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vol.13 no.2 Winter 2005
Published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies
ISSN 1447-0039 (Print); 1447-0047 (Online)
Manager, National Child Protection Clearinghouse, Daryl Higgins
Newsletter compiled and edited by Ellen Fish
Contact the Australian Institute of Family Studies for a copy of this newsletter, or access articles as listed below in HTML or PDF format. The full newsletter can be downloaded in PDF format (558K) or in sections as listed below. You will need an Acrobat Reader which is free from the Adobe Systems Web site .
In this Issue
Welcome to the second Child Abuse Prevention Newsletter for 2005.
We trust that by now you are enjoying the new publication schedule, with issues papers and newsletters alternating every three months. We hope that this keeps you more informed in the field of child protection nationally (and internationally) and of what's going on at the National Child Protection Clearinghouse - as well as giving you a chance to read and absorb the information before the next instalment from us arrives! We always welcome feedback on our publications, so let us know how you feel about the change to the timing of our publications or any other issues (email: ncpc@aifs.gov.au).
Our most recent issues paper, written by staff from the Clearinghouse, provided a comprehensive overview of legislation, policies and practices in place in the child protection systems in each of Australia's eight states and territories. If you have just joined the Clearinghouse's mailing list, or want additional copies of Child Abuse Prevention Issues No. 22, 'National comparison of child protection systems', or any of our publications, they are available for download at: http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/pubs.html.
This newsletter contains a variety of valuable contributions from researchers, practitioners and policy makers, including a 'help sheet' on minimising child abuse risks in organisations, a description of a parenting program targeted particularly at vulnerable families, a child-safety resource, a review of social work training issues in relation to statutory child protection work, and a casework model for working with families in need.
We have also continued to provide information in this edition of the newsletter on current Clearinghouse activities and progress towards the implementation of our new communications strategy. To be included on our new mailing list, please complete the survey inserted in this newsletter. As part of the Institute's contract with the Australian Government Department of Family and Community Services, Clearinghouse research staff have been working on a number of research projects focusing on issues such as:
In addition, Clearinghouse staff have been working on other contracted research projects such as:
We look forward to being able to report on the progress of these projects in the future.
Minimising your organisation's exposure to the risk of child abuse
This help sheet is designed to assist organisations that deal directly with children and young people, to take the first steps in risk managing their exposure to child abuse, in a proactive and responsive way.
Whether your organisation deals directly with children or young people (for example, family welfare agencies, sporting clubs, schools) or you come in contact with children on an irregular basis (for example children attending as spectators or visitors), you have a responsibility to prevent children and young people from being placed in a situation where they are at risk of child abuse.
If staff in your organisation (including volunteers) work directly with children and young people, your legal and moral duty of care is greater than if you only come in contact with children and young people indirectly or irregularly.
Any organisation that works directly with children and young people has a legal and moral duty to ensure their safety and security is maintained. Your duty of care extends to taking all reasonable steps to prevent children or young people from any form of child abuse.
What is child abuse?
The term 'child maltreatment' is a catch-all term to describe the maltreatment of children by caregivers, and includes various forms of child abuse and neglect.
The definition of child maltreatment is a complex area. Leah Bromfield, Senior Research Officer at the National Child Protection Clearinghouse advised that the main forms of child maltreatment are sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional or psychological abuse, and neglect. She provided the following information and description of these terms (personal communication, 23 October 2004).
Sexual abuse is:
Available statistics for 2003-2004 show that in Australia, approximately 10 per cent of all child protection notifications involved an allegation of child sexual abuse (AIHW 2005).
Physical abuse is:
Emotional abuse, also called 'psychological abuse' or 'psychological maltreatment':
Emotional trauma underlies the various forms of abuse/neglect and is the central part of all abuse.
Neglect is the failure to provide a level of care that meets a child's physical and emotional needs, including:
How big is the problem of child abuse?
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW 2005) reported that for the year 1 July 2003 to 30 June 2004, there were 219,384 notifications (allegations of child maltreatment or risk of harm) received by the Australian state and territory child protection services (up from 198,355 in the previous year - an increase of 21,029 or 10.6 per cent).
This report drew upon from the data available from the previous year (that is 2002-2003), as not all states and territories had data for 2003-2004. Approximately 20 per cent of the notifications to child protection services were confirmed to be substantiated - 'where there was reasonable cause to believe that the child has been, was being or was likely to be abused, neglected or otherwise harmed' (AIHW 2005: 15). Similar to the notification rate, the number of substantiations increased over the last four years from 24,732 in 1999-2000 to 40,416 in 2002-2003.
Available data from the AIHW (2003) for 2001-2002, indicate that in the majority of cases the person alleged to be responsible for the abuse or neglect was the biological parent (74 per cent). Other alleged perpetrators included a step parent or de facto (10 per cent), another relative or sibling (7 per cent) and a friend or neighbour (5 per cent). The person was unknown to the child in very few cases with a recorded rate of abuse by others (including strangers) of only four per cent. Data on the person believed to be responsible for the abuse or neglect were not reported in the AIHW Child Protection Australia 2002-2004 reports.
Developing child abuse policies, procedures and standards
As a first step, your organisation needs to assess your current child abuse policies, procedures and standards, and promptly address any shortfalls or improvements found to be necessary.
The Australian Council for Children and Youth Organisations (ACCYO) was established in 2001 to develop standards and an accreditation process, for organisations working with children and young people. ACCYO have developed several web-based draft standard forms to assist organisations complete the policy assessment process. These forms are accessible at:
All applicants for paid or unpaid (including volunteer) work that involves access to children and young people, should undergo a rigorous screening and assessment process, prior to their employment or placement.
ACCYO has also developed several web-based draft standard forms to assist organisations complete the applicant assessment process. These forms are accessible at:
The National Child Protection Clearinghouse at the Australian Institute of Family Studies is an information, advisory and research unit that focuses on the prevention of child abuse. The Clearinghouse has a number of web-based links that could assist you to develop your screening policy and procedures:
What is appropriate behaviour towards children and young people in your care?
Unfortunately a simple answer, for all organisations and cases, is not practicable. Even though current university and TAFE courses cover the current accepted professional codes of behavior, models of best practice change over time. Workers currently in the field may struggle to stay abreast of recent developments.
In conjunction with your staff having the appropriate tertiary education qualifications, this needs to be supplemented with your organisation having induction programs that identify what is acceptable behaviour in your organisation. These programs also need to be reinforced by ongoing professional development courses.
Also, as volunteers come from all walks of life and have varying degrees of education and aptitude for working with children, the initial screening and training processes need to be relevant to the role they are taking on in your organisation.
What is mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse?
Leah Bromfield, of the National Child Protection Clearinghouse, advised that 'mandatory reporting' is the legal requirement to report suspicions of child abuse or neglect to the various state and territory statutory child protection authorities (personal communication, 23 October 2004). As the laws in relation to mandatory reporting vary between each jurisdiction, you need to check with your state or territory statutory authority to see if you have a legal obligation to report suspicions of child abuse or neglect.
For a current overview of the legislation in each jurisdiction, see 'National comparison of child protection systems' by Leah Bromfield and Daryl Higgins, Child Abuse Prevention Issues, No. 22, Autumn 2005. This paper is available at: http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/issues/issues22/issues22.html
The Clearinghouse has also published the 'Mandatory reporting of child abuse', Resource Sheet No 3. This publication would assist you develop an awareness of your mandatory reporting responsibilities and is available at: http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/sheets/rs3/rs3.html
Whether you have a legal obligation to report suspicions of child abuse or not, the protection of children is everybody's responsibility. Anybody can report suspicions of child abuse or neglect to the statutory child protection authority in their state or territory, by phoning:
Other useful Australian websites and contacts
Australian Childhood Foundation: This independent national charity aims to prevent child abuse and reduce the harm it causes to children, families and the community. It provides counselling services for children who have experienced abuse and family violence. It also runs a range of prevention, education, advocacy and research programs.
Their website is at: http://www.childhood.org.au/website/default.asp
Child Wise: This not-for-profit organisation works to prevent, protect and reduce the sexual abuse and exploitation of children in Australia and overseas. Their 'Choose with Care' program aims to minimise the risk of child abuse occurring within organisations working with children. The program assists organisations improve screening, recruitment and management practices for staff and volunteers.
