes. The first group participated in a multidimensional eco-systemic intervention programme called the Personal, Family and Community Help Program (PFCHP); and (2) the second group underwent psychosocial intervention that was provided as part of regular Local Community Services Centre services and focused mainly on the social worker-family relationship. At the beginning of the intervention pre-test measures were obtained and a follow-up was held 24 months later. Findings indicated that both forms of intervention were associated with improved parent-child relationship and the reduction of parental stress, depression and the potential for child abuse and neglect. The conclusion outlines the need for long-term intervention process for families at high risk for child neglect. It also highlights the necessity of addressing multiple dimensions of family life if lasting changes are to be expected.

Child protection

Child protection Australia 1998-99, by H. Johnstone, H. Moyle, S. Kelly & P. Dowling, Canberra, ACT, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2000.

Child Protection Australia 1998-99 provides comprehensive information on children who come into contact with State and Territory community service departments for protective reasons. The report contains data for 1998-1999 on child protection notifications, investigations and substantiations, children on care and protection orders and children in out-of-home care. Detailed information on the characteristics of children in the child protection system is presented, such as data on their age, sex and indigenous status. For children who were the subject of a child protection substantiation, data on the family type, the relationship of the person believed responsible and the source of the notification are also included.

Child protection law in Australia, by P. Parkinson, In, M. Freeman, ed. Overcoming child abuse: a window on a world problem, Aldershot, UK, Ashgate, 2000, pp. 15-38.

Child protection is a responsibility of the states and territories in Australia. Each of the six states and two territories has its own government department with responsibility for child protection, and each has its own legislation. While there have been calls for the federal government to take a greater role in child protection work, there are practical difficulties in the way of greater federal involvement. It is difficult to ensure a national approach to child protection when there are not only eight different laws but eight different government departments which have statutory responsibility for child protection, each with distinctive legal and administrative structures. There are different definitions of child abuse between the states and territories, different legal responses, different understandings of child abuse as a matter of social policy and different characterisations of the problem. This chapter looks at the nature and extent of child abuse in Australia, the approaches of the different states and territories and the way in which the law responds to child abuse.

Ensuring the protection of children: the role of child protection services in the identification, assessment and treatment of maltreated children, by A.M. Tomison, Keynote address presented at NSW Department of Community Services Entry Parameters for Child Protection Conference, March 1999, Sydney NSW and Online http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/papers/tomison3.html

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of some of the trends and issues in the identification and assessment of children by child protection services where there have been allegations or a suspicion of child abuse and neglect. Issues discussed include: the role of child protection; new models of child protection and family support; gatekeeping in child protection services; streaming cases, Western Australia; the differentiated response model, Enhanced Client Outcomes Victoria; risk assessment; implementation of risk assessment tools; risk factors in risk assessment measures; ecological effects of applying risk assessment in situ; worker effects; and child centred family focused practice.

Interagency collaboration and communication in child protection cases: some findings from an Australian case tracking study, by A.M. Tomison, A M. Paper presented at Fifth ISPCAN Asian Conference on Child Protection, Hong Kong, November 1999, and Online http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/papers/tomison4.html

The objective of this paper is to present some findings on professionals' management of suspected child maltreatment cases in a Victorian child protection network, focusing in particular on the extent to which effective interprofessional coordination and communication has been achieved. The results of an in situ tracking of suspected child abuse and neglect cases are used to form the basis for a discussion of professional case management and the implications for child protection practice. The issues raised by a case study presented in the appendix are discussed.

Blending qualitative and quantitative approaches: case tracking studies in child protection systems, by A.M. Tomison & C.R. Goddard, Paper presented at Association for Qualitative Research 'Issues of Rigour in Qualitative Research' International Conference, Melbourne, July 1999, and Online http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/papers/tomison1.html

Case tracking studies are descriptive research tools which combine elements of interviewing, direct observation and archival analysis. This paper discusses the methodological and theoretical benefits which result from utilising case tracking methods as a means of investigating professionals' case management of child protection cases in situ. It also identifies and explores some of the problems which have confronted the authors in a number of large scale case tracking studies which have been conducted in Victoria. Systemic and methodological problems which can significantly affect the design and overall success of such studies are considered.

ISPCAN 5th Asian Conference on Child Protection, November 1999, Protecting children in the 21st century: creating peace and stability for children and families: proceedings. Wanchai, Hong Kong, The Federation of Medical Societies of Hong Kong for the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, 1999.

This document contains papers presented at the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect's 5th Asian Conference on Child Protection, held in Hong Kong in November 1999. Issues addressed include: child protection services; cultural issues; promoting family well being; child rearing; parent participation in child protection; intra-familial sexual abuse; home visiting programs; preventive education in schools; shaken baby syndrome; Child Fatality Review; caregiver abuse of children with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder; effects of domestic violence on children: children in the court system; childhood psychological abuse; child pornography; child labour; stepfamilies; adult survivors; foster children; and corporal punishments. The countries involved are: China; Indonesia; Hong Kong; Japan; Nepal; Malaysia; United Kingdom; New Zealand; Thailand; Singapore; South Korea; Philippines; India; Vietnam; Pakistan; and Australia.

Training teachers in child protection, by M. Baginksy, Child Abuse Review, vol. 9, no. 1, 2000, pp. 74-81.

The author conducted a series of surveys within various sections of the education system over the past 2 years. The aim of the study was to discover how schools, local education authorities (LEAs) and teacher training bodies are responding to their clearly defined responsibility in relation to child protection. This paper discusses some of the implications for teacher training which has emerged from this study.

Dealing with child protection problems, by P. Winterton, Australian Family Physician, vol. 29, no.4, 2000, pp. 367-368.

One of the most challenging aspects of the role of the general practitioner lies in the area of child protection. In order to manage child abuse and neglect, it is important to understand that the mechanisms of causation and presentation are not the same for all forms of child abuse. The author discusses non accidental injuries, the use of protective services, child neglect and child sexual abuse, and outlines the obligatory involvement of general practice in child protection matters.

The significance of 'significant' - when is intervention justified under child abuse reporting laws?, by P. Swain, Australian Journal of Family Law, vol. 14, no.1, 2000, pp. 26-35.

Intervention by the state to protect children is widely accepted as necessary where the harm is serious, but where less serious concerns arise it is generally understood that less intrusive protective arrangements are preferred. Child protection legislation, in Australia and elsewhere, has moved toward the notion of 'significant harm' as the basis for statutory intervention in respect of alleged abuse or neglect. This paper considers the meaning attributed to 'significant harm' in recent judicial interpretations in the United Kingdom, and the criteria there developed by which significance can be assessed. The paper considers the applications of these interpretations to Australian child protective legislation and practice.

Homogenising Australia's child protection laws: will the cream still rise to the top?, by M. Liddell & M. Liddell, Children Australia, vol. 25, no.2, 2000, pp. 10-15.

