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International Human Rights and child rights conventions as well as U.K. wide legislation and guidance require that children in care should be returned home to one or both parents wherever possible. Reunification with parents is the most common route out of care, but rates of re‐entry are often higher than for other exit routes. This study used 8 years of administrative data (on 2,208 care entrants), collected by one large English local authority, to examine how many children were returned home and to explore factors associated with stable reunification (not re‐entering care for at least 2 years). One‐third of children (36%) had been reunified, with adolescent entrants being the most likely age group to return home. Three quarters (75%) of reunified children had a stable reunification. In a fully adjusted regression model, age at entry, being on a care order prior to return home, staying longer in care, being of minority ethnicity, and having fewer placements in care were all significant in predicting chances of stable reunification. The results underline the importance of properly resourcing reunification services. The methods demonstrate the value to local authorities of analysing their own data longitudinally to understand the care pathways for children they look after.

Citizens' opinions on child protection public policy are a key dimension of the legitimacy of a political order. We have conducted a survey vignette on a representative sample of citizens (N = 4,003) in England, Finland, Norway, and California, USA. The findings show that citizens' opinions are clearly in favour of adoption (75%) rather than long-term foster care (25%). Context may partly explain the findings, as the responses of the majority of Anglo-American respondents are in line with practice in their countries but for the Nordic respondents, there is a substantial discrepancy between citizens' opinions and on-going child protection practices.

This paper presents findings from a prospective longitudinal study which set out to track the progress of 105 children and young people newly identified as having suffered, or being likely to suffer, significant harm through maltreatment or neglect. Baseline data were collected on these children in four English social services departments. Descriptive data on the services and child outcome data were analysed on all the children between 12 and 18 months later, and on 77 of the young people 8–9 years after concerns were first identified. Forty per cent of the children stayed at home with a parent throughout, while the majority of children experienced either some or considerable disruption to their lives. Fifty-seven per cent experienced further maltreatment or neglect. Some children appear to have made good progress in spite of repeated moves, disruption and re-abuse. The paper examines the pattern of services to children and parents. Factors are explored which appeared to either help or hinder the children's capacity to deal with the stresses and adversities faced over the 8 years. Implications for policy and practice are explored which may be more likely to promote positive outcomes for these high-risk children.

The Department of Health has funded the development of a set of schedules for collating information on and monitoring the progress of children looked after by local authorities. An additional aspiration underlying official encouragement of the use of these ‘Looking After Children’ (LAC) materials was that they would provide aggregate data to feed into national and local policy and planning. Progress on this aim has been slow, in part because instruments designed to aid practice in individual cases have not adapted easily to the hoped for dual role, and in part because completion rates have been patchy and often poor. This paper describes an action research project designed to use the children's reviewing system to collect aggregate data on the LAC dimensions of well-being. It comments on the viability of this method of aggregate data collection as well as locating the information on a cohort of 96 children in the context of other studies, and debates about whether the state can be a ‘good parent’.

The paper explores the outcomes of permanent family placement for children of minority ethnic origin, using a sample of 254 placements drawn, in the main, from a cohort of 1165 British children placed between 1980 and 1985. Statistical techniques are used to explore the relationship between ‘success’ (defined, for the purposes of this paper, as the placement not known to have broken down) and a range of variables, including the characteristics of the child, the birth parents and the adoptive parents, and the type of placement. In most respects, the findings are consistent with those of similar studies. Age at placement is found to have an important effect, with success least likely for children placed in the middle age range. Lack of problem behaviours in the children at the time of placement is also found to be associated with success. Variables which are found to have no effect on the probability of success include ethnic origin of the child, whether it is an adoptive or permanent foster placement, and whether contact with birth parents continued after placement. There was an interesting gender effect in that boys did better in ‘transracial’ than in ‘matched’ placements, but the opposite was the case for girls.

Sarah Armstrong and Petrina Slaytor (eds) The Federation Press, Sydney, 2001, 200 pp. AUS$33.95. ISBN 1 86287 397 6