Their website is at: http://www.ecpat.org/training_and_support/training_workshops/child_safe_organisations.php
Also have a look at the Child Wise handbook for parents 'A Parent's Guide to Choosing Child Safe Organisations' accessible at: http://www.ecpat.org/downloads/CWC_Parents_handbook.pdf
The National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN): This independent charity produces national campaigns and distributes free resources that promote positive and practical actions to stop child abuse.
Their website is at: http://www.napcan.org.au/
References
AIHW (2003), Child Protection Australia 2001-2002, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Child Welfare Series no. 29, Canberra, www.aihw.gov.au/publications/index.cfm/title/8479, accessed 14 June 2005.
AIHW (2005), Child Protection Australia 2003-2004, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Child Welfare Series No. 36, Canberra, www.aihw.gov.au/publications/index.cfm/title/10095, accessed 14 June 2005.
Tom Reisner developed the help sheets as part of his fieldwork placement at Our Community Pty Ltd, West Melbourne, in the completion of his Diploma of Community Services (Community Work) at Swinburne University. Tom previously worked in the insurance industry specialising in Professional Indemnity and Public Liability insurance. He would like to acknowledge Clearinghouse researcher Leah Bromfield for her assistance and support, and Our Community for publishing his fieldwork help sheets (on which the above help sheet was based). This can also be viewed from the Insurance and Risk Management Centre section of the Our Community website at: www.ourcommunity.com.au/insurance/
At the beginning of 2001, Parenting Australia (under the auspice of Jesuit Social Services) was successful in a tender bid to the Family and Relationships Branch of the Australian Government's Department of Family and Community Services, under their Child Abuse Prevention Program to fund a parenting program. The model focuses on prevention of child abuse by early intervention and will build on existing parenting programs that support families and young children.
The aims of the Early Intervention Parenting Program were as follows:
The project offers:
The project began in May 2001 with two geographical areas identified by the Department of Family and Community Services as high-risk areas for families of young children. The areas identified were the La Trobe Valley region in South East Victoria and the outer Northern metropolitan region of Melbourne. In the second year of the project, two other geographical areas outer western region and East Gippsland were identified.
The coordinators
A coordinator was chosen in each of the four geographical regions. The role of the coordinator in each of the regions was essential to the project. Coordinators were employed by the project to oversee the training and support for the parent programs that followed.
The training
Three-day training was provided using a strengths-based and solution-focused philosophy that enhanced skills and knowledge of the participants.
Research and evaluation
The evaluation was undertaken by Dr Gay Ochiltree, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. The evaluation process consisted of a pre- and post-training evaluation filled in by the facilitators attending the training. The parent group facilitators used a diary to capture the richness of the parent group content and participation. Parents also completed pre- and post evaluations on the course content and processes.
The parent groups
There was a wide range of parent groups that were undertaken in the first year. All parent groups focused on parents with children 0 to 5 years.
These include: parent groups for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families; families struggling with domestic violence; parents with an intellectual disability; parents of children with additional needs; families in temporary crisis housing; and parents from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds.
In year 2, the parent groups were just as diverse including: parents in prison; parents who are living in isolated situations; Vietnamese parents; and Aboriginal grandparents.
Some of the barriers to successful engagement of parents were: difficulties with advertising; engaging parents when you do not already have a relationship with them; time to organise the group on top of heavy workloads; arranging child care - venue and personnel; and a suitable venue.
The groups that were easier to get off the ground were those where the professionals already had a relationship with the parents or where the participant was part of a network that could access parents that is, Maternal and Child Health Nurses.
The outcomes of the project
For parents
There was no doubt that the parents, once engaged in the parent groups were very happy with the group process.
To the question 'What was the best thing about attending the program?' responses included: learnt new approaches to children (30 per cent); learnt other parents have similar problems to me (27 per cent); and meeting other parents (26 per cent).
To the question 'Why did parents attend the groups?' responses included:
wanted to be a better parent (47 per cent); wanted to learn about child development and behaviour (23 per cent); and to meet other parents (16 per cent).For the participants and coordinators
At the end of the second year of the project it was becoming obvious that there were some exciting 'ripple effects', including increased understanding of resilience and parenting that transferred to other areas of the facilitators' work and personal lives. These ripple effects were captured in this later evaluation through telephone interviews with coordinators and facilitators, questionnaires to targeted participants and some site visits.
The project received funding for another year and was to have two aspects.
Part one was the opportunity for the evaluator to follow up with participants and the coordinators: to capture the exciting 'ripple effects' being identified after the end of the project; to provide funding for facilitators who did not get their parent group going; and to provide funding for facilitators who had enough parents for a second parent group.
Part two was to trial the model within the Aboriginal communities in the Warrnambool area.
In part one the evaluator used a qualitative approach including: telephone interviews with the four coordinators; short questionnaires sent out to facilitators; and telephone interviews with some facilitators.
All four coordinators were happy to be interviewed and some of their comments about the project include:
Two of the facilitators recognised that they had enough parents to facilitate another group each. Facilitating a second group offered the facilitators the opportunity to build on their skills and expertise obtained in their first group. One facilitator, who was unable to facilitate her group in the first part of the project, found that the gap in time between participating in the training and finally facilitating the parent group daunting. However once the group began, with weekly telephone support from the project, the facilitator reported feeling satisfied with the success of her group.
Exploration of the Early Intervention Parenting Program model in the Warrnambool area
Background
The Aboriginal communities in the Warrnambool region do not receive adequate services because of their low numbers of child abuse notification. In order to maintain this good record, the Department of Family and Community Services recommended that early intervention services would ensure that the status quo remained.
Plan of action
To engage influential local community leaders to promote and assist in the training of community members to deliver parent support groups using the Early Intervention Parenting Program model.
Three Aboriginal communities were identified in the region. These are: Gunditjmara - in Warnambool; Framlingham Trust - 15 minutes outside Warrnambool; and Winda Mara - at Heywood.
The project ended up working with the Winda Mara community which identified the need for training with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander early childhood workers. This process began with a meeting of the potential training participants and the community coordinator. At this meeting the workers decided on the content and purpose of the training.
From the training the early childhood workers agreed to:
Progress to date
Progress to date is that: a playgroup that was struggling to function has been able to attract new members; the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander early childhood workers involved with the playgroups feel more confident to work with parents within the playgroups; and parents from three playgroups have successfully met together and shared parenting information at Lake Condor.
This 3-year project has yielded many successful results but there are many parents still not accessing parent groups.
Some follow up questions include:
Parenting Australia has now received funding for another three years (2004 - 2007) through the Responding Early Assisting Children (REACh) initiative to explore a much bigger question. What would happen if, instead of trying to engage families who do not access services, these families were identified and we tried to create a safe supporting community around them?
Constance Jenkin is REACh project manager at Parenting Australia, a program of Jesuit Social Services and Pat Jewell is the REACh project worker. For further information they can be contacted at: constance.jenkin@jss.org.au or pat.jewell@jss.org.au
In September 2004, thousands of Australians came together and made protecting children their business. Organised annually by the NAPCAN Foundation, National Child Protection Week is a key event on the community calendar. NAPCAN's focus during the week is to increase awareness of the problem of child abuse and neglect, inspire people that there are simple things we can all do to help prevent abuse and break down the misperception that this issue can be dealt with by the welfare sector alone.
In 2004, NAPCAN worked to reposition the prevention of child abuse and neglect as a whole-of-community responsibility reinforced through the week's theme: 'Protecting children is everyone's business'. Individuals were encouraged to engage with their community and get together by holding an event for kids.
There was a positive response to NAPCAN's prevention message with many Australian communities actively supporting parents and children during National Child Protection Week. An estimated 96,500 people directly participated in this event, compared to 49,000 in 2003, and the total number of events doubled from 337 to 737.
The range of events organised during the week were diverse and included numerous breakfasts, information sessions and displays, as well as creative and family fun days. Some fun and simple activities were taken directly from the suggestions on NAPCAN's website and in the National Child Protection Week organiser's booklet, such as the staff who raised valuable funds for NAPCAN through a baby photo guessing competition.