This paper discusses the increasing similarity between Australia's states and territories in their child protection legislation. The paper deals mainly with the principles underlying child protection laws, definitions of abuse and neglect, and the way legislation deals with the likelihood and severity of harm to the child. The trend is towards adopting a common set of principles, and definitions which are relatively precise in targeting particular 'types' of abuse and eliminating status offences. However there are significant differences even between states which broadly adopt this type of legislation, and some states adopt quite different approaches. There is still little consensus on how likelihood and severity of harm are dealt with. The paper, in welcoming the principle of common legislation, notes a wide range of issues in the developing legal paradigm which have been subject to little or no public debate. It is not clear that the increasing 'homogenisation' of child protection laws is enshrining the kind of legislation required.

Regional roundup: Developing a child protection continuum in partnership with rural family workers in the Darling Downs, by J. Baker, QCOSS Bulletin, May - Jun, 2000, pp. 22-23.

An overview is presented of the Workers with Families Project, which operated from July to December 1999 in Toowoomba, Queensland with funding from the Department of Family and Community Services as a Child Abuse Prevention Pilot project. The project set out to explore the possibilities for partnership between a specialist child protection agency and rural family workers with the goal of extending effective early intervention responses to families where there are protective concerns. Strategies and forms of partnership adopted are described, and it is noted that the project highlighted the isolation faced by many rural workers in their professional practice.

Child sexual abuse

Child sex tourism, by F. David, Canberra, ACT, Australian Institute of Criminology, 2000.

There are twenty-four countries around the world with legislation that makes child sex tourism a criminal conduct, even when the act concerned is committed overseas. In 1994, Australia introduced offences relating to child sex tourism. Since this time there have been a number of cases that have proceeded through the courts and have resulted in convictions. This paper reviews the progress of this legislation, and notes the successes and difficulties experienced in relation to the legislation.

Child sexual abuse 1: psychopathology, by B. Nurcombe, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 34, no.1, 2000, pp. 85-91.

This paper reviews the scientific literature concerning the prevalence, childhood outcome and adult outcome of child sexual abuse, and the hypothetical models that have been postulated to explain its psychopathology. It is shown that estimates of prevalence of sexual abuse suggest that a significant number of children of both sexes are affected. Research into the psychopathology of sexual abuse is hindered by methodological problems. However, sexual abuse has been associated with a number of psychiatric disorders and maladaptive lifestyles in childhood and adulthood. Several theoretical models of the psychopathology of child sexual abuse are examined and compared. It is concluded that a transactional model is the most comprehensive and encompassing.

Child sexual abuse II: treatment, by B. Nurcombe, S. Wooding, P. Marrington, L. Bickman & G. Roberts, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 34, no.1, 2000, pp. 92-97.

This paper reviews the scientific literature concerning the treatment of child sexual abuse. There are only nine published research studies in which subjects were randomly assigned to an index treatment or treatments and a comparison treatment or no-treatment control group. In seven of the studies, the index treatment exceeded the control or comparison group in regard to treatment outcome; in two studies it did not. The successful treatments involved group therapy, combined individual and group play therapy and cognitive behaviour therapy. It is concluded that treatment should be based on an explicit conceptual model of the psychopathology of sexual abuse. The University of Queensland Sexual Abuse Treatment Project, which is based on a transactional model, is described.

Child sexual abuse: a case study in community collaboration, by K. C. Faller & H. Henry, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no. 9, 2000, pp. 1215-1225.

This study describes the process and outcomes of a community's approach to the case management of child sexual abuse. Successful outcomes where achieved in the criminal prosecution of child sexual abuse perpetrators. The study found that the child's testimony is not necessarily the centrepeice of a successful case. The desired outcomes were a consequence of the collaborative effort of law enforcement, CPS and the prosecutor's office.

Child sexual abuse in Queensland: offender characteristics and modus operandi, by S. Smallbone & R. Wortley, Brisbane, Qld, Queensland Crime Commission and Queensland Police Service, 2000.

This document reports on a study which gathered both official demographic and offence history data, and confidential self-report data, from a large sample of men currently serving sentences in Queensland for sexual offences against children. Investigation focused on: offenders' psychosocial and psychosexual histories; differences between official and unofficial rates of child sex offending; the extent of offenders' non-sexual criminal activity; the extent to which offenders have engaged in multiple 'paraphilias' - for example, exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism; the offenders' modus operandi - for example, victim recruitment strategies; abusive behaviours; methods of avoiding detection; the extent of formal and informal networking among offenders, including their knowledge and/or membership of paedophile organisations, their use of the Internet for communication and access to child pornography, and the role of the prison environment in facilitating collaboration with other offenders. Discussion of the findings includes conceptual and policy implications.

Factors related to mothers' perceptions of parenting following their children's disclosures of sexual abuse, by D. Hiebert-Murphy, Child Maltreatment , vol. 5, no. 3, 2000, pp. 251-260.

This study examined predictors of parenting satisfaction and efficacy in a sample of 102 mothers of children who had disclosed sexual abuse within the previous 12 months. Conduct behavior problems exhibited by the child, social support from friends, and the use of coping strategies by the mothers were used as predictors of parenting satisfaction. Parenting efficacy was predicted by age of the child and conduct and sexual behavior problems exhibited by the child. It was found that maternal history of child sexual abuse was not related to parenting satisfaction or efficacy. Results are discussed in relation to a stress-coping model of understanding mothers during the post disclosure period.

Project Axis: volume 1: child sexual abuse in Queensland: the nature and extent, Brisbane, Qld, Queensland Crime Commission and Queensland Police Service, 2000.

Project Axis was jointly established by the Queensland Crime Commission and the Queensland Police Service as a wide-ranging inquiry into child sex offending in Queensland. The primary aim of this report (the first of a two-volume public report on child sex offending) is to provide the public of Queensland with relevant, reliable, objective and contextualised information about the risks posed by child sex offenders to their families and to the community more generally. The report describes Project Axis and presents official data on child sex offending and the results of studies aimed at gauging the prevalence of child sexual abuse. It includes information about child sexual abuse victims, including age and gender, the identification of risk factors, and the effects of the abuse on victims; child sex offenders, including their age and gender, and the relationship between them and their victims; targeting and grooming tactics used by child sex offenders; victims' disclosure of child sexual abuse, including the number of victims who disclose, to whom they disclose and when, and responses to that disclosure; and associations among child sex offenders.

Project Axis: child sexual abuse in Queensland: selected research papers, Brisbane, Qld, Queensland Crime Commission and Queensland Police Service, 2000.

