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In this chapter on therapeutic residential care in Australia, the authors identify what is perhaps an overemphasis on “downsizing”—for example, reducing to units of four or fewer—without comparable efforts at “specialization” of programs and attention to their critical elements as inadequate to meet the complex needs of differing at-risk youth. More generally, they also question inadequate emphasis on group processes and structure, which they argue is central to the therapeutic milieu; inadequate emphasis on evidence-based practices, including model programs; inadequate national data gathering; and continuing disproportionality of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care as areas of continuing concern. They conclude that the idea of a “revitalized” residential care sector in Australia seems a long way off.

Therapeutic residential care differs markedly from other forms of out-of-home care for children and youth. Support for the view that therapeutic residential care needs to be a milieu approach that ...

This article reports on the early results of using behavioural and educational data to evaluate a residential education programme. The programme serves male and female students between 12 and 16 years of age who have been suspended or expelled from school due to behavioural issues or who refused to attend school. Using measures of behavioural and educational progress during care and reporting these changes over time provided empirical evidence that the programme was achieving its primary aims of ‘behaviour change and educational gains.’ Collecting and reporting this data has empowered the programme to increase programme effectiveness through both data-informed decision-making and ongoing programme evaluation.

This commentary aims to start a debate about various dimensions of social disadvantage and the relationship to child abuse and neglect (CAN). These dimensions include poverty, educational attainment, employment status, sub-standard housing, disadvantaged neighbourhoods and social isolation from family. Other aspects such as mental health issues, domestic violence and substance misuse are compounding factors that are critical influences on the relationship between disadvantage and CAN. New South Wales is used as the exemplar Australian state.

It is not unusual to see research studies or published opinion pieces that claim to demonstrate that home-based interventions (HBI) are more effective than group-care (GC) programs for young people...

This article is about using data from the Strengths and Difficulties questionnaire to develop a house burden score as a way of measuring the workload of a therapeutic residential care program. The ...

This article examines child protection practice when the Department of Communities and Justice in New South Wales takes the view that an injury to a child is non-accidental. The position taken in this paper is that once a child protection caseworker takes the position that an injury is non-accidental, then a strict liability or absolute liability approach is adopted. In effect, any of the child’s parents or caregivers are identified as persons who may have caused the injury or harm. What follows is the decision that a child must never be restored to the parents or caregivers, unless a person confesses to causing the harm and completes specific child protection counselling. Our concern is with the process of investigation, the reliance on one medical opinion in a context where the parents or caregivers are not in a financial position to obtain a second opinion, the failure to observe the rules of evidence when considering medical opinion, and the manner of substantiation of the non-accidental injury. In addition, we argue that there is a lack of knowledge about the factors that influence a paediatrician’s decision-making and that the guidelines for judicial decision-making derived from case law need to be examined further.

In this article I examine the best interests of the child construct and raise questions about the utility of the construct. I also draw attention to Winnicott’s good enough parenting proposal as an alternative conceptualisation that addresses the issue of parental child-rearing capacity.The best interests construct that emanates from the US has been the dominant international child-protection paradigm for at least two decades. Associated with this construct is a focus on individual parental pathology and child-rearing deficits. Yet, family poverty is the dominant factor, rather than parental pathology or incapacity, that precipitates many child abuse and neglect cases. The question is, has the best interests construct, one that ignores poverty and social disadvantage, outlived its usefulness? This construct has certainly affected Aboriginal families and led, as evidence shows, to the over-removal of children from these families. A range of alternative interventions and a social model of child protection is then canvassed.

Recently, the Anne E Casey Foundation announced a ‘first-of-its kind partnership’ between the US Children’s Bureau, Casey Family Programs and Prevent Child Abuse America (http://www aecf org) Each paper has a different focus – social origins (Ainsworth), legal disadvantage (Harrison et al ) and service delivery (Bennett et al ) – but all tell a similar story about how parental poverty makes dealing with child protection authorities an impossible task The second part of this issue contains all remaining articles Because this is the final issue of Children Australia, we have ‘cleared the books’ and this issue of the journal has a higher than usual volume of papers In conducting their analysis, the authors test the relevance of Ambiguous Loss Theory in understanding how removal from families of origin and placement experiences may affect young people and lead to ‘wanted’ pregnancies

Parental licensing is the idea that parenting competence should be demonstrated prior to adults achieving full parental rights. It is a long-standing idea that is alive among a host of academic philosophers, political scientists and others interested in children’s rights. The question is – is the notion of parental licensing a good idea or is it an extreme authoritarian response to the social problem of child abuse and neglect? The next question is – if parental licensing was in place, who would decide on parental competence, what are the boundaries of competence and how would competence be measured? And what about those adults who are deemed as incompetent? It is worth considering the proposition that, by endorsing the concept of the “best interests of the child” and passing legislation that gives standing to the removal of a child from parental care, by default this constitutes a system of parental licensing.