Other activities showed originality and initiative. The Hawkesbury Child Protection Interest Group in New South Wales organised the display of positive child protection messages on school noticeboards and placed banners on council sites at key traffic locations. In the Northern Territory, the Oenpelli Community which had come together to create parenting resources using traditional stories and paintings in their own Bininj language, used NAPCAN child protection grants to create a CDROM on their community.
One of the highlights of National Child Protection Week was the support of children's champions, particularly Cathy Freeman who attended a Police Citizen's Youth Clubs Family Fun Day in Queensland. Channel 7's weather presenter, Nuala Hafner showed her support, hosting the National Launch. It was held in regional Armidale with more than 350 people attending a day of youth entertainment and children's activities.
At the Queensland Breakfast Launch, former Australian Cricket Captain and the 1989 Australian of the Year, Allan Border, spoke about his commitment to NAPCAN's vision of communities taking actions to preventing child abuse and neglect. In Victoria, Courageous and Inspired Community Awards were presented to twelve such communities during the week.
In the Australian Capital Territory, a Community Forum was held in which members of the audience actively brainstormed ideas that individuals and community groups could use to better support children and their carers. This event arose out of direct recommendations from the Vardon Report, in which the abuse of children in care in the Australian Capital Territory was examined. Community engagement is essential to National Child Protection Week.
Now imagine if the same effort and enthusiasm that goes into planning and participating in events for this special week went into preventing child abuse everyday. National Child Protection Week should be like a single snapshot of Child Friendly Communities preventing abuse and neglect of children.
National Child Protection Week 2005 will build on last year's success and develop a new theme around the concept of Child Friendly Communities.
For further information go to http://www.napcan.org.au
Adam Blakester is Executive Officer of the NAPCAN Foundation.
Workers in statutory child protection roles are increasingly embracing the notions of strengths-based practice in their work. However, is the essence of strengths-based practice being misplaced by some workers in the translation from theory and policy into practice?
At Charles Sturt University, undergraduate and postgraduate students from social work, social welfare and policing courses regularly complete a subject in child protection practice. Most of these students are either already engaged in child protection employment within the relevant state and territory departments or intending to pursue child protection related employment upon graduation.
As part of the Child Protection Practice subject students are asked to respond to hypothetical cased-based 'paper scenarios'. Students are directed to respond from a critical practitioner perspective to the case, to act professionally and ethically to deliver effective services to the clients in the context of agencies, communities, law and policy. In doing so, the students' responses indicate that their understanding and application of strengths-based approaches are often variable and reactive to the case situations presented to them. Most students agreed with the realism of the case studies and that of the statutory work environment described. However, it must be acknowledged that student responses to hypothetical 'paper scenarios' - no matter how detailed - are likely to be tainted by and the limited case information available and workplace factors (for example, the absence of time pressure).
Over the past four years, most students have begun to articulate a very clear endorsement of strengths-based practice in their work with statutory clients as the preferred practice approach when responding to hypothetical case-based assessment tasks. Many students also indicate that strengths-based practice is the predominant practice methodology informing the policy and training related to their practice in the agencies in which they work.
Strengths-based practice has become a benchmark practice in many fields of social and community services, particularly those dealing with people with complex and multi-faceted needs (Graybeal 2001). Having been widely and successfully adapted in many family support programs in the 1990s, notably by the St Lukes organisation (Scott and O'Neill 1997), this practice has been progressively influencing child protection work, in Australia and elsewhere.
Strengths-based practice is a term that has gained momentum in social work literature and teaching in the past decade. In essence strengths-based practice is defined by the idea that social work is principally about enabling people to function autonomously within society, by collaborating with individuals (through social casework) to identify the resources they have available to them to make the changes they would like to make (McMillan et al 2004). In practice it gives emphasis to overcoming the systemic problems of entrapment and welfare dependency in socially disadvantaged people, and perhaps challenges the notion that social problems are directly proportional to the number of social workers available to deal with them. This is significant in itself, given that at times it seems that the sector discusses the need to improve child protection as much as it discusses the need to prevent child abuse and neglect.
Importantly strengths-based practice is not a discrete theory - but a framework for directing social work interventions such as casework (Saleebey 2002). Strengths-based practice begins with the worker engaging with, and assisting the client in a process of 'client-led' identification of needs and solutions. Strengths-based practice presumes that clients are in effect the principal resource for change and that the motivation for change is at some level related to the clients being able to identify the usefulness of such change (Saleebey 1997).
The virtue of strengths-based approaches in casework practice is that they reinforce the benevolent helping and supportive elements of social work theory that grounds the profession's identity and character. It is the worker who responds to the clients' resources and abilities. The worker collaborates with the client to achieve the changes that the client has identified as required in a process that the client understands and leads within their own means and abilities (Blundo 2001).
The focus on identifying client strengths poses a challenge for statutory child protection workers whose role is primarily defined by the statutory powers and responsibilities they are mandated to exercise on behalf of the child protection agency and the broader society. Such mandates require statutory child protection workers to remedy the protective concerns that impact upon the safety and wellbeing of children. Consequently the worker engages with the family on issues that are externally perceived and labelled (if not externally identified) as problematic.
The process of engaging clients and collaborating to identify the client's strengths and needs is also challenging for the statutory child protection worker. One of the more consistent messages from the many child protection enquiries that have occurred is that workers can form 'allegiances' with parents in child protection practice that are not helpful and are potentially quite dangerous for the child in need of protection. 'Allegiances' in this context refers to the concept of 'professional dangerousness' where the worker's emphasis upon preservation of the working relationship with the parent, interferes with the professional's ability to respond protectively to harmful situations (Dale, Davies, Morrison and Waters, 1986). Cousins (2005) illustrated the concept of 'professional dangerousness' in her discussion of the difficulty for adult-focused drug and alcohol workers to identify the needs of the child due to their close working relationship with the parent. The emphasis upon collaboration with parents in strength-based practice is often a challenge for child protection workers to address in the context of avoiding being seen to be professionally dangerous. This is not to say that workers (and their agencies) are not acutely aware of the environmental contexts that contribute to and sustain the risks and threats to a child's safety and wellbeing (Trotter 2004).
Interestingly, many students taking the child protection subject define their professional identity in terms of their role and duties - that is, that their profession is child protection work, not social work or welfare work. In doing so, the students' rationale for strengths-based practice appears to be as much about the adoption of the latest agency training and policy directions, rather than integrated practice from both a reflective and evidentiary knowledge base.
This is most concerning as it suggests that workers may engage with clients on a premise of focusing upon their strengths, because that is 'the way to do it' (child protection work) rather than engaging with clients on the basis of how they (the worker) can collaborate effectively with the client to utilise the client's strengths in their practice (helping to protect children).
Students sometimes complained about the limitations of the information they were provided, but did not often extend their hypothesis or identify avenues for further inquiry from the experience or theory (that is, they did not make hypotheses based on the information available or identify avenues for further inquiry to confirm their supposition).
Strengths-based practice invites workers to make some effort to listen to the client's 'story' as a vehicle for identifying with the client's capacities and strengths, particularly in response to their client's adverse experiences. Yet students' unwillingness to hypothesise, suggests that there is little refinement on the client's story.
This would seem to support a distinction between strengths-focused practice (identifying the client's existing strengths) over strengths-based practice (collaborating with the client to identify the resources they have to work with to create change).
Driving much of this appears to be a case-management imperative to minimise the direct ongoing involvement of protective services (that is, by taking an optimistic approach to client's existing strengths it may be possible to rationalise minimal statutory involvement). This seems to inform the emphasis upon client strengths as much as the capacity for change.
Students regularly refer to the need to form partnerships with clients. They are intent to draw upon the clients' own resources and networks to find solutions to their (the clients') needs that have given cause for protective concern. This is consistent with the underpinning principles of social work and is perhaps a source of comfort for graduates who find the socio-legal context of statutory child protection work antagonistic to some of those fundamental principles instilled in undergraduate programs (Cox 2001). Students are often highly critical of events, information or worker actions in the case studies that supported or informed forensic activity related to the safety of children, or statutory practice that is led by the needs of the agency rather than the client. It is not clear whether the attitudes expressed in the classroom translate into practice.