This volume of selected papers from Queensland and interstate academics was compiled as part of Project Axis to provide a more comprehensive appreciation of the complex nature of child sex offending. Project Axis was jointly established by the Queensland Crime Commission and the Queensland Police Service as a wide-ranging inquiry into child sex offending in Queensland. Contributions to this volume, which have been individually indexed, are: Historical and contemporary social setting by Simon Petrie; The concept of childhood by Juliette Goldman and Caron Ronken; The consequences of childhood sexual abuse by Michael Dunne and Margot Legosz; The problem of child sexual abuse in church communities by Patrick Parkinson; and, The role of the media by Chris Goddard and Bernadette Saunders.

A reply to the NSW Royal Commission Inquiry into Paedophilia: victim report studies and child sex offender profiles - a bad match?, by A. Cossins, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, vol. 32, no.1, 1999, pp. 42-60.

This paper focuses on the Royal Commission's analysis of different types of child sex offenders in terms of how they are classified and how the problem of different offenders should be addressed in relation to the types of child sexual assault cases that are investigated and prosecuted. It questions, in particular, the validity of the classification scheme of child sex offenders adopted by the Royal Commission, which focused on the activities of homosexual, fixated offenders and engaged in little analysis of the extent of child sexual abuse within the family and abuse concerning female children in general. It then considers the ramifications of the use of a classification scheme that is based on incarcerated offender profiles for the investigation and prosecution of the vast majority of offenders, whose sexual behaviour and motivations may not necessarily accord with incarcerated offender profiles.

Christianity and child sexual abuse - the survivors' voice leading to change, by M. Kennedy, Child Abuse Review, vol. 9, no. 2, 2000, pp. 124-141.

This article examines the particular difficulties faced by children who have been sexually abused and who grow up in families with strong Christian beliefs. Many of these additional concerns are not readily identified by the child protection worker or therapist. Beliefs that may have a significant impact and which may hinder the child from disclosing the abuse include: belief in a male diety; no sex before marriage; honour your father and mother; and forgiving others. These concerns are also present in other faith communities, especially those with a patriarchal basis.

Tomorrow's children: Australia's national plan of action against the commercial sexual exploitation of children, Australia, Department of Family and Community Services, Canberra, ACT, Department of Family and Community Services, 2000.

This collaboratively developed document sets out what activity Australia has undertaken to combat the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the areas of prostitution or sex for favours, pornography, trafficking and sex tourism. It also describes the continuing challenges, and discusses future directions in terms of legislation, risk factors, support and assistance, education, awareness and monitoring.

Child welfare

Family and Youth Services Bureau : evaluation handbook : a companion to the program manager's guide to evaluation, United States Dept. of Health and Human Services, United States Administration for Children, Youth and Families & United States Children's Bureau - [Washington, D.C.], Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, [1996?].

This guide is intended as a supplement to The Program Manager's Guide to Evaluation. This publication is written for directors of Family and Youth Services Bureau programs and looks at issues specific to this area such as the provision of developmentally appropriate services, ways to measure outcomes through aftercare contacts and use of the Runaway and Homeless Youth Management Information System to manage data and forecast trends.

Family preservation: a potential not yet realized, by S. Kelly & B.J. Blythe, Child Welfare, vol. 79, no. 1, 2000, pp. 29-42.

This article gives a brief historical overview of family preservation services from the 1980s to the present. It examines some of the main reasons why efforts to implement family preservation services have not been completely successful, and proposes a strategy for ensuring that these services reach their potential in the future.

Needs assessment of children and adolescents, by L. Kroll, R. Harrington & S. Bailey, Child Psychology & Psychiatry Review, vol. 5, no. 2, 2000, pp. 81-88.

Although needs assessment is a frequently used term by all agencies involved in the welfare of children and adolescents there is no clear definition of the meaning of the phrase. This review aims to describe some key concepts and issues in regard to needs assessment. It also aims to describe the development of a needs assessment instrument for adolescents with complex and mutiple problems, and to explain how such an instrument can be used in clinical and research settings.

In our best interest: three necessary shifts for child welfare workers and children, by J.R. Seita, Child Welfare , vol. 79, no. 1, 2000, pp. 77-92.

In this article the author, a former youth in care, proposes three practical shifts in child welfare policy and practice. He argues that while these changes will cost little they will do much to build a better future for both children and their families.

Reforming child protective services, by J. Waldfogel, Child Welfare, vol. 79, no. 1, 2000, pp. 43-57.

Everyone agrees that the child protective services system (CPS) is in crisis and is in urgent need of reform. This article gives a brief overview of the problems facing the CPS today and outlines a vision for reforming the CPS and making it a more effective and viable service. Ways to move from today's CPS to the CPS of the future are suggested.

Substantiation and early decision points in public child welfare: a conceptual reconsideration, by B. Drake & M. Jonson-Reid, Child Maltreatment , vol. 5, no. 3, 2000, pp. 227-235.

This article provides an overview of substantiation in the context of early intervention decision points faced in the state child welfare system. The conceptual complexities underlying these interventions are examined. The role that substantiation does or does not play in these interventions is explored. Specific attention has been given to the voluntary or involuntary nature of services and the availability of evidence. The article explores the conceptual consistency of recent child welfare policies and offers suggestions for policy and research.

Using administrative data in child welfare, Child Welfare, vol. 79, no. 5, 2000, Special Issue.

This special issue contains the following articles: Using administrative data by Joan W. DiLeonardi & Ying-Ying T. Yuan (pp. 437-443); Using administrative data to reward agency performance: the case of the Federal Adoption Incentive Program by Penelope L. Maza (pp.444-456); Measuring contract agency performance with administrative data by Fred Wulczyn, Britany Orlebeke & Elan Melamid (pp.457-474); Improving child welfare performance through supervisory use of client outcome data by Terry D. Moore, Charles A. Rapp & Bethany Roberts (pp.475-498); Data-based organizational change: the use of administrative data to improve child welfare programs and policy by Diana J. English, Carol C. Brandford & Laura Coghlan (pp.499-516); Costing child protective services staff turnover by Michelle I. Graef & Erick L. Hill (pp.517-534); Assessing the local need for family and child care services: a small area utilization analysis by Andrew Percy [et al]...(pp.535-545); Mapping child maltreatment: looking at neighborhoods in a suburban county by Joy Swanson Ernst (pp.555-572); Safety, permanency and in-home services: applying administrative data by John D. Fluke [et al]...(pp.573-596); Using administrative data to assess child safety in out-of-home care by Philip C. Garnier & John Poertner (pp.597-613); Placement stability for children in out-of-home care: a longitudinal analysis by Daniel Webster, Richard P. Barth & Barbara Needell (pp.614-632); Data mining in child welfare by Dick Schoech, Andrew Quinn & Joan R. Rycraft; Additional sources of information on using administrative data resources (pp.651-655).

Resignation, radicalism or realism? What role for non-government agencies in the changing context of child and family welfare?, by J. O'Brien, Children Australia, vol. 25, no.1, 2000, pp. 4-9.