We are in agreement with some of the points made in the recent article by Tregeagle, ‘Weighing up the evidence and local experience of residential care’ (Children Australia, 42(4), 240–247). For example, there can be no dispute about the high costs of residential placements or that achieving a stable residential environment is very challenging. Table 1 provides a three state cost comparison of residential placements (Ainsworth, 2017).

This article reviews developments in the NSW child protection system which aim to reduce the number of children in state care. The first development was changes to the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1988 made in 2016 that created a permanency hierarchy for children who have been removed and not restored to parental or extended family care. Under Section 10A of the Act, guardianship and adoption becomes the priority if restoration is not possible, although Aboriginal children are exempt from adoption to some extent. The more recent development, during 2017, is the purchase by the Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) of a license for two US models, namely Multi-Systemic Therapy for Child Abuse and Neglect (MST-CAN®) and Functional Family Therapy through Child Welfare (FFT-CW®). US studies have shown that these models reduce the number of children being taken into care. Related to this effort is the recognition by FaCS that the cost of out-of-home care (OOHC) is increasingly unmanageable given the 16,843 children in care in NSW. Added to this is the knowledge, confirmed by the Minister, that for many children in OOHC the outcomes are dismal. Finally, the article turns to the issue of poverty and seeks to address the established correlation (not causality) between poverty and child abuse and neglect. This remains the key issue that underscores child abuse and neglect that has to be addressed if a significant reduction in the number of children taken into state care is to be achieved.

In every state and territory in Australia, child welfare departments, under various names, maintain or, alternatively, fund group homes for children and young people in the non-government sector. Increasingly, these group homes offer only four places with no integrated treatment or educational services. In that respect they can best be viewed as providing care and accommodation only. Since 2010, following the release of a definition of therapeutic residential care by the National Therapeutic Residential Care Work Group, there has been debate about how to make group homes therapeutic. In 2017, as part of a wider reform effort, New South Wales renamed all their out-of-home care (foster care and residential care) as intensive therapeutic care and ceased using the term residential. The net result is that the group homes in New South Wales will from now on be referred to as intensive therapeutic care homes. This article raises questions about the utility of this renaming and explores whether or not group homes can be therapeutic given the characteristics of the population of children and young people they accommodate, their small size, the staffing complement and the limited job satisfaction with high staff turnover as a consequence of this smallness. All of these factors lead to the well-documented, anti-therapeutic instability of the group home life space.

This article provides data about the national usage of residential care services for children and young people in Australia. A number of definitions of therapeutic residential care are then considered. Next details of the debate in New South Wales and elsewhere in Australia are reviewed. The focus then moves to the identification of the characteristics of those children and young people who may need 24/7 therapeutic residential care. The final section is about the difficulty of transitioning standard or generic residential care programs into therapeutic residential care.

This study examines the use of section 106A of the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 in the New South Wales in Children's Court. Section 106A was inserted into the Act by way of an amendment in November 2006. This amendment establishes that if a child has previously been removed from parental care and not restored to the parents, then that is prima facie evidence that any subsequent child born to these parents is in need of care and protection and can be subject to removal. The parents must then rebut this evidence if they are to recover or retain custody of the new born child. To date, no data exists about the use of this section of the Act, hence this study. The only significant finding was that if section 106A was cited in Court documents, then restoration of a child to family is less likely. The analysis did not show any significant relationship between Aboriginality and any of the other variables in the study.

Over the last 25 years (1990–2015), the number of adoptions of children (and young persons) in Australia declined from 1,142 to 292 (25.5 %). Of the 292 adoptions that took place in 2014–15, 83 (28%) were inter country adoptions, with the remaining 209 (72 %) adoptions of Australian children. Very few of the adoptions of Australian children were in New South Wales. In amendments in 2014 to the New South Wales Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 and the Adoptions Act 2000, a new emphasis on ‘open’ adoption was introduced. The focus of these amendments is on adoption of children who are in foster care where the New South Wales Children's Court has ruled that there is no realistic possibility of restoration of the child to parental care. This article is about the implementation of this new legislative emphasis on adoption. It does not examine the benefit or otherwise of adoption for children who cannot be safely restored to parental care as this issue has been extensively canvassed elsewhere. This article also highlights the US and English experience of adoption from care in order to place the New South Wales development in perspective. The article concludes with discussion of the issues adoption raises for the parents of a child who is being considered for adoption from care.