One concern is that client strengths are not so much self defined, but designated. Case management is a disputed concept within the human services sector, and has gained much from its application and theoretical development in health and other diverse sectors of economic activity. One challenge for social workers is whether case management is now a discrete form of professional practice or a component of the ongoing casework activity.
In itself there is nothing problematic about this, but very few students can readily identify a process for how to actually base their work with clients using a strengths approach. Rather they can focus their case management responsibilities upon client strengths.
For example, in response to a case study of a family with significant issues of physical and emotional neglect; the mother's participation in the 'cash economy' (informal employment) was generally perceived as a strength. At the same time, the presence of the father 'as the at-home carer' was rejected. Students wanted to explore ways in which the father could be 'skilled up' on his strengths as a backyard mechanic to gain entry to the paid workforce, relieving the mother to return home as the primary carer. Apart from the gender role biases inherent, there was also a clear perception that Dad's ineffectiveness as a carer, was derived from his interest in car mechanics (his identified strength) and that Mum's disengagement with her children's needs was derived from the necessity to supplement household income (her identified strength). Few students attempted to explore Dad's interest and abilities to care for the children, or the relationship of Mum's employment to the levels of deprivation experienced by the children.
In classroom discussions of case study narratives (narratives are the stories of the events, actions and outcomes experienced by the children, parents, child protection workers and other professionals and community members), case planning decisions suggested by students on the basis of identified client strengths were inconsistent with the underpinning philosophy of strength based practice.
Students show a preference to interpret the information from the case study narratives, to support a case management decision in favour of ongoing child protection planning and monitoring of social interventions (often by other services/ professionals) but not necessarily in favour of direct intervention by statutory child protection - even when cases were at critical junctures in terms of resources, and needs. This is significant as it suggests that the students see their role to broker services on behalf of the client, rather than to necessarily provide services to the clients themselves. In doing so, the clients identified strengths became a justification for the statutory child protection worker to support the client to engage with other services, rather than exercising their mandatory powers to engage the client themselves.
The Rule of Optimism
It is at this point that the significance of Dingwall, Eekelaar and Murray's (1933) Rule of Optimism becomes apparent in the consideration of strengths-based practice. The Rule of Optimism is predicated upon the notions of 'cultural relativism' and 'natural love' informing a casework approach that is under-responsive to critical needs and events in child abuse cases. The worker is allowed to rationalise inaction in respect of child protection needs on the basis of arguments around the capacities and aspirations of the parents/carers (natural love) and the contextual environment of the child within the family and community (cultural relativism). The worker focused upon clients' strengths (and relying on other services to support change based upon those strengths), may find this challenging if they also consciously apply their statutory obligations to respond to the child's needs for safety and security.
Natural love. For many students, the strengths identified for clients were often the basis for an attempt to establish a relationship that is less conflicted and threatening between worker and parent/carer in the interests of both the clients and themselves (the worker). While it is not desirable that children be exposed to conflict between worker and parent, they may also not be well served by avoidance of conflict on significant points of contention. Students tended to identify strengths that were usually derived from parental emotional reactions to children. They often used these reactions to inform an expectation that the parent will want to do 'right by their children'. This is more coercive than collaborative, as it creates an expectation on parents that may prevent them from being open about the issues that have previously prevented them from providing adequate care to their child.
Parental affection (natural love) may be a legitimate strength that should derive a desirable protective outcome for the children, yet there appears to be a substantial burden of expectation upon the parent to make this occur without constructive input on how to do so. It appears that students are not comfortable in trying to evaluate parental affection or to critique it, and so cannot help the parent to use this latent resource to effectively protect the child - but still they rely upon its presence to motivate parents to effect such change.
Client cooperation. There are significant issues about the students' interpretation of both client participation and cooperation. The former is usually invited in anticipation of the latter - in other words participative clients are cooperative clients. Students find it very difficult to articulate a process for negotiating with clients about strengths, that they have not themselves identified.
For example, in a case study involving issues of domestic violence, students almost universally were inclined to disregard the information provided by the violent parent about the other non-violent parent's new partner. However when confronted by the new partner's violence and the non-violent parent's passive hostility, they felt completely disempowered, as the 'good' clients had not followed the script.
Students in this situation found themselves clearly poised to take direct intervention. This is significant, as it appears that again, the idea of working with the client through the issues is lost. In this case, this might well have been a legitimate outcome. However the reluctance of students to pursue the intervention framework led to a significant and unpredictable change of direction and process of engagement with the clients. If the students as workers felt lost - how did the clients feel?
Consequently, perhaps the value of strengths-based practice for students may be as much from limiting the depth of engagement that protective services need to have with the client, as it is from having clients engaged in a positive and selfdirected process for change. In fact there is perhaps some reticence to allow clients too much control of the process.
Competing approaches to case management. Crucially the potential arises for 'track jumping' between the two approaches to case management: the 'strength' and 'risk' approaches. When confronted by critical safety events or non-agreement from other participants, students frequently make a sudden and dramatic 'switch' in their approach to the case, adopting an often highly directive and forensic response to issues of risk and safety, which is seemingly at odds with the established strengths-based practice approach that they endorse.
Furthermore, this dilemma creates for child protection workers a parallel process between strengths-focused assessment of needs, and risk-focused assessment of safety being followed by students as illustrated in the diagram above.
These two diverse approaches appear to have little structural integration for students in their overall case management. Students find themselves engaged positively with clients in a strengths-based approach, but also keeping a wary eye for the elements of threat or risk toward the child's safety or wellbeing, that would require them to intervene directly. The competing 'strength' and 'risk' approaches to case management are characteristic of any planned intervention strategy being implemented cooperatively by other services and the client, at the orchestration of the statutory protection worker.
Many students felt that giving such direction was justifiable to prevent collusion between those services and families so as to minimise the imminent threat or risk of harm to the safety and wellbeing of the child (such direction may also have been a pre-emptive defence of the worker and agencies practice in the event of external scrutiny). The adoption of strengths-based casework practices that support organisational needs, such as workload management, or placement availability and support, underpin much of the value students place in such approaches.
When presented with contradictory information or resistant responses from either clients or other agencies about issues of safety and services required to assist the family, the students often assume an expert position in relation to family needs and become directive about the roles of participants in responding to these needs.
Cultural relativism. A case study described two workers responding to a critical event in a child protection case where a parent had hit her child. The workers were in dispute about the significance of the event and its meaning for the child protection agency's interventions with family. Was this the final straw or a pothole in the road? Most students identified with the worker who articulated the event as a pothole, rather than the worker who saw it as the final straw. However their justification was reliant upon the failure of the system to adequately respond to the parents' efforts to seek help, rather than the context of the event in which the parent seriously assaulted their child.
It is here that we see the appearance of cultural relativism (the contextual environment of the child within the family and community): the expectations of families are tempered against the limited resource available to support them and help protect the child. The safety issues that create a need for direct intervention that may result in the child being placed in out-of-home care may also be mitigated by the notional benefits (or strengths) of keeping the family together.
The question that arises from these sorts of responses is about how well informed our ideas of strengths-based practice are in relation to the practice environment of child protection work and how this can itself be strengthened. We also need to consider how to move away from an optimistic focus upon the 'good things' or at least the 'not so bad things' in to an informed way of working to make protective change.
From an academic teaching perspective there may be challenges in these responses for how we develop students' knowledge and skill base for industry and the profession both generally and explicitly in roles such as statutory child protection. While many social work and welfare teaching programs are no longer as shy of child protection content as perhaps they once were, there is obviously work to be done on how we integrate the educational elements of professional identity, knowledge and skill with the operational requirements of role, relationships and resources.
Equally important, given that many or most of these students are also practitioners, is how agencies identify and utilise workers' own strengths, such as their academic knowledge and thinking and interpretive skills to understand and make use of practice models such as strengths-based practice. The most obvious vehicle for tapping into workers' strengths, academic knowledge and interpretive skills, is supervision, particularly educationally- or developmentally-focused supervision. However such supervision needs to be able to draw down upon workers' knowledge and skill base and their critical capacities to interpret and understand not only the concept of particular practice methodologies but also their application.
In doing so workers can afford to be optimistic about their interventions with clients, rather than being optimistic about their clients' strengths as a basis for intervention.
References
Blundo, R. (2001), 'Learning strengths-based practice: Challenging our personal and professional frames', Families in Society, vol. 82, no. 3, pp. 296-304.