Non-government welfare agencies have a history of both service provision and advocating for social justice and welfare reform. Current economic and social changes have had an impact on our understanding of the role of welfare and the state. There has been a significant reconfiguration of community services, with important implications for the present and future role of welfare agencies. This article seeks to identify questions confronting agencies that seek to maintain a commitment to social action by examining an 18-month child abuse prevention campaign conducted by a coalition of agencies in NSW. Significant insights and challenges that emerged from the campaign are identified. Questions about the role of non government agencies are revisited and the value of welfare agencies' contribution to social equity reasserted.

Child witnesses

Investigative interviews of child witnesses in Sweden, by A, Cederborg, Y. Orbach & K.J. Sternberg, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no. 10, 2000, pp. 1355-1361.

This study evaluates the structure and informativeness of interviews with alleged victims of sexual abuse aged 4-13 years. It was found that many of the interview techniques relied on option-posing and suggestive prompts which may reduce the accuracy of the information obtained. This in turn may lead to a reduction of the forensic admissibility of the children's statements. The study suggests that there is a need for interview techniques that enhance the quality of the information provided by the young victims.

Queensland Law Reform Commission reports on children's evidence, by H. Jackson, Rights Now! (Newsletter of the National Children's and Youth Law Centre), Sept 2000, pp. 19-20.

In 1997 the Queensland Law Reform Commission was requested to review the capacity of the judicial system to properly receive the evidence of children. This article presents a summary of the recommendations made in Part 1 of the Commission's Report on the Evidence of Children, dealing with four particular areas: the power to restrict inappropriate cross-examination; the competency of children to give evidence; the situation where an accused is unrepresented; and the situation where allegations of persistent sexual abuse are involved.

Communities

Communities that care: a prevention approach to build the resilience of young people in our communities: report of the study visit of Communities that Care initiatives in the US and UK, by G. Fiske, Melbourne, Vic, Youth and Family Services Division, Department of Human Services, 2000.

Communities That Care (CTC) is a local community-based prevention strategy that aims to bring together community leaders and agencies to work on preventing social problems including drug abuse, juvenile delinquency and crime, depression and homelessness. The strategy is based on more than 10 years of research into the social factors which exist in the community that place young people at increased risk of developing problem behaviours during their adolescence. It is being applied successfully in more than 400 communities in the United States and is being trialled in the United Kingdom. The report gives the reader an overview of the context for the Communities That Care development, current overseas policy and program implementations of Communities That Care by government and other agencies, and the evaluation of the Communities That Care effectiveness by funding and other bodies.

Corporal punishment

Changing public attitudes towards corporal punishment: the effects of statutory reform in Sweden, by J.V. Roberts, Child Abuse & Neglect , vol. 24, no. 8, 2000, pp. 1027-1035.

This article examines the argument that a statutory ban on physical punishment changes public attitudes towards the use of this form of discipline by parents. It was found that the Swedish ban on corporal punishment did not affect public attitudes. It is more likely that changing public attitudes influenced the legal reform rather than vice versa.

Corporal punishment and primary prevention of physical abuse, by M.A. Straus, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no. 9, 2000, pp. 1109-1114.

In this study the author reviewed the October 1999 special edition of Child Abuse & Neglect on "A National Call to Action: Working Toward the Elimination of Child Maltreatment". The author was looking for literature in relation to the corporal punishment of children by their parents. None of the articles in the special edition mentioned this issue. The author concludes that the "National Call for Action" should include steps to end the use of corporal punishment as a mode of discipline.

Harsh physical discipline in childhood and violence in later romantic involvements: the mediating role of problem behaviors, by S.P. Swinford, A. DeMaris & S.A. Cernkovich, Journal of Marriage & the Family, vol. 62, no. 2, 2000, pp. 508-519.

This study explores the link between experiencing harsh physical discipline in childhood and engaging in problem behaviors during adolescence and young adulthood and what effect these experiences have on experiencing and perpetrating intimate violence. The results suggest that harsh physical punishment in childhood is directly related to greater perpetration of violence against an intimate partner later in life. It was also found that the enactment of problem behaviors in adolescence and young adulthood predicted an increased level of perpetration of violence against an intimate partner.

Disabled children

Maltreatment and disabilities: a population-based epidemiological study, by P.M. Sullivan & J.F. Knutson, Child Abuse & Neglect , vol. 24, no. 10, 2000, pp. 1257-1273.

This study found that children with disabilities are 3.4 times more likely to be maltreated than their nondisabled peers. The study also found a significant association between the presence of a disability that affected the child's educational performance and maltreatment.

Is sexual abuse of children with disabilities disclosed? A retrospective analysis of child disability and the likelihood of sexual abuse among those attending Norwegian hospitals, by M.H. Kvam, Child Abuse & Neglect , vol. 24, no. 8, 2000, pp. 1073-1084.

This research aimed to investigate if disabled children in Norway where more likely to be sexually abused than non-disabled children. A questionnaire was sent to all Norwegian pediatric hospitals in the years 1994-1996. The questionnaire addressed the issue the number of children presenting for a medical examination for possible sexual abuse and the number of these children who were disabled, the degree and description of the disability, the age and gender of the patient. It was found that a smaller number of children with disabilities presented with the suspicion of sexual abuse than was expected. The reasons for this finding are discussed.

The prevalence of disabilities and maltreatment among runaway children, by P.M. Sullivan & J.F. Knutson, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no. 10, 2000, pp. 1275-1288.

This research was conducted to determine the relationship between disability, maltreatment, family stress factors, academic achievement, school attendance, domestic violence and runaways. Young people with disabilities were found to be at an increased risk of becoming runaways than their nondisabled peers. However, the research found that young people with disabilities are an unidentified and unrecognized group among runaways.

Children exposed to domestic violence: current issues in research, intervention, prevention and policy development, Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Traum,a vol. 3, no. 1, 2000. This special issue contains the following articles:

