The papers published in this special issue of Children Australia were originally presented at a two day symposium held in Melbourne on 26 and 27 November 2009. The symposium, Adoption, fostering, permanent care and beyond: Re-thinking policy and practice on out-of-home care for children in Australia, was jointly convened by the Department of Human Services (DHS), Victoria and the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University in conjunction with the History of Adoption in Australia project (Monash University 2009).

The event was a partnership between professionals working in this area and university researchers. Each group brought different perspectives and imperatives to the table. For DHS and the sector, the immediate frame of the symposium was the major policy statement Directions for out-of-home care, announced in May 2009 by the Victorian Minister for Community Services after consultation with community service organisations and young people living in care (DHS 2009a). It announces a framework for change which incorporates action on seven fronts or ‘reform directions’. These are to support children to remain at home with their families; to provide a better choice of care placement; to promote wellbeing; to prepare young people who are leaving care to make the transition into adult life; to improve the education of children in care; to develop effective and culturally appropriate responses to the high numbers of Aboriginal children in our care; and to create a child-focused system and processes (DHS 2009a). The driving principle informing the reforms is to ensure that policy and service provision are centred on the needs and interests of children and young people, and to ensure that young people are consulted as to what their needs are (rather than assumptions being made by adults as to their needs).

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.

In Australia, it is commonly reported that rates of child protection notifications have increased over time. More and more children in any given year are subject to a child protection notification. On the whole, these conclusions have been based on cross-sectional notification counts or rates recorded in a given year (e.g. AIHW 2009). Although useful, such analyses are limited in that they do not account for the fact that child protection incidents are unevenly distributed across individual cases. Crosssectional analyses also do not indicate the incidence of notifications within a given cohort of children.

In this paper, we summarise the longitudinal and comparative analysis of data relating to children born in 1991, 1998 and 2002. The results highlight the increasingly early involvement of child protection systems in children's lives, higher annual incidence rates, as well as increasingly steep cumulative involvement curves for cohorts tracked from their year of birth. The implications of these findings for mandatory reporting policies are discussed.

While the emerging theory of ‘social investment’ offers an opportunity to advance the political discourse beyond the false dichotomy between economics and social justice, social investment for Indigenous children and families must be built on the awareness of the need to promote human rights, respect Indigenous cultures and address the historical conditions that create disadvantage.

For many Indigenous children and families, mainstream Australian society fails to provide the conditions for social growth because it is built on systemic racism. In order to create the conditions for positive social engagement for Indigenous children and families, there needs to be a social investment framework which recognises that colonisation has impacted negatively on Indigenous social and economic capacity, and which builds on the strengths of Indigenous culture and respects the self-determining rights of Indigenous communities in order to re-build capacity.

A holistic, cultural strengthening and self-determination/human rights-based framework is the best approach to ensure that Indigenous children have a better future and participate positively in Australian society without forfeiting cultural identity and integrity. A human rights and culturally respectful framework can facilitate a ‘meeting place’ where Indigenous cultures can engage with the dominant culture and positive partnerships for social investment can be developed.

Child protection legislation in every Australian state and territory prohibits the disclosure of the identity of a person who acts as a mandatory reporter. There is also provision in most child protection legislation that prevents the naming of children and families in protection cases. It is argued that disclosure is not in the interests of the child, the family or the general public. Children's Court proceedings in most states and territories in Australia are closed to the public so that, unlike in most other jurisdictions, interested parties are not able to observe the proceedings. Child protection authorities also have considerable power to collect information about children and families from many sources. This power to obtain information is compounded by legislation which removes confidentiality provisions from professional codes of ethics. Furthermore, the rules of evidence do not ordinarily apply in the Children's Court. This article uses New South Wales as the exemplar state and raises questions about all of these issues.

Although the new family law legislation, the Family Law (Shared Parental Responsibility) Amendment Act of 2006, seeks to implement the notion of ongoing and collaborative parenting of children following parental partnership breakdown, separation and divorce, institutional obstacles still prevent the realisation of this policy. The question then arises: can such a model of separation and divorce be achieved? This question is examined through a discussion of a series of studies undertaken by a Monash University research team investigating parents' involvement in their children's schooling following parental separation and divorce. The research, building on a number of small studies carried out in Western Australia, looked at parents' and teachers' views of schools' ability to relate to separated and divorced parents and the wider difficulty of schools managing this family form.

A series of harrowing reports across the 1990s on the past removal of children, black and white, from their families have impacted on children and family policy in contemporary Australia, and on the way in which this is reported by the media and understood by the public. This paper briefly surveys some of these consequences and asks how we, as a community, can learn from the past with respect to questions of the welfare of children, without being burdened by that past.

Each year many families relocate to live in new places, but disputes will not usually arise over this when the family is intact because the two parents, and perhaps the children, will reach the decision about shifting together. Nevertheless the move will mean these children are likely to experience the loss of familiar surroundings and close friendships, need to change (pre)schools and start afresh with many aspects of their lives. It is when the parents are already living apart that a proposed relocation by one of them might mean the Courts are called upon to examine the interests at stake and determine the outcome. Relocation in this context has particular poignancy for the children involved because, if their parent's application to relocate is approved by the Court, this might marginalise the role of their other parent in their life.