Cousins, C. (2005), 'But the parent is trying . . .: The dilemmas workers face', Child Abuse Prevention Newsletter, vol. 13, no. 1, Summer, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne.
Cox, A. (2001), 'BSW students favour strengths/empowerment based generalist practice', Families in Society, vol. 82, no. 3, pp. 305-313.
Dale, P., Davies, M., Morrison, T. & Waters, J. (1986), Dangerous families: Assessment and treatment of child abuse, Routledge, London.
Dingwall, R., Eekelaar, J. & Murray, T. (1983), The protection of children: State intervention and family life, Blackwell, Oxford.
Graybeal, C. (2001), 'Strengths-based social work assessment: transforming the dominant paradigm', Families in Society, vol. 82, no. 3, pp. 233-242.
McMillen, J.C., Morris, L., & Sherraden, M. (2004), 'Ending social work's grudge match: Problems versus strengths', Families in Society, vol. 85, no. 3, pp. 317-325.
Saleebey, D. (2002), The strengths perspective in social work practice, 3rd edition, Allyn & Bacon, Boston.
Scott, D. (1997), Beyond child rescue: Developing family centred practice at St. Lukes, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, Sydney.
Trotter, C. (2004), Helping abused children and their families, Allen &Unwin, Crows Nest, Sydney.
Neil Barber is a lecturer in Human Services, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, New South Wales.
A family casework model with client and worker friendly assessment, planning and review tools
Supporting Children and Responding to Families (SCARF) is a casework model designed for services assisting vulnerable families and children. The SCARF casework model is based on ecological theory, which suggests that individuals are connected to and interact with the environment in which they live (UK Department of Health 2000). In addition SCARF draws upon neurological development, attachment, resilience, and 'good enough parenting' theories to inform its assessment and planning methodology. In terms of casework intervention, SCARF promotes a strengths-based/solutionfocused approach.
SCARF was adapted from the UK's Children In Need and their Families Assessment and Planning Framework. The UK's Children In Need Framework was designed to complement the Looking After Children casework model promoted as the standard of practice expected for the care of children removed or unable to be cared for by their birth parents. The two systems have since been combined in the UK and are known as the Integrated Children's System. The Integrated Children's System offers a single approach to undertaking key processes of assessment, planning, intervention and review based on an understanding of children's developmental needs in the context of their families and communities.
Barnardos Australia in collaboration with the University of New South Wales (UNSW) trialed the Children In Need and their Families Assessment and Planning Framework in six family support programs over a threeyear period (Fernandez and Romeo 2003). The SCARF trial was funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council Strategic Partnerships with Industry Research and Training (SPIRT) Scheme Grant. The trial evaluation results showed that it required adaptation to make it more family and worker friendly. This conclusion was similar to that made by Anglicare who also trialed the model in their Family Support programs in Victoria (Wise 2000).
Following the three-year trial and adaptation of Children In Need, Barnardos have continued to use the model, which became known as SCARF, in all its family support services. This resulted in the standardisation of assessment, planning and review procedures for clients across services. The introduction of SCARF throughout the agency resulted in two major benefits to service delivery. Firstly, workers became confident in using a common language, that is, they mean the same thing when they speak about such notions as strengths, needs, risk of harm, or good enough parenting. Establishing a common language has had the effect of improving communication and reducing the chance of erroneous decisions in case management. Secondly workers using SCARF reported that they paid more attention to the effect their work had on the needs of the children rather than looking at its impact on the parent or carer. Workers became aware of how easy it is to be occupied with parents' or carers' dilemmas and assume that relieving pressure for parents will automatically help children. SCARF's training and the guided practice tools reinforced the importance of remaining child focused while working with the child's parent or carer(s).
The evidence that informs the Children In Need framework was drawn from a wide range of research studies and theories across a number of disciplines and from the accumulated experience of policy and practice. Gathering this evidence was possibly the biggest and most expensive research exercise of its kind in the history of family support research. As well as the UK evidence, SCARF had the benefit of considering additional evidence from recent Australian research such as, the intervention outcome study Barnardos and UNSW have conducted (Fernandez 2002).
A brief description of some of SCARF's key values are:
The Children In Need and their Families Assessment and Planning Framework has several publications that detail the knowledge base and underpinning values (Cleaver, Unell and Aldgate 1999; Department of Health, Quality Protects 2000/2001).
SCARF Tool Kit
Initial Referral Record
Client Assessment Agreement
Basic Child and Family Assessment questionnaire
Supplementary Assessment tools (for complex issues)
Planning Agreement
Action Plans
Review Record and Review Guidance Document
Worker Record of Contact*
New Information Record*
Closure Record
* these tools are optional and can replace progress notes
To ensure the values of the model are upheld for all families, standard assessment and planning tools are used. The assessment tools have practice guidance notes printed alongside the questions assisting workers to make objective and accurate professional judgements. These notes being visible to the family add to the transparent nature of the assessment process. The three-year trial period allowed workers to make suggestions as to how the tools could be improved. Changes suggested by workers aimed at making the assessment questions more understandable to clients and more in tune with a strength-based approach to therapy. The SCARF assessment tools examine the same areas (referred to as dimensions) as the Children in Need and their Families Assessment and Planning Framework (see Figure 1 below).
The Planning Agreement and detailed Action Plans that are provided in the SCARF tool kit ensure that work with the family is strategic and relates to child needs determined by the assessment. Workers have reported to the SCARF implementation committee that the planning tools are easy to use and very helpful in terms of staying on track when working with families with multiple and/or complex child needs. Although the formal research study has ended, Barnardos has maintained the SCARF implementation committee whose function is to explore ways to further develop the tools and keep abreast of new research evidence relevant to child welfare.
SCARF promotes regular review of progress from the child's perspective and so a Review Record and a Review Guidance Document were included in the 'SCARF Tool Kit' (see Tool Kit above). The Review Record prompts both the client and worker to evaluate the outcome of each action plan. The guidance document proved to be a helpful resource, particularly for new workers conducting their first client family review meeting.
The UK Children In Need publications include a comprehensive guide to practice that was particularly helpful for workers in the trial.
Thus far, the tools are produced in a paper format, but an electronic database version, SCARF-e, is currently on trial in 13 services in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. It is hoped that this version will be available to the sector at the end of the trial. An exciting advantage of the database version will be its capacity to collect and collate service outcome and output measures, as discussed in the final section.
The guidance notes built in to the SCARF tools makes them relatively easy to use even for new and inexperienced workers. It would be a mistake however, to suggest that the implementation of the SCARF model across a service would be simple. Implementing SCARF is best viewed as an exercise of change management.
Managing change requires skill and planning and a great many decisions will need to be made along the way. Allowing sufficient time for workers to adjust to the idea of change and where necessary learn new skills is crucial. For some workers, conducting an assessment may be a new and challenging experience.
The experience of the SCARF trial clearly demonstrated the value of involving front-line workers and clients in the implementation process. This had the benefit of sharing ownership and creating a challenge to be tackled by the team. Obviously management must fulfill its commitment to such a consultative process by listening to and acting upon advice from the implementation team set up. In the SCARF trial, opportunities for management to prove they were listening and learning from the team occurred. For example, workers expressed ideas about changes to the text in the assessment tools to make them more family friendly and strength based. These recommendations were acted on very swiftly so the workers could actually see their suggestions getting implemented. Many workers took full advantage of the consultative processes and made great contributions to decisions being made.
Dropping caseloads for a few months to allow time for extra training or planning meetings will increase the chance of success of the implementation project. In the SCARF trial, middle managers and workers found this idea difficult because of the worry about the pressing demands for service. However, when staff considered the long-term benefit of the model to the service, this helped persuade them that this strategy was necessary.
The SCARF project offers implementation advice to services contemplating using the model.
Family support has over the last three decades earned recognition as the preferred response to vulnerable families with children at risk of harm. Testimony to this fact is the change made to child welfare legislation in different countries, such as in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, as well as in Australia. These countries' legislation mandates that every effort must be made to support vulnerable families before considering removing children at risk of neglect and/or abuse from the family. Despite the increased emphasis on family support across Australia and efforts to integrate statutory child protection services with the wider family support sector, formal standards for services taking on this role and responsibility have not been determined. The lack of formal standards, clear definitions and a common language, creates difficulties for the sector because it holds services accountable for their performance and examins the sector's overall effectiveness.