• Emerging issues for children exposed to domestic violence by Peter G. Jaffe, Marlies Sudermann & Robert Geffner (pp.1-8);
• Making the invisible victims of violence against women visible through university/community partnerships by John W. Fantuzzo, Wanda K. Mohr & Megan J. Noone (pp.9-24);
• Trauma and parenting in battered women: an addition to an ecological model of parenting by Alytia A. Levendosky & Sandra A. Graham-Bermann (pp.25-36);
• Consider the children: research informing interventions for children exposed to domestic violence by Debra J. Pepler, Rose Catallo & Timothy E. Moore (pp.37-58);
• Witnessing parental violence as a traumatic experience shaping the abusive personality by Donald G. Dutton (pp.59-68);
• The neglected variable of physiology in domestic violence by Wanda K. Mohr & John W. Fantuzzo (pp.69-84);
• Posttraumatic response and children exposed to parental violence by B. B. Robbie Rossman & Joyce Ho (pp.85-106);
• The relevance of narrative research with children who witness war and children who witness woman abuse by Helene Berman (pp.107-126);
• Evaluation of the London (Ontario) community group treatment programme for children who have witnessed woman abuse by Marlies Sudermann, Larry Marshall & Susan Loosely (pp.127-146);
• Helping children who reside at shelters for battered women: lessons learned by Nanette Stephens, Renee McDonald & Ernest N. Jouriles (pp.147-160);
• Assessment and intervention for PTSD in children exposed to violence by Patricia K. Kerig, [et al]...(pp.161-184);
• Mothers and children together: a family group treatment approach by Stephanie Rabenstein & Peter Lehmann (pp.185-206);
• Child protection workers and battered women's advocates working together to end violence against women and children by Carole Echlin & Bina Osthoff (pp.207-220);
• The role of attitudes and awareness in anti-violence education by N. Zoe Hilton (pp.221-238);
• Controversies in family preservation programs by Richard J. Gelles (pp.239-252);
• Aligning with the battered woman to protect both mother and child: direct practice and policy implications by Colleen Friend (pp.253-268);
• Innovative approaches to child custody and domestic violence in New Zealand: the effects of law reform on the discourses of battering by Ruth Busch & Neville Robertson (pp.269-300);
• A differentiated legal approach to the effects of spousal abuse on children: a Canadian context by Nicholas Bala (pp.301-328);
• Custody and visitation trends in the United States in domestic violence cases by Nancy K. D. Lemon (pp.329-344);
• Collaborating on family safety: challenges for children's and women's advocates by Sandra K. Beeman & Jeffrey L. Edleson (pp.345-361).

Family support services

Embracing what works: building communities that strengthen families, by D. Scott, Children Australia, vol. 25, no.2, 2000, 4-9.

There are three conceptual building blocks to assist us in building communities that strengthen families: an ecological way of understanding families and communities; exciting new research on prevention; and the development of some highly innovative programs. The re-emergence of an ecological understanding of families broadens our focus from the psychological interior of family life to encompass the social exterior of family life. This social exterior includes the micro level of kith and kin and neighbourhood networks right through to the macro level of globalisation and economic restructuring. In relation to research, recent meta-analysis demonstrates that the same set of risk and protective factors at the levels of the individual child, the family, the peer group, the school environment and the broader community are associated with the presence or absence of major problems such as child behavioural and mental health problems, school failure, drug use, and child abuse, to name a few of the problems which confront us. Creative and innovative programs are emerging in communities across the land. A strengths based approach requires us to identify the core elements of successful programs and explore their potential to be disseminated and transplanted in different community contexts. Drawing on a few examples of successful programs, both of the home grown and the imported variety, the author identifies some of their common qualities as well as explores some of the challenges which need to be faced to sustain and disseminate them. Strength based strategies to rebuild communities must construct bridges across both the different levels of government and the different sectors of the service system, and involve a broad range of people such as economists, business and union leaders, social planners, professionals in health, education and welfare services, and local community members.

Family diversity and family policy : strengthening families for America's children, by E.E. Sparks & L.D. McCubbin, - Boston, Mass. , London, Kluwer Academic, c1999.

"Family Diversity and Family Policy describes the dimensions of diversity which characterize the contemporary American family and discusses the implications for public policy and associated intervention programs linked to this diversity. The authors contend that if the programs and policies available to support families are to be maximally useful, they need to reflect the diversity of the families they intend to help."--BOOK JACKET

A preventative services program model for preserving and supporting families over time, by P. McCartt Hess, B.G. McGowan & M. Botsko, Child Welfare, vol. 79, no. 3, 2000, pp. 227-265.

This article reports on selected findings from a three-year study of a sample of families served by the Center for Family Life's preventive services program. The study examined the nature and results of the services the families received.

Programs for the promotion of family wellness and the prevention of child maltreatment: a meta-analytic review, by J. MacLeod & G. Nelson, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no. 9, 2000, pp. 1127-1149.

Fifty-six programs which were designed to promote family wellness and prevent child maltreatment were reviewed. Meta-analysis, using a 3-step model testing procedure was employed. The findings indicate that child maltreatment can be prevented and family wellness can be promoted.

Toward building a typology for the evaluation of services in family support programs, by V. Manalo & W. Meezan, Child Welfare, vol. 79, no. 4, 2000, pp. 405-429.

This article briefly reviews the development, philosophy and practice principles of family support programs. Typologies currently in use to classify these programs are examined. The difficulties these classifications pose for program evaluators are discussed. A new typology is introduced and the potential for this typology for the evaluation of family support services is discussed.

Foster care

Children and youth in foster care: disentangling the relationship between problem behaviors and number of placements, by R.R. Newton, A.J. Litrownik & J.A. Landsverk, Child Abuse & Neglect , vol. 24, no. 10, 2000, pp. 1363-1374.

This study examines the relationship between the number of foster care placements and behavior problems among a cohort of children in foster care. The results suggest that there is a relationship between a volatile placement history and both internalizing and externalizing behavior of foster children. Children who experience a large number of changes in placement are at a high risk of exhibiting these behaviors.

The heterogeneity of children and their experiences in kinship care, by L.K. Leslie, J. Landsverk & M.B. Horton, Child Welfare, vol. 79, no. 3, 2000, pp. 315-334.

Although an increasing number of children in need of out-of-home care are being placed in kinship care there have been few longitudinal studies done to determine if these children constitute a homogeneous group or a diversity of subgroups. The results of this study indicates that children in kinship care have significantly different sociodemographic and maltreatment histories. They also are exposed to a diverse range of placement experiences.

Understanding reentry to out-of-home care for reunified infants, by L. Frame, J.D. Berrick & M.L. Brodowski, Child Welfare , vol. 79, no. 4, 2000, pp. 339-369.

A significant number of children who have been placed in out-of-home care, although returned to their family of origin, reenter care. This trend reflects the continuing problems experienced by the family and the weaknesses of the child welfare system. This study reviewed the case records of 88 randomly selected infants who had been reunified with their families. It was found that 32% of those infants had reentered care within 4 to 6 years of the reunification. It is therefore of vital importance to identify the factors that predict reentry into care. The policy and practice implications of this study are discussed.

Mandatory reporting

Opinions among mandated reporters toward child maltreatment reporting policies, by S. Delaronde, G. King & R. Bendel, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no. 7, 2000, pp. 901-910.

This study investigates the opinions of professional, mandated reporters (social workers, pediatricians, and physician assistants) in their support for the existing child maltreatment mandated reporting policy and an alternative reporting policy. It was found that the majority of mandated reporters did not consistently report all suspected cases of maltreatment and support for an alternative policy varied among the different groups.

Medical practitioners' obligation to report suspected child abuse under scrutiny in South Australia, by S. Castell-McGregor, Rights Now! (Newsletter of the National Children's and Youth Law Centre), Apr, 2000, p. 10.