It is not, of course, uncommon for separated parents to have to move in the aftermath of their relationship breakdown as they re-establish themselves in separate households and negotiate their children's care and contact arrangements. However, when the proposed relocation by the resident parent involves moving such a distance from the non-resident parent that contact visits become problematic, then the potential for a major dispute exists. This is particularly so when there has been a pattern of frequent contact and the non-resident parent refuses to acquiesce in the move. While these cases can be very difficult to resolve by agreement, some separated parents are able to negotiate the relocation without seeking recourse to the legal system.

This rural pilot study examined the effectiveness of a brief parenting skills intervention delivered to parents/carers of children who had experienced moderate to severe child abuse. The participants were 35 parents/carers living in rural New South Wales, Australia, who were recruited through referrals to a rural community health service. Participants were assessed pre and post the brief parenting skills education program using a battery of standardised self-report measures. Participants were randomly assigned to an immediate intervention group or a 3-month waitlist control group. The intervention was a three session ‘1-2-3 Magic’ parenting program.

T-test analyses indicated that carers who received the intervention reported significant improvements in their mental health and discipline practices, and a significant reduction in child problem behaviour compared to the waitlist control group.

The results of the study suggest that a brief psycho-educational parenting group intervention may be effective for carers of abused children in the short-term.

Young people leaving state out-of-home care are arguably one of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society. Many have been found to experience significant health, social and educational deficits. In recent years, most Australian States and Territories have introduced specialist leaving care and after care programs and supports, but there has been only limited examination of the effectiveness of these programs. This paper examines the experiences of a group of young people involved in the leaving care and after care support program introduced by St Luke's Anglicare and Whitelion in the Victorian town of Bendigo. Attention is drawn to the impact of some of the key program initiatives around accommodation, employment and mentoring. Some conclusions are drawn about ‘what works’ in leaving care programs, including particular implications for rural policy and practice.

This paper reports on research investigating the educational status and needs of school-aged children in foster care placements. Using clinical data mining, data were collected about school experiences, attendance, educational achievements and needs, health needs and supports provided. The study found children faced enormous barriers to satisfactory participation and attainment at school. Improving educational outcomes depends upon successful linkages between the child protection, education and health care systems.

This paper discusses the negative effects on children who are placed in out-of-home care and the need for early intervention and support for families to enable children to remain at home.

Child protection systems have always sought to respond to the interests of vulnerable children. Protective paradigms have changed over time as the ‘best interests’ of vulnerable children are defined in different ways. Within protective systems we are currently debating how best to provide children at risk with security and stability: should we seek to reunify them with their birth families or seek alternative options for their permanent care? The debate is unlikely to lead to an either/or option, but rather one where we need to consider many complex factors in both the decision-making process and how to implement these decisions. These factors include: the rationale and process for decision-making; the importance of timing (child's, parent's, carer's, service system and legal system); how to meet the child's heightened developmental needs before, during and following this process; the importance of the child's identity; and the level and type of real-life support needed (by either the birth family or permanent care providers) on the ground. It is also about the relationships needed to provide children with the foundation of a secure base and a safe haven so they can learn that adults can provide comfort, safety and a base upon which they can learn to explore the world.

The transition from childhood to young adulthood is often associated with a range of challenges that can be overwhelming for a young person. For young people in out-of-home care, complex histories that may include traumatic personal experiences can make this transition even more problematic, both for the young person and their carers. This is the final paper in a series of four which has focussed on a range of challenging behaviours in children and young people in out-of-home care. This paper examines delinquency and its associated effects on young people and carers and outlines specific considerations for carers and other health professionals in responding appropriately to delinquent behaviours in young people.

Young people leaving state care are undoubtedly among the most vulnerable groups in society. Despite their susceptibility to a range of problems in young adulthood, few Australian studies have examined how young people feel about leaving care and the supports they feel they - will need. This paper presents selected findings from the Commission for Children and Young People and Child Guardian's third survey of children and young people in foster and kinship care conducted in Queensland in 2009 which attracted 2727 responses. The paper focuses specifically on the views of 124 young people aged 16 to 18 years. Young people were surveyed on a range of issues including: leaving care, their health and wellbeing, education, placement histories, and perceptions of both their current placement and the care system in general. Findings indicate that most are optimistic about managing independent living but anticipate needing a range of supports, especially financial assistance and help finding accommodation. Over half would prefer to continue living with their foster or kinship care family and more than three-quarters would like ongoing contact with the family after they leave care.

This paper reviews the findings of the South Australian longitudinal study and the extent to which findings are borne out in subsequent national and international research. Included in this paper is an analysis of several issues in out-of-home care, including the disparity between child and carer numbers, the nature and effects of placement instability, the complexity of child behaviour and family contact. Using some recent findings of the ongoing National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being (NSCAW) study in the United States, the paper shows how many of the South Australian findings have been also borne out in other studies with larger sample sizes and more sophisticated measures. These comparisons suggest that the out-of-home care experiences of children living in both countries may share many similarities. Findings obtained in either country may be more easily translated to inform policy and practice internationally than has been previously thought.