This research explored the experiences of care leavers, who lived in institutions (such as Children's Homes and orphanages) or other forms of out-of-home care between 1930 and 1989. Participants included representatives of three sub-cohorts: Forgotten Australians, members of the Stolen Generations and Child Migrants. Employing mixed methods, this research used three forms of data collection: surveys (n = 669), interviews (n = 92) and focus groups (n = 77). This research concentrated on participants’ experiences in care, leaving care, life outcomes after care (education, employment, health, wellbeing and relationships), coping strategies and resilience, current service needs and usage and participation in organisations as well as the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Most participants experienced extreme neglect and abuse while in care. Leaving care, often after years of institutionalisation, was generally a frightening and demoralising process. Despite these challenges, a number of participants demonstrated remarkable resilience. For many, however, these experiences had negative consequences in adulthood including serious physical and mental health problems. This often made adult learning, paid employment and positive relationships virtually impossible. Most survivors carry high levels of trauma and complex unmet needs. Implications for policy, practice and services are drawn from key findings.

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

This paper presents a scoping review of the literature on child participatory research in Australia published in academic journals between 2000 and 2018. The review focused on research designed to engage with children and young people in the development, implementation and evaluation of services. A total of 207 papers were identified and distributed across eight service sectors: child protection and family law, community, disability, education, health, housing and homelessness, juvenile justice and mental health. The papers were reviewed against Shier’s participation matrix, demonstrating that almost all of the identified papers included children only as participants who contributed data to adult researchers. Only a small number of papers involved children and young people in the other phases of research, such as designing research questions, analysis and dissemination. There is a clear interest in the engagement of children and young people in service design and decision-making in Australia. This paper is intended to serve as a catalyst for discussion on where there are gaps and where further Australian research is needed.

Notions of childhood have been debated through time and place. This paper works from the understanding of childhood as an adult imposed, socially constructed and culturally transmitted concept. This paper provides a typology often ways in which adults construct children and childhood. The authors assert that in the process of defining children, adults necessarily and simultaneously define their own position/s in relation to children. Thus for each of the ten constructs of childhood, the authors present ten types of relationship adults consciously or unconsciously impose upon themselves when they work from these constructions. The authors intend that the typology presented creates a beginning tool for conscious, critical reflection of how we are perceiving children and how this perception may drive our work and relationships with them. It may also provide a reflective tool for imagining working differently with children in ways which better serve them (and us!).

In early 2020, the world as we knew it began to change dramatically and rapidly with the COVID-19 outbreak. Social distancing restrictions and lockdown measures have been the most effective course of action and an inarguably imperative approach at this time. However, in trying to keep the global population safe, social distancing measures unwittingly placed children already experiencing maltreatment and disadvantage in harm’s way. This paper will consider the evidence base which attests to the importance of considering the accumulation of adversity when seeking to understand risk and impact of child maltreatment and disadvantage. Given the unique and unprecedented circumstances which have accompanied the COVID-19 outbreak, and the dearth of research pertaining to the impact of pandemics on child welfare, the paper draws on an emerging body of literature about the effect of natural disasters, conflict and significant global events on child maltreatment. The paper synthesises the research to date in order to call attention to the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children already experiencing abuse and neglect. The paper concludes with an outline of the implications for practice in the helping professions.

In 2005 the Institute of Child Protection Studies, Australian Catholic University, was approached by the ACT Government and asked to evaluate the ‘child centredness’ of its child protection policies and procedures. An early review of the literature discovered some use of the term ‘child centred’ in government documents but very little clear indication of its meaning in the theoretical and empirical literature. This paper canvasses the literature and develops a set of principles for child centred practice which may apply to all child and family agencies. In developing these principles, the researchers identified four key themes which provide a broad, overarching framework for child centred approaches. These themes emphasise the importance of: recognising critical time frames in childhood and adolescence; taking into account the developmental needs of children and young people in all practice contexts; providing children and young people with appropriate opportunities to participate in decisions that affect them; and promoting a collaborative approach to influencing children’s multiple environments. The researchers claim these principles can be used to provide the basis for evaluating policies and practices and for ongoing training.