Issues raised by the guilty plea of a South Australian doctor who failed to comply with mandatory reporting requirements in a case of suspected child abuse are addressed in this article. Factors which may inhibit mandatory reporting are identified.

Mental health professionals' experiences reporting suspected child abuse and maltreatmen, by B. Weinstein, M. Levine & N. Kogan, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no. 10, 2000, pp. 1317-1328.

This study examines the experiences of mental health professionals who have reported cases of suspected child abuse concerning their clients. The study discussed issues such as when the abuse was suspected by the clinician and when it was reported, if the client was informed of the report and the effect of the report on the client/clinician relationship.

Mass media

The gender neglect and textual abuse of children in the print media, by C. Goddard & B.J. Saunders, Child Abuse Review, vol. 9, no.1, 2000, pp. 37-48.

While the majority of analysis of child abuse, child protection and the media has considered what has been called the unevenness of reporting, little attention has been paid to detailed analysis of the language used to describe child abuse and child victims in media texts. The research reported in this article involves the examination of the coverage of child abuse cases in three major Australian newspapers. In some circumstances the gender of a child who has been abused or is at risk of abuse, is identified and then lost. The pronoun 'it' is substituted and, as a result, the child becomes an object. Furthermore, through the language chosen, some stories redefine child sexual abuse as a less serious, almost consensual relationship between adults. These phenomena, which the authors have termed 'gender neglect' and lexical redescription or 'textual abuse', may serve to reduce the impact of abuse on the reader.

Mass media and disclosures of child abuse in the perspective of secondary prevention: putting ideas into practice, by C. Hoefnagels & A. Mudde, Child Abuse & Neglect , vol. 24, no. 8, 2000, pp. 1091-1101.

Most child abuse prevention programs are based on interpersonal communication. Examples of mass media campaigns in this area are rare and the reports of these campaigns generally focus on the outcomes. This article aims to provide an insight into the developmental process of a mass media campaign in Holland which was developed to enhance children's disclosure of abuse. The article describes the various stages in the development and implementation of the campaign.

Social conservatism vs social justice: the portrayal of child abuse in the press in Victoria, Australia, by P. Mendes, Child Abuse Review, vol. 9, no.1, 2000, pp. 49-61.

This article examines the role that the media have played in the child abuse and child protection debate. The author argues that media coverage of child abuse has had both positive and negative consequences. On the one hand, media campaigns have helped to produce more equitable and more effective child protection policies and practices, while on the other hand, much media coverage has tended to be sensationalist. In this article attention is drawn to the local coverage of recent high profile child abuse cases and debates within the two daily Melbourne newspapers, and the different approaches that each newspaper has taken.

Mothers

Emotion recognition ability in mothers at high and low risk for child physical abuse, by K.A. Balge & J.S. Milner, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no. 10, 2000, pp. 1289-1298.

This study compared high-risk and low-risk mothers to determine if there was a difference in the number of emotion recognition errors when they attempt to recognize emotions in children and adults. Although, high-risk mothers showed a tendency to make more errors on the visual and auditory emotion recognition tasks, the trend was not significant. The study found that high-risk mothers reported more parenting stress and depression and less ego-strength.

Impact of child noncompliance on stress appraisals, attributions, and disciplinary choices in mothers at high and low risk for child physical abuse, by C.A. Dopke & J.S. Milner, Child Abuse & Neglect , vol. 24, no. 4, 2000, pp. 493-504.

The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of repeated child noncompliance on stress appraisals, attributions and disciplinary choices in high- and low-risk mothers. It was found that high-risk, compared to low-risk, mothers perceived more threat and uncontrollability, rated child behaviors as more stressful and reported higher levels of negative affect after repeated noncompliance. However, risk group differences in disciplinary choices were not found.

Munchausen syndrome by proxy

Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy: a care and protection social worker's perspective, by L. Roberts & V. Carmichael, Social Work Now, no.14, 1999, pp. 15-22.

Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is the diagnosis used to describe a variation of child abuse whereby the parent or adult caregiver fabricates a medical history or induces symptoms in the child, resulting in unnecessary examinations, treatments, hospitalisations and even death. This article is written from a child protection social worker's perspective and focuses on issues relating to the investigation of child abuse. The authors have been involved in seven cases where Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy has been suspected and, in some cases, diagnosed. This article provides a perpetrator's and child's profile, information on medical and social history of the child and siblings in the family, and a case study.

Parents/parent education

Commentary: issues in training parents to manage children with behavior problems, by R.A. Barkley,Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry , vol. 39, no. 8, 2000, pp. 1004-1007.

Research has shown that training parents in the use of contingency management methods is an excellent way to help them better manage their children's disruptive behavior. Whilst approaches to parent training may vary, they all seem to share a common set of principles. These can be summarized as follows: it is important to reduce any positive reinforcement (such as parental attention) being inadvertently provided to the child for engaging in disruptive or defiant behavior, while simultaneously increasing the reinforcement parents provide for prosocial or compliant behavior; and applying punishment contingent on the display of disruptive or unacceptable behavior, while making parental use of consequences more predictable, contingent, and immediate.

Bending like a river: the Parenting between Cultures program, by C. Kayrooz & C. Blunt, Children Australia, vol. 25, no.3, 2000, pp. 17-22.

While there are many parent education programs in Australia, there have been few developed to cater specifically to the needs of migrant groups. Attempting to fill this gap, a parenting program was developed and trialed for three ethnic communities. The program addressed key parenting issues found to be of relevance to members of culturally and linguistically diverse groups, including: intergenerational conflict arising from different acculturation rates; the protective factor of a bicultural parenting identity knowledge of the school system; discipline options and child abuse laws; and how to gain support. The program was subsequently independently evaluated. Quantitative and qualitative information from both the process and outcomes of the program revealed that it was effective, particularly in fostering an understanding of the impact of culture on parenting, knowledge of the school system, non-physical disciplinary methods and child abuse laws. This study may be one of the first targeted ethnic parenting programs to be independently evaluated in Australia.

The assessment of parenting in child protection cases, by J.G. Barber & P. Delfabbro, Research on Social Work Practice, vol. 10, no.2, 2000, pp. 243-25.

This article summarises the findings of a pilot project conducted by the New Zealand Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Services (CYPFS) into the application of standardised parenting measures within statutory child protection agencies. The primary objective of the study was to trial a procedure that could be incorporated into the work of CYPFS' social workers in order to monitor the performance of the service against the objectives of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989. The primary purpose of the pilot was development of a measurement procedure that could be incorporated into outcome studies in the future. The study also sought to demonstrate how standardised instruments could be used as an aid to clinical decision making.

Parental monitoring: a reinterpretation, by H. Stattin & M. Kerr, Child Development, vol. 71, no. 4, 2000, pp. 1072-1085.