In Tomison's (2002) thorough critique of the changes to family support in the 21st century, he described how quickly the child protection pendulum can swing - often as a result of isolated child abuse tragedies reported by the media. Family support must have the evidence base to support its approach to child protection if it is to survive its critics that suggest it may in fact fail to protect children because of its minimal intervention approach (Tomison 2002).
A vision for the family support sector is to determine its own practice standards informed by research and practice wisdom. The sector also sees the need to establish reliable methods of evaluating service output as well as outcomes for children and families to inform and further develop best practice. It was this vision that stimulated Barnardos to begin work on the development of SCARF and be able to offer a best-practice model to the sector. The electronic version, SCARF-e has the capacity to collect on-going output and outcome data in terms of individual casework, worker or program caseloads and whole-of-service performances. What an ideal scenario it would be if all family support services used the same or similar casework/data collection systems, with the capacity to collate their data - the research and evaluation opportunities would be fantastic.
References
Cleaver H., Unell I. & Aldgate J. (1999), Children's needs - parenting capacity, The Stationary Office, London.
Dartington Social Research Unit (1995), Child protection: Messages from research, HMSO London.
Fernandez, E. (2002), Protecting children by strengthening families, School of Social Work, UNSW, Sydney.
Fernandez E. & Romeo R. (2003), Implementation of the framework for the assessment of children in need and their families: The experience of Barnardos Australia, School of Social Work, University of New South Wales, Sydney.
Tomison. A. (2002), 'Preventing child abuse: Changes to family support in the 21st century', Child Abuse Prevention Issues, no. 17, Summer, National Child Protection Clearinghouse, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne.
UK Department of Health, Quality Protects (2000), Framework for the assessment of children in need and their families, The Stationary Office, London.
UK Department of Health, Quality Protects (2000), Assessing children in need and their families: Practice guidance, The Stationary Office, London.
UK Department of Health, Quality Protects (2001), Studies informing the framework for the assessment of children in need and their families, The Stationary Office. London.
Wise, S. (2003), The child in family services: Expanding child abuse prevention, Australian Social Work, vol. 56, no. 3, September, pp. 183-196.
Sue Tolley is SCARF Project Manager, Barnardos, Australia.
With core funding from the Department of Education, Science and Training of $1 million per annum for 10 years, the University of South Australia has established the Australian Centre for Child Protection.
The Centre is embarking on two major national programs:
The newly appointed Director of the Centre, Professor Dorothy Scott, has recently moved from the School of Social Work at the University of Melbourne to take up the challenge of leading the centre. She says she is very excited by the potential of the Centre and is looking forward to working with an advisory board of eminent Australians from a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds, and to creating a strong, multi-disciplinary team of researchers and project workers.
'The time is ripe for a knowledge-based reform agenda in child protection. We are facing a crisis situation. While we know more about child abuse and neglect than ever before, the gap between what we know and what we do in child protection is immense, and so we need to make sure that the research done in this field has the maximum possible impact. We still have a lot to learn about how to translate research into policy and practice but the starting point is to forge a genuine partnership between researchers, policy makers, practitioners and those who are most directly affected - children, families and communities.'
One of the first things the Australian Centre for Child Protection has done is to commission the National Child Protection Clearinghouse to undertake an audit on child protection research in Australia. Associate Professor Judy Cashmore is assisting the Clearinghouse with the audit, which complements the recently completed audit of 'out of home care' research completed by Judy Cashmore and Frank Ainsworth in 2004.
Professor Scott believes that the audit of child protection research will be very valuable. 'Not only will it provide a succinct summary of the research that has been done to date and make this accessible to everyone, but it will provide an ongoing database for future child protection research. Most importantly, the audit will highlight where the key gaps are and help determine priorities for future research.'
After the release of the audit later in 2005, the Australian Centre for Child Protection will host a symposium for key stakeholders to develop a national child protection research agenda and develop some major collaborative projects across different states and territories to tackle high priority issues. 'The only way forward in child protection, whether it is in research or in service delivery, is to work together in partnership. We cannot afford to compete at the expense of the children we are here to serve. Large projects across different sites will yield substantial samples and allow for much greater generalisation of the results,' says Professor Scott.
The Child Protection Professional Education Initiative will be one way of translating research into practice. It will map the curricula of key professions and disciplines to identify their strengths and weaknesses in relation to child protection content. 'We hope this will enable us to learn from the exemplary work currently being done in some courses,' says Professor Scott. 'New technologies now provide us with such wonderful opportunities. For example, we could use multi-media to simulate case-based decision making in child abuse cases, encompassing the expertise and roles of different professions, and then put the case into its broader epidemiological context to highlight community variables associated with high levels of child abuse and neglect. This could then stimulate students and practitioners to think how they might 'go from case to cause' in child protection and tackle the big challenge - prevention.'
Dr Dorothy Scott is Director of the Australian Centre for Child Protection, University of South Australia.
The Ninth Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference, 'Families Matter' was held in Melbourne at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre 9-11 February 2005. The National Child Protection Clearinghouse staff attended a number of presentations. These sessions are summarised in this article with a comment from staff members. (For presentations given by Clearinghouse researchers, see article entitled 'National Child Protection Clearinghouse activities' on p 25).
Child protection data in Australia: Current issues and future improvements
Susie Kelly, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
Julie Kos, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
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.
While there are nationally agreed definitions and counting rules used to compile the data, each jurisdiction has their own legislation, policies and practices in relation to child protection which impact on the data they provide to the Institute. The comparability of the data across states and territories is examined and some of the major differences between jurisdictions are highlighted.
It is hoped that changing the method of collecting the data will alleviate some of these problems. At present the data are provided in aggregate format, but this will move to a unit record file collection within the next two years. The development of the national reporting framework and data definitions will be discussed, as will the collections' potential to provide more detailed data for use by policy makers and researchers interested in child protection.
Ellen Fish: This session was really useful as several key points were made about AIHW child protection data. The first point made is that the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data describe child protection activity - not child abuse and neglect. Secondly, procedural and legislative differences mean the number of notifications and investigations are higher in some jurisdictions than others. This highlights the fact that definitional issues are responsible for differences in the number of reports made to child protection services rather than, differences in the prevalence of abuse or neglect. Thirdly, there are positive policy and research implications in the collection of future data through a unit record which will mean for the first time a child will be able to be tracked through the system, allowing for a longitudinal picture.
This paper ties in very well with the recent publication of Child Abuse Prevention Issues paper no. 22, 'National comparisons of child protection systems', by Clearinghouse researchers Leah Bromfield and Daryl Higgins. Their paper describes and compares child protection provision in each state and territory. (For a copy go to http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/issues/issues22/issues22.html)
The following two presentations were given under the title 'Child inclusive protective services' and were attended by Clearinghouse researchers.
Stop it: It hurts me! Children and physical punishment
Nicola Taylor, Children's Issues Centre, University Of Otago, New Zealand
Anne Smith, Children's Issues Centre, University Of Otago, New Zealand
The Children's Issues Centre at the University of Otago, New Zealand, has recently completed a comprehensive literature review on the discipline and guidance of children, including the use of physical punishment. This has provided 'evidence-based' information for parents and professionals on the risks and benefits of different family disciplinary practices. The review of international research clearly shows that physical punishment is a tool to be avoided in the 'family discipline kit' because of the risks associated with its use. The first part of this paper will discuss the effects of physical punishment on children, and explore children's own perspectives on its use. Thirteen countries have now prohibited the use of physical punishment within the home, and the second part of this paper will briefly review these international developments and their implications for countries like New Zealand and Australia where the use of reasonable force for the purpose of correcting a child is still sanctioned in the criminal law. The paper will conclude with the six principles for effective family disciplinary practices which the authors identified from the literature.
Leah Bromfield: This presentation was excellent, providing a solid evidence base for the prohibition of physical punishment. The legal condoning of physical punishment creates complex problems in defining child physical abuse and determining the thresholds at which physical punishment becomes physical abuse. The inappropriate use of physical punishment results in many families becoming involved in statutory child protection services. The evidence presented in this paper shows that physical punishment is harmful to children as well as showing that there is growing support from governments internationally for the prohibition of physical punishment.