At the present time in Australia, there is much discussion about attachment and trauma-informed therapeutic residential care (TRC) programmes. The discussion includes a continuing reference to the high cost of this form of care by comparison to foster family care. This comparison assumes that both services serve the same population which this paper disputes. The emergence of TRC as one option in the continuum of care also raises issues about how a residential care (RC) workforce might be educated and trained for these programmes. This is particularly important given the mental health and behavioural difficulties the population of young people referred to TRC programmes, frequently display.

In many developed countries around the world residential care interventions for children and adolescents have come under increasing scrutiny. Against this background an international summit was organised in England (spring 2016) with experts from 13 countries to reflect on therapeutic residential care (TRC). The following working definition of TRC was leading: "Therapeutic residential care involves the planful use of a purposefully constructed, multi-dimensional living environment designed to enhance or provide treatment, education, socialization, support, and protection to children and youth with identified mental health or behavioural needs in partnership with their families and in collaboration with a full spectrum of community based formal and informal helping resources". The meeting was characterised by exchange of information and evidence, and by preparing an international research agenda. In addition, the outlines of a consensus statement on TRC were discussed. This statement, originally published in English and now reproduced in a Dutch translation, comprises inter alia five basic principles of care that according to the Work Group on Therapeutic Residential Care should be guiding for residential youth care provided at any time.

The media coverage of foster care in Australia is replete with adoration for foster carers who look after disadvantaged and difficult children and youth. As this article is being written, New South Wales is holding a ‘foster care week’ with enhanced media coverage and praise for foster carers, the recruitment of new foster carers and acclaim for the ‘foster carer of the year’. Yet, there is another side to foster care that offers less than ideal circumstances for children in care. There is the worrying issue of multiple placements, the problem with children and young people running away from foster care before they reach the legal age for discharge, and evidence of increased incidence of poor educational attainment and involvement in juvenile offending for young people in foster care. In addition, there are cases of foster children being abused by foster carers. As adults, former foster-care children and youth are over-represented among the homeless, in adult correction centres, the unemployed and the users of mental health services. This article documents these negative outcomes of entering the foster-care system, and asks whether family (or non-relative) foster care can survive this evidence. For too many children and young people, family foster care may not provide better outcomes than less-than-optimal parental care from which the children were removed. An alternative is to reduce the use of family foster care and increase intensive support and parenting education services for birth parents who have limited parenting capacity. The aim should be to limit the number of children being taken into care.

This article records briefly the history of the Family Inclusion Network as an organisation that promotes family inclusive child protection practice. Since its inception in Queensland in 2006, Family Inclusion Network organisations have been formed elsewhere and now exist in Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales. In 2010, developments at a national level saw the formation of the Family Inclusion Network Australia. Most organisations are incorporated and some have achieved charitable status. Each organisation endorses a common set of aims and objectives. There are, however, differences in terms of whether state or territory organisations accept government funding or not, are staffed by professionals or rely entirely on volunteer personnel, and have a capacity or otherwise to provide direct casework services to parents. Some state organisations focus on information and advice services, and legislative and policy reform efforts. All have telephone advice lines and a webpage presence. This article also focuses on a code of ethics for child protection practice and on the contribution parents can make to child protection services, and their rights to do so.

The New South Wales Children's Court, like other state and territory Children's Courts, is a closed court. This means that the public cannot attend court hearings when care and protection matters are before the court. The exception is Victoria where even in the Family Division of the Children's Court that deals with care and protection matters an application has to be made to a magistrate for the court to be closed. This article is designed to take the reader behind the closed door and provide information about court processes and procedures as well as present parents' comments on the way in which the court works.In New South Wales there are seven specialist children's courts at Parramatta, Glebe (Bidura), Campbeltown, Newcastle (Broadmeadow), Wyong, Woy Woy and in the Illawarra (Port Kembla). In other places children's care matters are dealt with by local magistrates supported by specialist Children's Court magistrates from Parramatta who staff a country Children's Court circuit.Parents' views on these processes and procedures are troubling as many see the court as unfair in the way that decisions are made. The parents' views have been obtained, through interviews with parents over a number of years, as part of the authors' professional duties, as a Guardian ad Litem and solicitor in the New South Wales Children's Court.From this experience it is clear that many professional staff who have contact with parents involved in Children's Court matters are also unclear about the court processes, and as a result they are less able to support parents through this stressful process. This article aims to assist staff to understand the court processes so that they may in turn support parents.