The media coverage of foster care in Australia is replete with adoration for foster carers who look after disadvantaged and difficult children and youth. As this article is being written, New South Wales is holding a ‘foster care week’ with enhanced media coverage and praise for foster carers, the recruitment of new foster carers and acclaim for the ‘foster carer of the year’. Yet, there is another side to foster care that offers less than ideal circumstances for children in care. There is the worrying issue of multiple placements, the problem with children and young people running away from foster care before they reach the legal age for discharge, and evidence of increased incidence of poor educational attainment and involvement in juvenile offending for young people in foster care. In addition, there are cases of foster children being abused by foster carers. As adults, former foster-care children and youth are over-represented among the homeless, in adult correction centres, the unemployed and the users of mental health services. This article documents these negative outcomes of entering the foster-care system, and asks whether family (or non-relative) foster care can survive this evidence. For too many children and young people, family foster care may not provide better outcomes than less-than-optimal parental care from which the children were removed. An alternative is to reduce the use of family foster care and increase intensive support and parenting education services for birth parents who have limited parenting capacity. The aim should be to limit the number of children being taken into care.

A research-led reform strategy is urgently required in the field of child protection in Australia. While international research can be a valuable resource, a strong research base which is relevant to this country’s needs, legislation and service systems is essential. Two recent audits of Australian research completed over the past decade – one on out-of-home care and the other on child protection more broadly – have highlighted significant gaps in existing research. There is a number of important topics that have not been addressed – as well as an over-reliance on small-scale, qualitative studies and a very low level of funding for research. This paper explores these gaps and identifies crucial areas for development, encompassing: the development of a national child protection and out-of-home care research agenda; adequate funding for research, especially for multi-site, cross-jurisdictional studies; and closer collaboration between researchers, policymakers and practitioners to close the gap between what we know and what we do.

This article reviews the interdisciplinary field of interpersonal neurobiology and its view of developmental trauma and wellbeing. Issues related to the mind, brain and relationships are discussed along with a working definition of both the mind and mental health.

In recent times, research that has traditionally concerned itself with children ‘at risk’ has been supplemented by studies which have concentrated on the characteristics of those children who display resilient behaviours despite the presence of negative individual, family or environmental factors. A range of internal and external ‘protective factors’ that contribute to childhood resilience has been identified in the literature.

The research being presented here reports on one phase of a longitudinal study that is tracking children originally identified as displaying resilient or non-resilient behaviour. After one year, the persistence of resilient or non-resilient behaviours is noted among the 55 children in the study; the incidence of changed behaviour – either from resilience to non-resilience or vice versa – is low. Case studies of three children are used to illustrate the trends in the findings and to provide real examples of how the presence or absence of protective factors impact on the lives of real children.

The aim of this paper is to review the Australian and international literature on social and emotional issues affecting children in kinship foster care and to examine stresses experienced by kinship foster carers.

There is a growing trend of kinship foster care as an alternative form of care for children in Australia and overseas which is attributed to factors such as child abuse, parental incapacity, parental incarceration, and parental substance misuse. The ideology supporting the use of kinship care is that it is in the child’s best interests because it helps them to maintain ties with their family of origin.

A comprehensive search of the literature on kinship care was undertaken and articles addressing social and emotional issues of children in kinship care or their carers were selected for critical review.

The literature suggests that children placed with kinship foster carers suffer from a range of social and emotional issues and these may impact on outcomes in adulthood. The existing literature does not, however, adequately differentiate the impacts of kinship care itself from the children’s pre-existing difficulties and there is a paucity of literature comparing kinship care outcomes with outcomes for children who have experienced other forms of out-of-home care. Common factors experienced by kinship foster carers that can make it challenging for them to deal with children’s issues are economic disadvantage, stress, health issues and lack of resources.

In conclusion, this review supports the arguments for assessment and interventions for children in kinship foster care; and support, parent training and interventions for kinship carers. Longitudinal studies are needed in this area.

In almost all current debates concerning services for young people in out-of-home care it has been customary to define services in terms of the so-called ‘continuum of care’, a hypothetical typology of placement options that differ in varying degrees from conventional family life. According to this philosophy, children should always be placed into family foster care rather than congregate care because foster placements are more normalised, nurturing, and place fewer limits on children’s individuality and freedom of choice. In this paper, we argue that this approach is limited because it fails to consider the diversity of actual services and structures possible at different points in the hypothetical continuum. In our view, future policies may be better served by a dimensional approach that views placement options as a configuration of factors including: the physical and living environment, service type, and staffing characteristics. In this system, the quality and suitability of placement options is no longer defined by names or labels (eg, family, group or residential), but by the actual nature of the placement provided. Appropriate combinations of these elements, rather than a choice between fixed categories, may assist in the development of innovative options better able to meet the needs of young people not suitable for existing care arrangements.