A longitudinal evaluation of family group conferencing
Patricia Kiely, Uniting Care, Burnside, Sydney.
Family Group Conferencing in child protection aims to allow families to participate fully in decision making about their children who have been or are considered to be at risk of abuse and neglect. The model is based on a number of values that include the importance of the family in children's lives. It works from a strengths perspective, respecting the family's cultural context in decision making, sharing power with families and involving children in care and protection planning.
This process is based on the belief that by involving the wider family in case planning it increases the possibility that the child will be cared for within the kin group, families will be more committed to work with a plan, and that relationships between family members will be improved.
This longitudinal study reports the outcomes for children and families up to five years after they participated in a Family Group Conference to plan for the future welfare needs of their children. This group was compared with a sample of similar families who were subject to more traditional case planning procedures.
The most compelling finding was the increased respite and foster care provided by the kin group for the 'conferenced' families especially for children under the age of 12 years. Community agencies provided the majority of support services for both groups increasing the percentage for the 'conferenced' group post-conference. A reduction in the rate of reported abuse for the 'conferenced' group indicated that safety and welfare of the children was well maintained.
Daryl Higgins: The Clearinghouse supports research that provides an 'evidence-base' for practice. Family Group Conferencing is now employed to varying degrees in all Australian states and territories. While it has been found to be effective in other countries, there was a need to confirm the effectiveness of Family Group Conferencing in the Australian context. This paper showed several advantages of Family Group Conferencing compared with traditional case-planning procedures.
'Children in out-of-home care' was the general topic for the next group of three presentations attended by Clearinghouse staff.
Implementing a community visitor program for children in foster care
Barry Salmon, Commission for Children and Young People, Queensland
The Commission for Children and Young People and Child Guardian in Queensland has recently experienced significant changes to its legislation, which have considerably enhanced and extended its powers and functions. Included in the changes is the expansion of the statewide Community Visitor Program to provide advocacy and support services to all children and young people in foster care in addition to those living in residential care facilities. This extension markedly increases the reach of the Community Visitor Program and the Commission's ability to oversee the interests and wellbeing of some of Queensland's most vulnerable children and young people. This presentation will discuss the expanded Community Visitor program and its progress since its inception in February 2004.
Leah Bromfield: In this paper, an exciting new development in out-of-home care practice was described. The Clearinghouse considers the Queensland's Community Visitor Program to be an example of best practice in monitoring the wellbeing of children in care, providing children in care with an independent advocate and ensuring the needs and opinions of young people are given a voice.
Carers' perceptions of their fostering role
Ciara Smyth, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales
Marilyn McHugh, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales
Australia is experiencing major difficulties attracting and retaining foster carers.This crisis in recruitment coupled with the increasingly demanding nature of the fostering role have focused attention on whether fostering can continue to rely on voluntary carers or whether it needs to become more professional. This paper examines data from a 2003/4 survey of foster carers in New South Wales commissioned by the New South Wales Department of Community Services. The research explores carers' perceptions of the nature of the fostering role and examines these in relation to three dimensions of the professionalisation of foster care identified in the literature: training, support and payment.The research findings indicate that the majority of carers surveyed believe fostering should be regarded as a professional or semi-professional role. Among these carers, there was a higher level of support for the three dimensions of the professionalisation of caring examined, compared to foster carers who regard their role as voluntary. Differences in perceptions of the fostering role were not attributable to other socio-demographic characteristics examined, aside from education levels. This paper also addresses the policy implications of these findings for the future recruitment and retention of carers.
Nick Richardson: There is very little knowledge about what influences the overall satisfaction and intent of foster parents to continue to foster. Listening to and understanding the voices of carers is very important in designing an alternative care system that retains carers and ensures a consistently high standard of care for children that is provided by foster parents. The findings in this paper - which draws on carer perceptions - add to the body of knowledge in this particular area of out-of-home care research.
Children with high support needs in Australian out-of-home care: A national comparative study
Paul Delfabbro, Department of Psychology, University of Adelaide
Alexandra Osborn, Department of Psychology, University of Adelaide
Mignon Borgas, Department of Psychology, University of Adelaide
Previous research by Barber and Delfabbro (2004) indicates that approximately 15 to 20 per cent of young people in Australian out-of-home care have significant emotional and behavioural problems that often condemns them to a life of repeated placement instability and further psychosocial harm. This paper reports the findings of a national comparative study of over 300 children (drawn from South Australia, Queensland,Western Australia and Victoria), all of whom had experienced placement instability due to behavioural problems within the previous 12 months. The study examines their social and family background, psychosocial profile, service history, and current status in each of the care systems. The results provide an opportunity to document the similarities and differences between young people referred for services across the different states, as well as a vehicle for assessing the potential effectiveness and transferability of service responses. Taken as a whole, the results highlight the need for a more integrated national approach to the protection of children with high support needs in Australian out-of-home care.
Leah Bromfield: In the Australian audit of out-of-home care research, Cashmore and Ainsworth (2004) lamented the lack of multi-state longitudinal research. This paper presented findings from an ongoing multisite study of the outcomes of children in care, and is the first step in a much needed national approach to out-of-home care research.
In addition to the presentations the Clearinghouse staff attended, in her Communications Officer role, Ellen Fish spoke to those attending the conference about the services offered by the Clearinghouse at a Clearinghouse display of publications and resources. There was a fair bit of interest in our work, as well as in our issues papers and recent newsletters, which disappeared off the table in droves!
Networking by Clearinghouse staff throughout the conference proved very fruitful. Many professional connections were established and opportunities for collaboration have arisen. Ellen Fish and Leah Bromfield attended a professional development day in Sale (Gippsland, Victoria) in response to an invitation that Wendy O'Brien extended at the conference. After meeting Paul Delfabro and Alexandra Osborn at the conference, Leah Bromfield had discussions with Paul and Alexandra about their out-of-home care research. While visiting Adelaide in February, Alexandra subsequently applied for, and was offered a research officer position with the Clearinghouse and assisted with a current project documenting the findings from the Australian out-of-home care research. The New Zealand Families Commission has invited Clearinghouse researchers Daryl Higgins and Leah Bromfield to visit both the Family and Children's Commissioners when they attend the Tenth Australasian Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect in Wellington, New Zealand in February 2006. You'll be relieved to know that amongst all this networking, the Clearinghouse team did find time to eat and drink at the evening events!
For full details on all the conference papers please visit the following website: http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/afrc9/papers.html
Bravehearts is a charity focused on prevention, intervention and victim advocacy in relation to the sexual assault of children. Supported by the Australian Government Department of Family and Community Services and the Telstra Foundation, Bravehearts has produced a CD-ROM that can be used by parents to assist them in talking with their children about keeping safe, and what they can do if they feel unsafe, or 'yucky'. Using an animated character (Ditto - a lion cub), children are guided through a series of fun, interactive activities on line, where they are exposed to educational messages, such as:
The beauty of the CD is that as well as being interactive, it encourages further discussion between parents and children at various stages during the program. These opportunities are supported by the accompanying 'Parents Guide' which explains in more detail some of the concepts, and what needs to be reinforced. For example, when talking about the fact that 'It's OK to say NO', the Guide states: 'Ensure your child understands that 'anyone' includes you, your partner,your family, - 'anyone' means 'everyone' (p. 9).
The animations, and the 'pitch' of the messages are ideal for children under 10. Technical or complicated terms are not used. In fact, the word 'sex' is never used, and it is left up to parents to explain the names of the 'private parts'. Older children may find some of the activities less engaging. Unfortunately, some use of double negatives in the questions asked of children maybe confusing for some. However, this highlights the importance of this tool not being intended as a 'stand-alone', but as an adjunct to discussion between children and parents about body parts, yucky feelings, and how to keep safe. Parents need to sit down with their child as they work through the activities.
The focus of many of the messages are more relevant to the prevention of sexual abuse than other maltreatment types, although the Parent Guide does inform parents about other types of abuse. The CD-ROM ends with an activity where children are shown how to build their own safety plan - identifying trusted adults in their world to whom they could turn if they had something difficult to discuss.
