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Program Manager: Sarah Wise

The family is the primary setting for children's development, and the importance of the early years of development for a person's adult life is increasingly recognised. With increasing diversity of family forms, and the changing roles and pressures within families, understanding how family factors interact with the child's own characteristics, and those of the family's wider social context, in determining children's adjustment is a complex task. The Children and Parenting program studies children in the social contexts of their family, community and culture. This knowledge can provide a basis for policy frameworks and services that can enrich children's lives by enhancing care and responsibility for children by their parents and communities. This is the aim of the Children and Parenting Program.

Child care in cultural context
Project Manager: Sarah Wise

Child care services are one of a range of resources available to parents to assist them in their child-rearing functions. The study of 'Child care in Cultural Context' set out to understand what functions parents expect child care to provide, and how closely these services match parents' cultural values and beliefs about children and their development as well as their care practices. The purpose of studying these issues is to determine whether parents from culturally and linguistically diverse families choose child care services that are akin to the nature and quality of care provided at home, and how children's development is influenced when there are substantial differences across these settings. These issues have relevance to both the structure and scope of child care arrangements in Australia. They also contribute to understanding about how children negotiate the different worlds of child care and home.

Children from Vietnamese, Somali and Anglo-Australian cultural backgrounds using centre based child care, family day care and informal care, and their parents and carers, are the participants in the study. They are currently being recruited to the project through child care centres, family day care schemes and community bulletins. To date, parent and carer information has been received concerning 36 children, and recruitment and data collection will continue through the first half of the next reporting period until information on approximately 100 children from each cultural background is obtained.

The Australian Temperament Project is a large longitudinal study of children's development which began in 1983 with the enrolment of a representative sample of over 2,000 infants and their families from urban and rural areas of Victoria. The study investigates pathways to psychosocial adjustment across childhood and adolescence, and the influence of personal, family and environmental factors. Since early in 2000, the Australian Institute of Family Studies has been collaborating with researchers from the University of Melbourne and the Royal Children's Hospital in this ongoing research project.

The past year has seen the completion of the 12th wave of data collection, which comprised a mail survey of the entire sample of participating parents and adolescents, who were then aged 17-18 years. Statistical analysis of the latest wave of data is underway, and will be followed by analyses of longitudinal trajectories, utilising the data gathered from infancy onwards. The foci of the analyses are the personal and family factors which facilitate healthy adolescent adjustment, and the origins and emergence of adolescent antisocial behaviour problems, substance use and depression. Planning has begun for the 13th data collection wave, scheduled to take place in the first half of 2002. A National Health and Medical Research Council grant was awarded for the year 2001 to investigate the precursors of and pathways to adolescent depression. A collaboration has begun with 'Crime Prevention Victoria' to investigate patterns and predictors of antisocial and criminal behaviour.

A number of reports, papers and conference presentations of findings from the study have been completed during the past year. Most notable among these was the book Pathways from Infancy to Adolescence: Australian Temperament Project 1983-2000 which was published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies in November 2000 and provides an overview of the wide range of issues investigated over the course of the study to date. The book was launched at a function to celebrate the first 18 years of the study, attended by approximately 400 of the adolescents and families participating in the study.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies, Anglicare Victoria and the University of Melbourne Department of Social Work were successful in an application for funding in 2000-2001 to the Financial Markets Foundation for Children to trial the UK Children in Need assessment framework in Anglicare Victoria Family Services. The purpose of the implementation was to evaluate the effectiveness of the assessment recording documents in directing practice in a way that is focused on children's needs and outcomes within a holistic and inter-agency approach.

Practitioners were initially trained in the theory and use of the assessment framework and assessment recording forms. Between September 2000 and March 2001 eight family support programs adopted the UK assessment formats in their practice. After implementation, the effectiveness of the assessment formats, and the appropriateness of the model in the Victorian context of family support services, were judged on the basis of feedback from practitioners, clients and supervisors. The evaluative information has been collected, and a report is currently being prepared for the Financial Markets Foundation for Children.

Together with researchers from Macquarie University's Psychology Department and Institute of Early Childhood, Charles Sturt's School of Teacher Education, and the NSW Office of Child Care, Institute researchers submitted an application for an Australian Research Council (ARC) grant in 2001-2003 under the then SPIRT program for a study of multiple and changeable child care. The SPIRT application was unsuccessful, but the project received an ARC grant through Macquarie University to pilot measures and methodologies, with a view to resubmitting the application for funding in 2002. The partnership has planned to pilot the research method on a small sample of 40 children from both regional and urban areas of NSW, and data collection instruments and research protocols have been established for this purpose. An ARC Linkage grant application has been submitted for funding in 2002-2004.

Researchers from the Department of General Practice and Public Health of the University of Melbourne approached the Institute to collaborate on a Melbourne survey of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) parents, parents' partners and their donors. It is also a survey of prospective LGBTI parents who are in the process of attempting to conceive, adopt or foster a child. The project is funded by a grant from the Department of Human Services, Victoria. The AIFS component of the survey focuses on social acceptance and social support among LGBTI parents and their children, contact with professionals/services and parenting difficulties. The survey data collection is due for completion in October.

This project which was recommended by the National Marriage and Family Council was contracted to the Institute by the Department of Family and Community Services. The contract involved the conduct of a qualitative study focusing on child and parent perspectives of how parents' work and family roles are balanced. The study was based on research conducted by US researcher Ellen Galinsky, and generated Australian data on questions raised through her work. Data were collected from 69 parents and 71 children from 47 families in Melbourne during in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Information from child informants was reported at the Family and Community Services Family and Work: Listening to Our Children Conference in Sydney in May 2001 (Lewis, Family and work: the family's perspective) . A report was forwarded to the Family Relationships Branch of the Department of Family and Community Services in May 2001.

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