The focus of this article is young women aged 16–17 years who, while in State care in New South Wales gave birth, and from whom the child was then removed by the same department that is responsible for the mother's care. This topic is rarely examined due to two constraints. One is the lack of available data about the incidence of events of this kind. The second is the confidentiality provision in the New South Wales Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 which defines the Children's Court as a closed court and prohibits the reporting of identifiable case information.As a consequence much of this article is based on the authors' direct observation of cases involving young women of this age that they have encountered while undertaking professional duties in the Children's Court. The article also explores the further issue of the adoption of children removed from mothers who are still in State care.Because of the lack of data this article can be classified as an opinion piece which attempts to raise awareness about an important care issue. The article has a New South Wales focus but the authors expect that the same concerns are echoed in other Australian states and territories.

The use of residential placements for children needing out-of-home care remains controversial. This article considers the discourse of 'residential' and 'institutional' care before describing, mainly through administrative data sources, the wide variations in group-care usage in different jurisdictions. In some countries, its use is minimal, with foster care, kinship care and in some cases, adoption being the preferred options. This is not so in other countries where a high percentage of children in care are in residential placements. There is also diversity in the type of residential services, ranging from small group homes to large institutions. The challenges inherent in making process and outcome comparisons across national boundaries are explored. The authors concur with those who argue for more systematic ways of describing and analysing the aims and characteristics of residential settings. Only then can meaningful comparisons be made between outcomes from group-care regimes in different jurisdictions.

It is not uncommon to hear foster carers and child protection case workers comment about a child's behaviour both before and after parental contact. Frequently these comments are negative, the view being expressed that contact should be reduced because the children get upset at seeing their parents for a limited time, and then at having to separate from them. The child's resultant distress seems too difficult to manage for foster carers. Some foster parents even go so far as to suggest that parental contact should completely cease. This article sets out the rationale for parent–child contact after a Children's Court has ruled that there is “no realistic possibility of restoration” of a child to parental care. In doing so, the article revisits many of the old arguments put forward for reducing parent contact. However, alternative ways of approaching children's difficult behaviours both pre- and post-contact are also proposed to suggest different ways of managing these behaviours. The legislation and child protection practice in New South Wales provides the frame of reference for this article.