This study questions whether monitoring their children's movements is the best way for parents to know what their children are up to. The authors suggest that disclosure from the child is a more reliable source of knowledge. The authors conclude that a new prescription for parental behavior must rest on an understanding of the factors that determine and encourage child disclosure.

Research report summary: Growing up in Australia: the role of parents in promoting positive adolescent development, by M. Frederico, C. Davis & J. Barber, Asia Pacific Families: APFAM Journal, vol. 1 no.1 Jul 1999, pp. 61-64.

This is the executive summary of the authors' report published in 1999. It describes a study which provided the opportunity to ask parents and adolescents their views on the Australian experience of parenting adolescents and to hear from them what they find supportive in the relationship. The study aimed to use the results to inform policies and programs on child abuse prevention and parenting education. Apart from the views of parents and adolescents, the views of the service providers are also outlined.

Attitudes of low-income parents toward seeking help with parenting: implications for practice, by J. Keller & K. McDade, Child Welfare , vol. 79, no. 3, 2000, pp. 285-312.

This study surveyed low-income parents to assess their attitudes toward parenting and to determine their help seeking behavior. The results showed that low income parents were less likely to seek help with parenting than higher income parents. Those that sought help used family, books and videos, telephone helplines, and friends most frequently. The least likely sources of help were child protective services, school personnel, clergy, and social service/ counselling agencies. Only one in four of the participants indicated that they would use a parent support or education group program.

The assessment relationship: interactions between social workers and parents in child protection assessments, by S. Holland,The British Journal of Social Work, vol. 30, no. 2, 2000, pp. 149-163.

This paper explores an extremely important aspect of child protection practice: the comprehensive assessment. Many social workers base their assessment decisions on this verbal interaction between themselves and the parents. It is therefore particularly important for both parties to agree on a plausible explanation for the family situation as this may effect the outcome of the assessment. The possible implications of these findings for assessment practices are outlined.

Child maltreatment: differences in perceptions between parents in low income and middle income neighbourhoods, by R. Shor, The British Journal of Social Work, vol. 30, no. 2, 2000, pp. 165-178.

This study, conducted in Israel, compares the perceptions of child maltreatment by parents in a low income neighbourhood and a middle income neighbourhood. The findings indicated that not only the beliefs regarding effective and appropriate child-rearing practices differed but also the rationale behind these beliefs differed. The findings also indicated that parental practices which could be considered as maltreatment in one socio-ecological context may not be perceived as such in another. The implications of these findings for child protection workers is discussed.

The dangerousness of parents who have abnormal illness behaviour, by R. Meadow, Child Abuse Review, vol. 9, no. 1, 2000, pp. 62-67.

This article discusses the difficulties associated with assessing and evaluating the dangerousness of parents who are also child abuse perpetrators. It examines in particular the possibility of rehabilitating the abused child, and the safety of future children born to that perpetrator.

Resilience

Creating places where resilience thrives - Bloomington, IN, National Educational Service, 1999.

This issue contains the following articles: Beyond individual resilience by David Osher [et al]...(pp.2-3); I was wrong about group homes by Eric Edmonson (pp.5-6); Lost boys: why our sons turn to violence and how we can save them by James Garbarino (pp.7-10); Easier said than done: shifting from a risk to a resiliency paradigm by Sybil Wolin (pp.11-14); If you build it, they will come: a nontraditional approach for systems change by Ken Reavis [et al]...(pp.15-17); Building resilient families and communities: an interview with Karl Dennis by Kimberly T. Kendziora (pp.18-21); Exercises in a resilient system of care, cultural competency, and the wraparound process by Vera O. Pina & John VanDenBerg (pp.22-30); Tapping into resiliency: the kaleidoscope approach by Nick Dwyer (pp.31-33); Developing relationships that build resiliency: including peers in the wraparound process by Vernessa Gipson, Lillian Ortiz-Self & Deirdre Cobb-Roberts (pp.34-37); Growing resilience: creating opportunities for resilience to thrive by David Osher [et al]...(pp.38-45); "It's so great to have an adult friend": a teacher-student mentorship program for at-risk youth by Julia Ellis, Jan Small-McGinley & Lucy De Fabrizio (pp.46-50); Coming out resilient: strategies to help gay and lesbian adolescents by Tania DuBeau & David E. Emenheiser (pp.51-54); Answering a traditional call with a community response by Roslyn Holliday Moore & Araminta Rivera (pp.55-59); IDEA: parental protections under the law by Sherry Kolbe (pp.60-62); Meeting the needs of children and youth with challenging behaviors by Lyndal M. Bullock & Ann Fitzsimons-Lovett (pp.63-68); The Sacred Child project: a new definition of "formal" services by Jon Eagle [et al]...(pp.69-72).

Kids of survival : real-life lessons in resilience - Bloomington, IN, National Educational Service, 1997.

This issue contains the following articles: Betting on me by Alan Meredith Blankstein & Lyndal M. Bullock (pp.2-4); Thinking on good things by Franklin T. Hysten (pp.5-7); The "bad dude" story and keys to my survival by Warren Rhodes & Elva Edwards (pp.8-13); Overcoming four myths that prevent fostering resilience by Sylvia Rockwell (pp.14-17); Tara's death: a lesson in love, grief and resilience by Thomas Reilly & Eleanor Guetzloe (pp.18-23); Experiencing professional renewal through nurturing young survivors by Linda Bell (pp.24-26); Finding meaning in a socially toxic environment by James Garbarino (pp.27-30); How to be a turnaround teacher by Bonnie Benard (pp.31-35); I am, I have, I can: what families worldwide taught us about resilience by Edith Grotberg (pp.36-39); From risk to resiliency: a history of the research by Tim Duffey (pp.40-43); Using academic strategies to build resilience by Theodore Pikes, Brenda Burrell & Connie Holliday (pp.44-47); Building resilience with the self-control curriculum by Martin Henley (pp.48-51); Meeting the needs of children and youth with challenging behaviors by Lyndal M. Bullock & Ann Fitzsimons-Lovett (pp.52-60); Shaping a brighter future by uncovering "survivor's pride" by Sybil Wolin & Steven J. Wolin (pp.61-64).

Patterns of children's coping with life stress: implications for clinicians, by D. Donaldson, M.J. Prinstein & M. Danovsky, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, vol. 70, no. 3, 2000, pp. 351-359.

Boys and girls, aged 9-17 years, completed a coping checklist which listed four types of stressors: school; parents/family; siblings; peer/interpersonal. Similar patterns of coping strategies were found across the various stressors. However, it was found that the older adolescents used a broader range of strategies. The implications of this for clinical practice are discussed.

Strengthening family resilience, by Froma Walsh. New York, Guilford Press, c1998.

