Children Australia is entering a new and exciting era in its development. After some 35 years as an academic and practice-oriented publication, the Journal is now set to continue this tradition, but also to broaden its scope in response to the increasing complexity of working with children, young people and their families and carers.

Over nearly four decades, we have enjoyed the support of a number of organisations, key activists in the field and practitioners. Established in 1976 under the title of Australian Child and Family Welfare, the Journal was published by the Children's Welfare Association in Victoria as the quarterly journal of the Child and Family Welfare Council of Australia and funded by the Children's Welfare Foundation. Publication of the journal coincided with a number of key policy changes through the 1970s, and in 1979, during the International Year of the Child, it addressed a range of themes that were paramount in the minds of academics and practitioners both in Australia and overseas. The 1980s saw new challenges in the sector, computerisation, the amalgamations of a range of children's agencies, and devolution of services from government in to the non-Government sector, together with major economic change. By the late 1980s, Australia was in recession and many in the sector were facing major organisational changes, particularly in Victoria under the Kennett government.