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

The prevalence and hurtfulness of aggressive actions from peers at school experienced by Australian adolescents was examined with a sample of 652 Year 9 students (mean age 14 years) attending seven secondary schools in Adelaide, South Australia. Kinds of aggressive actions reported were categorised as physical, verbal and relational. In general, boys reported receiving more physical aggression; girls more relational aggression. Although girls tended to report being hurt more by aggressive acts than boys, they were similar in reporting acts of relational aggression, such as exclusion, as more hurtful to them than being subjected to physical aggression. Implications for interventions to reduce aggression in schools are discussed.

Adequately supporting the needs of maltreated and traumatised children within New South Wales (NSW) public education system schools is often frustrated by poor perception of the impact of developmental trauma on children's school-based functioning and the need for additional, specialist support; the push for, and provision of, behaviour diagnoses for these children to fund basic assistance and supervision; competing demands on an overextended School Counselling resource impacting capacity for school-based trauma informed psychological services, and seemingly stretched capacity of government/non-government agencies to reliably provide effective support. This is accompanied by a lack of understanding of behavioural signals of distress children display and underreporting to agencies; persistent, simplistic behaviourist views of children's behaviours within schools and low-level collaboration between schools and external agencies. Facilitating a trauma sensitive environment within NSW schools can ameliorate these frustrations and attend to these inadequacies in a pragmatic, achievable way. This practice paper presents a School Counsellor-led model (REWIRE) for achieving this.

In this article, the findings of research that had, as one aim, the exploration of the role of decision-making tools and practice frameworks in supporting the decision making of practitioners working with children and families in non-government agencies in Queensland are presented. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 frontline practitioners in three agencies in five different locations. A general finding was that practitioners used a range of different tools and frameworks and found them supportive. The pertinence of these findings is discussed in relation to recent developments in the provision of services for children and families in Queensland, namely the new funding of non-government agencies to provide early intervention supportive services to children and families and the implementation of a single practice framework to guide practice across the sector. Areas for future research in Queensland are identified to further investigate the role of tools in frontline practice with children and families and which may also contribute to debates more broadly about the development and implementation of practice frameworks to support practitioners.

As governments increasingly search globally for strategies to improve child welfare outcomes, it is vital to consider how policies and programs developed in other countries are likely to suit local conditions. Routinely collected child welfare administrative data can provide contextual information for cross-national comparisons. This article examines out-of-home care in Australia compared to other developed countries, and explores possible explanations for differences in patterns and trends. In doing so, it also examines the similarities and differences between NSW, Victoria and Queensland. It is argued that a sound understanding of how out-of-home care is used, the profile of children in care and the influences on data can assist policy makers to match proposed solutions to clearly understood current problems. The imperative is to plan and implement policies and programs that locate out-of-home care within a range of child welfare services that meet the diverse needs of children and families within local contexts.

This article explores the prevalence of cumulative harm as a subtle and pervasive harm type, often dismissed or ignored in child protection assessment and reporting practices. The author examines a range of trends and research that identifies current gaps in the legislative response to cumulative harm identification and intervention. Through analysis of the current practices informing child protection in Australia, it is clear that there is movement towards a more holistic understanding of harm and the impacts of long-term maltreatment. However, a nationwide level of consistent practice has not yet been achieved, which places cumulative harm and reoccurring maltreatment on an equal footing with episodic maltreatment, particularly in relation to notification and reporting. Internationally, although variations are evident, just as they are in national framework, there is an inclusive impetus towards early intervention as a means of addressing harm prior to the onset of cumulative impact. There is a growing emphasis on children's wellbeing, development and universal right to quality of life and fair treatment.

Longitudinal research in Victoria is exploring the experience and support needs of birth parents’ and grandparents, children, permanent parents, teachers, social workers and therapists in situations where the children have been permanently removed from their birth families by the child protection system. The research is now halfway through its second three-year phase.

This paper details the findings for ten birth parents, most of whom have been involved in the study for at least three years. The findings are presented through themes of loss, role, boundary, power and support. The research provides clues as to how professionals can offer support to these parents. What the parents want is little enough–for their stories to be heard without blame; to be consulted about their children’s future; and to be offered the possibility of meeting up with parents who have similar experiences.

This article reviews recent research evidence about the effectiveness of residential care, education and treatment programs, singularly referred to as treatment programs, for ‘at risk’ adolescents. This evidence is drawn from child welfare, mental health services and education studies. The national and international evidence is that foster care is in crisis and is unable to provide stable and continuous placements for many of our most difficult youth. It is time to reconsider residential alternatives. The research suggests that these alternatives are not ‘all bad’ and that they have an important place in the continuum of child and family services.