Based on the conviction that all families have the potential for repair and growth, this book offers a fresh alternative to clinicians' prevalent focus on family dysfunction. Drawing upon extensive clinical and research experience, Froma Walsh presents an innovative framework for therapeutic and preventive work with couples and families who are distressed, vulnerable, or at risk. Filled with suggestions for strength-promoting, collaborative interventions that can help family relationships rebound from the worst of times, the book provides important clinical insights for professionals and students in a range of mental health and human service settings. This volume is a useful guide for family therapists and counselors, psychologists, social workers, and other social service and health care professionals. Its coverage of both theoretical and practical concerns also makes it an invaluable text for advanced undergraduate and graduate-level courses.

Valuing families: social work practice with families from a strengths perspective, by T.J. Early & L.F. GlenMaye, Social Work, vol. 45, no. 2, 2000, pp. 118-130.

Historically, most approaches to social work with families have focused on individual pathology and problem solving or have considered problems of a family member to be symptoms of family dysfunction. This the problem-focused approach. In contrast, another approach to social work has been based on the growth-focused approach. This approach is focused on growth, function, and healing of the family unit and individual family members. This article describes both problem-focused and growth-focused approaches to practice and presents a third approach. This is the strengths approach to practice that values families and builds resilience. Assumptions of the strengths approach are discussed.

Sequelae

Childhood sexual abuse history and role reversal in parenting, by P. C. Alexander, L. Teti & C. L. Anderson, Child Abuse & Neglect , vol. 24, no. 6, 2000, pp. 829-838.

This study explored the interactive effects of sexual abuse history and relationship satisfaction on a specific type of parent-child role reversal. This role reversal is defined as an emotional overdependence upon one's child.

Linking childhood sexual abuse and abusive parenting: the mediating role of maternal anger, by D. DiLillo, G.C. Tremblay & L. Peterson, Child Abuse & Neglec,t vol. 24, no. 6, 2000, pp. 767-779.

The first aim of this study is to explore the link between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and later parenting characteristics, in particular the potential to physically abuse one's own children. The second aim of the study is to examine maternal anger as a possible mediator of the link between CSA and the potential for child physical abuse as an adult. It was found CSA may be a risk factor for physically abusive parenting, while anger appears to play a significant role in mediating this relationship.

Multi-type maltreatment and the long-term adjustment of adults, by D.J. Higgins & M.P. McCabe, Child Abuse Review, vol. 9, no.1, 2000, pp. 6-18.

Multi type maltreatment refers to the experience of more than one form of child maltreatment. This paper focuses on the intersection between sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological maltreatment, neglect and witnessing family violence. The authors define the concept of multi type maltreatment, review the existing literature and present new empirical data. In particular they explore the association between multi type maltreatment and adjustment. It was hypothesised that a large degree of overlap occurred in the experience of the types of maltreatment. Family characteristics, particularly family cohesion and adaptability, discriminated between respondents reporting single type and multi type maltreatment. Greater adjustment problems were associated with reports of a larger number of different maltreatment types.

Pregnancy to parenting: issues and care for adult survivors of child sexual abuse, by J. Hall, Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre Newsletter, no. 2, 2000, pp. 21-23.

A pamphlet, 'Pregnancy to parenting: a Supportive Guide for Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse', was produced as a result of a public education seminar to mark the joint work of the Northern Centre Against Sexual Assault and the Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre. This article reports on some of the issues raised at the seminar which focused on how childhood abuse affects the ability to do well as a parent. These include: child sexual abuse and a link to post natal depression; how mothers disclose abuse; and art therapy for post natal depression.

Relationships between different types of maltreatment during childhood and adjustment in adulthood, by D.J. Higgins & M.P. McCabe, Child Maltreatment, vol. 5, no. 3, 2000, pp. 261-272.

There is a gap in the research that evaluates the relationship between multiple forms of childhood abuse and psychological adjustment in adulthood. This study aims to fill that gap by examining the interrelationships between five different types of child maltreatment (sexual abuse; physical abuse; psychological maltreatment; neglect; and witnessing family violence) and current psychological adjustment in adulthood. The participants were a community sample of 175 women and men. The relationships between the reported experience of these forms of maltreatment in childhood, family characteristics during childhood, and current psychological adjustment were assessed. It was found that family characteristics predicted maltreatment scores and adjustment, and maltreatment scores predicted adjustment after controlling for family environment. High correlations between scores on all five maltreatment scales were noted. Results highlight the need to assess all forms of maltreatment when looking at relationships of maltreatment to adjustment. Childhood familial environment was an important factor in the long-term adjustment of adults.

Male survivors of sexual abuse, by E. Fraser, comp. ISA Journal, Autumn 2000, pp. 23-45.

Adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse are starting to acknowledge the impact it is having on their lives. This is the contention of this article which discusses the effects on self esteem, feelings, body awareness, and intimacy in childhood and adulthood and the effects on work, the survivor's family, parenting, and sexuality in adulthood. Myths and realities of childhood sexual abuse are examined and ways of coping with denial and interpersonal relationships are addressed. The author's personal experience as a mother whose son was sexually abused by his father is presented.

Shame, anger and PTSD: the misunderstood emotions of male survivors of sexual child abuse, by C. Dawson, VAFT News (Victorian Association of Family Therapists), vol. 22, no.4, 2000, pp. 3-8.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role shame plays with men who were sexually abused in childhood and who also display angry and aggressive behaviour toward others. Theories on the differences between guilt and shame, anger and shame, and anger and aggression are examined. The effects of traumatic stress disorder are discussed. It is argued that in dealing with men's anger, aggression and violence, the therapist should consider the key factors of male socialisation, shame and post traumatic stress.

Social support, attachment and psychopathology in high risk formerly maltreated adults, by R.T. Muller & K.E. Lemieux, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no. 7, 2000, pp. 883-900.

This study aims to explore the relationships between social support, attachment security and psychopathology in an adult sample of survivors of childhood abuse. The findings indicate that among survivors of child maltreatment, a negative view of self emerges as the most substantial predictor of psychopathology when examined in combination with other relevant risk factors.

History of physical and/or sexual abuse and current suicidality in college women, by R.R. Thakkar, P.M. Gutierrez & C.J. Kuczen, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 24, no. 10, 2000, pp. 1345-1354.

This study examines the relationship between a history of physical and/or sexual abuse and current suicidality in college-age women. The study also looks at the relationship between abuse status and attitudes about life and death.

Young and troubled: childhood abuse, substance use and suicidal intent, by G. Mammen, Australian Family Physician, vol. 28, no.12, 1999, pp. 1288-1289.

Australia's high rate of suicide and substance use among young people is of great community concern as evidenced by the government's involvement in programs such as the National Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy and the National Drug Strategy. In this editorial, the author discusses the long lasting consequences on adult health of child abuse, the importance of increasing community awareness of depression, and the need for clinicians to incorporate into their practice framework a social model of health alongside biological approaches.

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