In previous comparative research on child well-being, most attention has been paid to how well-being varies. This paper draws on international comparisons of child well-being to explore a number of hypotheses as to why it might vary. In particular, it seeks to explore why subjective well-being among children might vary between countries. It argues that subjective well-being – what children say about their lives – should be taken seriously and we should be concerned that what they say varies so much. The conclusion is that even though we cannot explain these variations, we can ensure that every effort is made to enhance well-being in schools, in the home, and more directly, by social and emotional education

This essay explores some of the reasons why child welfare policy has too often avoided an explicit focus on child well-being. The historical origins of child welfare services contribute to avoidance of child well-being in policy discourse. In addition, program administrators are reluctant to explicitly take responsibility for the well-being of children they serve because of concerns about added liability, the belief that public institutions other than the child welfare system should be held responsible, and the fear that child welfare services will be unable to ameliorate the damage that children often suffer before entering care. Three empirical studies of child welfare populations in the US are used to examine the inextricable links between child safety, permanency and well-being. It is argued that broadening child welfare policy to embrace child well-being as a policy goal will only enhance the likelihood that child welfare agencies will improve child safety and permanency outcomes.

Although the undesirable child outcomes arising from the chronic over-representation of First Nations children and young people in child welfare care have been broadly acknowledged in Canada, research on this critical issue is just emerging. This paper summarizes the North American literature on ethnic over-representation and structural risks to inform future research directions in First Nations child welfare. Comparisons to the situation of Aboriginal children in Australia are also discussed.

Communities have long been seen as of central importance to individuals and families, and as critical lever for change. In recent years, the emphasis on community as an organizing principle to address a range of social problems and developmental needs of children and families has been increasing. This paper explores the question of why community is important for children and families, what communities can provide for their well-being, and how they might be strengthened. It outlines some of the reasons behind the interest in community as a locus for policy and practice, explores the idea of ‘community capacity’ and how to build it, and distills the principal strategies used by contemporary efforts to build capacity in disadvantaged communities. Finally, it examines both the promise and the limitations of a community capacity framework as an orientation toward social change and as an approach for addressing the needs of disadvantaged children and families.

Child neglect is the most prevalent and least understood form of child maltreatment both in Australia (AIHW 2007) and the United States (USDHHS 2008). There is a general consensus that because child neglect is multidimensional, no one method will be effective in preventing it. Use of prevention science principles (Cole et al. 1993), which focus on enhancing protective factors and decreasing risk factors, should be used to target families and communities, but be applied in such a way as to individualise and recognise their differences. This paper uses the stages of prevention science to illustrate the development, implementation, and evaluation of a community based prevention program called Family Connections (DePanfilis & Dubowitz 2005; DePanfilis, Dubowitz & Kunz 2008). Implications of this process are considered in the context of recommendations of the World Health Organization for preventing child maltreatment (Butchart, Harvey, Mian & Furniss 2006).

Working with children and families experiencing child maltreatment requires that a practitioner understand the family: their risks, their needs, their strengths, and the goals of the intervention. Therefore, many of the tools and training topics that support this work focus on family and child assessment. The purposes of a thorough assessment are to understand the immediate circumstances so that children are protected, and interventions are relevant to the child and family's circumstances and events. This paper presents a new assessment tool that is ecologically oriented, empirically based, and able to provide a continuous assessment of the child and family that can chart improvements and declines over the life of a case.

The following review is by Angela Stephenson, an early childhood specialist working with diverse groups of parents in Adelaide. She uses The Benevolent Society's Play Power Parent Workshop with her parent groups who have babies and toddlers. She is finding that the workshop activities and resources are both accessible and flexible, and that they help the parents to use everyday moments to engage with their young children, to learn how they grow and develop, and to understand why simple, playful interactions throughout the day are necessary for healthy brain development.