It is unlikely that the services of child care workers will cease to be needed during the next decade. The figures tend to show a steadily increasing demand for help with children who cannot live with their biological families for a number of different reasons. This seems to be a reflection of:—

Firstly, an increased awareness of the meaning of unusual behaviour in children, i.e., that the child who does something unacceptable like running away, stealing or failing to perform well in school is really showing signs of emotional stress, and secondly, in part due to an increase in social disruption of the family and a change in the values of a significant proportion of middle class parents. There is no way we can expect that all children can spend all their young lives living with a family, either their biological family or an alternative one.

Traditionally, when children were seen by their parents or teachers as exhibiting “problem” behaviors (e.g. tantrums, disobedience, stealing, reading difficulties, social withdrawal, incontinence) they were brought to the notice of a professional (often a psychologist) who proceeded to carry out “therapy” in a clinic or hospital. The child was seen as primarily the person with whom one should work, and the clinic as the setting where therapy should take place. Even in those cases where some form of “family therapy” was undertaken the emphasis remained on seeing the child in a clinical setting and rarely it seems was the parent or teacher taught specific behavior change skills.

As a welfare administrator, the opportunities to visit child caring establishments are many. It is like visiting another world. They are a mixture of “The Sullivans”, “The Waltons”, “The Brady Bunch”, with an air of unreality because time has passed them by and the new society of the present time calls for radical service delivery style. Alternative child care is developing in kids shelters to provide some of the elements needed in a modern world. What formalised child care often supplies is an expensive, stylised anachronism which does not need committees on how to change but accountants who can manage to wind down activities and allow reinvestment in care which will meet today’s challenges.

The Report of the Royal Commission on Human Relationships was not only about sex, and not only about law; but many of its more controversial recommendations concerned the role of the criminal law in connection with sexual behaviour. Though some of the ideas are new, much of the Report brought together in a lucid and available form arguments that serious scholars have been urging for years. The reaction of some members of the community — especially Prime Ministers and bishops — nevertheless shows how far some community leaders are from a thoughtful, or even nonhysterical, appreciation of the issues. Ironically, their reactions demonstrate how much we needed the report.

In this column, I will summarise the Commissioners’ recommendations about rape and sexual offences against young people! Later, probably next time, I will look at the areas of abortion, incest, and perhaps the legal context of family planning.

The mother of a retarded child tells of some of the battles, frustrations and the rewards of caring for her retarded son.

It is hoped that contributions such as this one from Margaret Hydon will become a regular feature of the Journal.

My husband was elated to hear at long last that our son Andrew had arrived, but at the time little did he realize the full implications of the trauma of the birth which was then closely followed by septicaemia and bronchial pneumonia.

Contemporary behaviour modification (or therapy) seems to offer what is both a useful theoretical and practical approach to the treatment of a very wide range of childhood and adolescent disorders (Gelfand and Hartmann, 1975; Herbert, 1975). We intend in this paper to describe this relatively new method of assessment and treatment of problem behaviour as it applies in family settings, and examine its relevance to social work practice. In doing this we shall consider briefly the nature of the social work task. After a discussion of the theoretical basis of behaviour therapy we shall attempt to demonstrate how the methods themselves can be applied in the social work setting giving examples from our casework in the Child Treatment Research Unit (C.T.R.U.) at the School of Social Work, Leicester University.

“In health or education programmes designed for the welfare of infants and young children the gains that the children make vanish unless parents are closely involved.”

The following quotation appeared in a publication by E. M. Duvall:

Thus a Child Learns.

The medical examination of the newborn infant for adoption should reduce the risk of the prospective parents adopting a child with a potentially serious disease or abnormality, and ensure that the infant being adopted is healthy (Betheras, 1976). Genetic and clinically obvious conditions apart, an early detection of brain damage was said to be of highest importance in such an examination, because adopting parents “… find it insupportable if a child cannot respond adequately to their love and affection” (Tizard, 1969, p. 44). However, because even gross brain damage may be undetectable in the early weeks of life, and the prediction of future development of the neonate is seldom possible from a paediatric examination (Tizard, 1969; Karelitz, 1956), there appear to be only very limited prospects to reduce “… the magnitude of the risk that adoptive parents must taken when they adopt newborn infants” (Karelitz, 1956, p. 94).

Marriage and marriage breakdown are the reasons we have the much discussed Family Law Act, Family Courts and the current boom in divorces. Divorce and the legal machinery which deals with it is more easily discussed in the media than is marriage and the processes by which it breaks down. This helps people to ignore marital problems until they become so painful and difficult that divorce seems the only solution. It is easier to read and write about sex, divorce and violence than about marriage, love and emotional closeness. Unless this is changed the rate of marriage breakdown and divorce in Australia is likely to remain higher than society can afford.

Effective legal provision for the adoption of children was not introduced into New South Wales until the passage of the Child Welfare Act of 1923. This paper examines some of the less formal and less effective practices which preceded that Act. The lack of adequate legislation affected all of those arrangements, creating problems out of issues which are today assumed to be solved. The early difficulties are seen to shed some light on modern discussions.

This paper reviews the relevant literature and attempts to highlight the implications of the research findings of Social Network Analysis for understanding the Greek family in Australia, with particular emphasis on its relevance for practitioners in the “helping” professions.

The author is concerned with the paucity of information available to practitioners in the field in the variety of settings where immigrant families seek personal help, and believes that the lack of such information lends itself to reinforcing, rather than eliminating, stereotypes and to inappropriate intervention in the lives of Greek immigrant families. The paper also highlights the need to understand Greek immigrant families within the context of the host community and to consider factors with regard to family functioning, that are common to all families.