Teaching safety rules is one important step within a broad approach to child abuse prevention, and this CD-ROM will certainly be a useful tool for many parents in facilitating discussion with their children.
Reference
Bravehearts Inc. (2003), 'Ditto's Keep Safe Adventure', [CD-ROM and Parents Guide].
For further information, go to: http://www.bravehearts.org.au
Dr Daryl Higgins is Manager of the National Child Portection Clearinghouse, Australian Institute of Family Studies.
In the past six months the National Child Protection Clearinghouse research staff have responded to numerous requests for information. Below is a brief summary of meetings staff have attended and presentations made during this time. The National Child Protection Clearinghouse can provide researchers with current information on a particular topic at forums and events or for staff professional development, with this service offered on a cost-recovery basis. The resources which we prepare for these speaker invitations are available free of charge upon request. If you would like access to these resources please contact the National Child Protection Clearinghouse on (03) 9214 7888 or email ncpc@aifs.gov.au
National Statutory Child Protection Learning and Development Group
3-4 February 2005
Leah Bromfield, Senior Research Officer attended a two-day forum hosted by South Australian Department of Children, Youth and Family Services and attended by staff from statutory child protection learning and development units in South Australia, Victoria, the Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The National Child Protection Clearinghouse in supporting the work of the group and resourcing child protection practitioners were discussed. As a result, a new learning and development page is being planned for the National Child Protection Clearinghouse website with links to state and territory learning and development units and contributions from the learning and development units. The Clearinghouse will continue its contribution to the learning and development group.
Forum on the Working with Children Check (Victorian legislation)
24 February 2005
The Victorian Government published a Discussion Paper and Exposure Draft Bill that will require people engaged in child-related work to submit to checks of their criminal history by an agency of the Victorian Department of Justice. In response to media and community concern about the proposals, the Australian Council for Children and Youth Organisations convened this forum to provide an opportunity for stakeholders to discuss their views on the legislation and for stakeholders to hear about the experiences of other states where the check is already in place. Nick Richardson represented the Clearinghouse at the forum. For more information, see the Clearinghouse Submission on the Discussion Draft for Draft Legislation for Working with Children 2005 at http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/submissions.html
National Child Protection Clearinghouse Symposium:
Ninth Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference Families Matter
9-11 February 2005
In the first presentation, Richardson, Smart, and Dussuyer used self-report longitudinal data from the Australian Temperament Project to examine victimisation experiences of young adults aged 19-20. In addition to committing more offences, young people are most likely to experience victimisation than other age groups. They address two issues: (a) the connections between victimisation and antisocial behaviour, and (b) the lifestyle and personal attributes that are associated with victimisation. One-third of participants had been victimised in the past year. Antisocial participants were much more likely to have experienced all types of victimisation measured, particularly violent interpersonal victimisation. (Paper can be accessed online at: http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/afrc9/richardson.html)
In the second presentation, Higgins reported on a cluster analysis examining whether respondents are best classified according to their experience of separate maltreatment categories (sexual, physical, psychological, neglect, witnessing family violence) or its overall severity/intensity. The best cluster analysis solution grouped individuals according to the degree of maltreatment, with those in the 'high maltreatment' cluster reporting significantly more adjustment problems than those in both the moderate and the low maltreatment clusters. It may be more meaningful to talk about the degree of maltreatment (frequency and/or severity) experienced, rather than about the type. (Paper can be accessed online at: http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/afrc9/higgins.html)
Finally, Bromfield and Higgins highlighted the findings of a mixed method qualitative-quantitative study in which the course of maltreatment was investigated using a chronic child maltreatment typology. The elements of the typology are maltreatment: frequency, duration, sub-type, severity and perpetrator. Chronic, moderate and isolated courses of child maltreatment will be compared with a focus on the qualitative case study data. (Paper can be accessed online at: http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/afrc9/bromfield.html)
Presentation by Professor Brad McKenzie at SNAICC,
Melbourne: Selected Issues in Child Welfare
7 March 2005
Daryl Higgins, Leah Bromfield, Nick Richardson and Ellen Fish visited the Melbourne office of SNAICC to hear Professor Brad McKenzie (Faculty of Social Work, University of Manitoba, Canada) - an expert on Indigenous out-of-home care in Canada - give a talk on comparisons of the Aboriginal child welfare systems of United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
Visit to the Victorian Innovations Project Roundtable at the Department of Human Services
16 March 2005
Daryl Higgins and Leah Bromfield attended a roundtable organised by the Victorian Department of Human Services with visiting academic Trevor Spratt from Queens College, University of Belfast. He was visiting Australia as part of a cross-jurisdictional research project, and discussed the historic and current tensions between child protection and child welfare/family support. Participants were encouraged to engage in the difficult task of balancing welfare needs while ensuring safety.
Child Protection and Family Support Innovations Project Workshop,
Department of Human Services, Gippsland
19 April 2005
Leah Bromfield and Ellen Fish attended a Child Protection and Family Support Innovations Project Workshop held in Sale and hosted by the Victorian Department of Human Services. Leah Bromfield presented the findings of a study investigating chronic child maltreatment in a child protection sample. Many children who experience child maltreatment will experience multiple incidents of maltreatment over a prolonged period of time (chronic child maltreatment). Ellen Fish gave a presentation on the role and services offered by the National Child Protection Clearinghouse.
The Child in Migration: Annual Asia-Pacific International Social Service Meeting
13-15 April 2005
Ellen Fish attended The Child in Migration conference as part of the Annual Asia-Pacific International Social Services (ISS) Meeting, hosted by the Australian Branch of the ISS. Topics covered included a range of issues including, the International Social Services' responses to the trafficking of women in Hong Kong and Thailand's social response to the Tsunami disaster, and more.
Visit from delegates from the Taiwanese Family Court to the Australian Institute of Family Studies
4 May 2005
Leah Bromfield took part in hosting a delegation of visitors from the Taiwan Family Law Court. The visitors were interested in the current Australian practice and policy context and Australian research in the areas of child residency after parental separation and child protection. The visit was a wonderful information sharing opportunity, and provided the Clearinghouse with the opportunity to compare the different ways in which child protection services were offered. There were many similarities (for example, Taiwan has mandatory reporting and children are protected from similar types of circumstances - neglect, physical, emotional and sexual abuse), however one surprising difference was that in Taiwan every report to child protection results in the child being taken into custody for 72 hours while the allegations are investigated - this appears to impact the types of reports received as Taiwan do not have the same problem as we do in Australia of struggling to cope with the very high demand on its services.
The Australian Institute of Criminology's Safety, crime and justice: From data to policy conference
6-7 June 2005
In June, Dr Daryl Higgins presented a paper (with Leah Bromfield) on the topic: 'Understanding what child protection data mean: A national comparison'. He presented data from the Clearinghouse's current research project, examining state and territory differences in their child protection systems (legislation, policies and procedures), and the difficulties this poses for collating uniform, comparable data on child protection system activities - and the inaccuracies that emerge when claiming that these reflect incidence of abuse and neglect. The conference presented a useful opportunity for researchers and policy makers to discuss the issues surrounding the use of a range of social data for public policy decisions.
American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children colloquium and
Child Maltreatment Editorial
Board meeting 15-18 June, APSAC Research Colloquium
15-18 June 2005
Daryl Higgins represented the Clearinghouse at the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children's 13th annual research colloquium in New Orleans. He presented a paper (with Nick Richardson and Leah Bromfield) 'Facilitating child abuse prevention research and models of best practice: The role of a national clearinghouse for child protection research'. In addition, he attended the annual Editorial Board meeting for the international journal Child Maltreatment.
National Foster Care Conference
29-31 July 2005
Three researchers from the Clearinghouse attended the National Foster Care Conference in Alice Springs. Daryl Higgins, Leah Bromfield and Nick Richardson presented papers based on current research projects looking at models of best-practice in Indigenous out-of-home care, findings from literature identified in the recent national audit of out-of-home care research, and strengths and weaknesses of alternatives to state-provided foster and residential care. The conference provided an excellent opportunity to speak with carers, caseworkers, researchers and policy makers in the 'out-of-home care' sector.
If you would like to access the resources mentioned, please contact the National Child Protection Clearinghouse on (03) 9214 7888 or email ncpc@aifs.gov.au