none 32 si The International Work Group for Therapeutic Residential Care convened an International Summit on ‘Pathways to Evidence-Based Practice’ at Loughborough University (GBR), Centre for Child and Family Research on 27-29 April, 2016 with generous support from the Sir Halley Stewart Trust and in partnership with The European Scientific Association on Residential and Family Care for Children and Adolescents (NLD) (EUSARF), the International Association for Outcome-Based Evaluation and Research on Family and Children’s Services (ITA) (IAOBER) and the Association of Children’s Residential Centers (USA) and with the additional support of Action for Children (GBR) and the National Implementation Service (NIS) (GBR). Membership includes: Lisa Holmes (Chair), Director, Centre for Child and Family Research, Loughborough University (GBR); James K. Whittaker (Co-Chair), Charles O. Cressey Endowed Professor Emeritus, University of Washington, School of Social Work, Seattle (USA); Jorge Fernandez del Valle, Professor of Psychology and Director, Child and Family Research Group, University of Oviedo (ESP); Frank Ainsworth, Senior Principal Research Fellow (Adjunct), James Cook University, School of Social Work and Human Services, Townsville, Queensland (AUS); Tore Andreassen, Psychologist, The Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs (NOR); James P. Anglin, Professor, Faculty of the School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria (CAN); Christopher Bellonci, Board-Certified Child/Adolescent and Adult Psychiatrist; Associate Professor, Psychiatry Department, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA (USA); David Berridge, Professor of Child and Family Welfare, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol (GBR); Amaia Bravo, Lecturer, Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo (ESP); Cinzia Canali, Senior Researcher, Fondazione Emanuela Zancan, Padova (ITA) and President, International Association of Outcome-Based Evaluation and Research in Family and Children’s Services (IAOBER); Mark Courtney, Professor, School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago (USA); Laurah Currey, Chief Operating Officer, Pressley Ridge, Pittsburgh, PA (USA) and President, Association for Children’s Residential Centers, (USA); Daniel. L. Daly, Executive Vice President and Director of Youth Care, Father Flanagan’s Boys’ Home, Boys Town, NE (USA); Robbie Gilligan, Professor of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin IRE), Hans Grietens, Professor, Centre for Special Needs Education & Youth Care, University of Groningen (NLD) and President, European Scientific Association on Residential and Family Care for Children and Adolescents (EUSARF); Annemiek T. Harder, Assistant professor, Department of Special Needs Education and Youth Care, University of Groningen (NLD); Martha J. Holden, Senior Extension Associate with the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research and the Principal Investigator and Director of the Residential Child Care Project at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (USA); Sigrid James, Professor, Department of Social Work & Social Ecology, School of Behavioral Health, Loma Linda University, CA (USA); Andrew Kendrick, Professor of Residential Child Care, School of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Strathclyde (GBR) and Consultant at the Centre of Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland (CELCIS) and the Centre for Youth and Criminal Justice (CYCJ) (UK); Erik J. Knorth, Professor, Department of Special Needs Education and Youth Care, University of Groningen (NLD); Mette Lausten, Senior Researcher at SFI - The Danish National Centre for Social Research, Copenhagen (DNK), John S. Lyons, Senior Policy Fellow at Chapin Hall, University of Chicago, IL (USA); Eduardo Martin, Lecturer at the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, University of La Laguna, Tenerife (ESP); Samantha McDermid, Research Fellow, Centre for Child and Family Research, Loughborough University (GBR); Patricia McNamara, Senior Fellow (Honorary), Department of Social Work, University of Melbourne (AUS); Laura Palareti, Assistant Professor in Social Psychology, Department of Education Studies, University of Bologna (ITA); Susan Ramsey, Parent and Former Children’s Mental Health Advocate, The Walker School, Needham, MA (USA); Kari M. Sisson, Executive Director, Association of Children’s Residential Centers (USA); Richard W. Small, Walker Executive Director Emeritus, The Walker School, Needham, MA (USA); June Thoburn, Emeritus Professor of Social Work, University of East Anglia (GBR); Ronald Thompson, Senior Director, Boys Town National Research Institute for Child and Family Studies, Boys Town, NE (USA); Anat Zeira, Professor, School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Head of Research and Evaluation at the Haruv Institute (ISR). Our work group wishes to thank CFRC staffer Laura Dale at Loughborough for extraordinary efforts in producing this statement in record time and for her care and assistance with all phases of our Summit activity. Whittaker, James K; Holmes, Lisa; del Valle, Jorge F.; Ainsworth, Frank; Andreassen, Tore; Anglin, James; Bellonci, Christopher; Berridge, David; Bravo, Amaia; Canali, Cinzia; Courtney, Mark; Currey, Laurah; Daly, Daniel; Gilligan, Robbie; Grietens, Hans; Harder, Annemiek; Holden, Martha; James, Sigrid; Kendrick, Andrew; Knorth, Erik; Lausten, Mette; Lyons, John; Martin, Eduardo; Mcdermid, Samantha; Mcnamara, Patricia; Palareti, Laura; Ramsey, Susan; Sisson, Kari; Small, Richard; Thoburn, June; Thompson, Ronald; Zeira, Anat Whittaker, James K; Holmes, Lisa; del Valle, Jorge F.; Ainsworth, Frank; Andreassen, Tore; Anglin, James; Bellonci, Christopher; Berridge, David; Bravo, Amaia; Canali, Cinzia; Courtney, Mark; Currey, Laurah; Daly, Daniel; Gilligan, Robbie; Grietens, Hans; Harder, Annemiek; Holden, Martha; James, Sigrid; Kendrick, Andrew; Knorth, Erik; Lausten, Mette; Lyons, John; Martin, Eduardo; Mcdermid, Samantha; Mcnamara, Patricia; Palareti, Laura; Ramsey, Susan; Sisson, Kari; Small, Richard; Thoburn, June; Thompson, Ronald; Zeira, Anat

Every Australian citizen expects state and territory governments to protect children from child abuse and neglect. Protecting children from harm is seen as good. This however is not a simple matter. The ultimate act in protecting children is to remove them from parental care. This causes trauma for the child and pain and distress for parents no matter how inadequately they may have been caring for their children. In that respect removing a child from parental care does harm to parents and children. This article explores the paradox of doing harm while doing good. The article has an Australian focus but the authors think that this issue affects child protection services in many countries.