In Australia the family is often used as a model for provision of residential care for children. Associated with this model is an acceptance of the parent role as the appropriate one for residential child care workers. This article explores these ideas, outlining the positive and negative aspects of the family model and the parenting function. The alternative put forward is that of identifying residential child care personnel as child development workers.

The Community Welfare Act 1982 was passed by the New South Wales Parliament and received Royal Assent on 25 May 1982. However, it is not yet in force: the Act itself provides that it will come into force on a day appointed by the Governor and notified by proclamation. This means it can come into force when the government decides that it should. It is possible for parts of it to be brought into force at different times.

The Act is long and complex. Rather than attempt a general overview of it, this paper will consider what the Act says on issues of special concern to foster parents.

Some people may wonder at the alternative title of this paper. I selected it after considering a number of specimens of the animal world. I could have used the sloth which seems to spend its life hanging upside down, asleep; or I could have used the analogy of any one of the dinosaurs which, as you know, tended to be huge and died when they could not adapt to changing environments. I chose a hybrid made up of tortoise and crab … the tortoise because it is cumbersomely slow and has a hard, seemingly impenetrable shell; the crab because it moves sideways on and has a tendency to devour its parents.

Child care policy must always relate to the wider social context, indeed it will inevitably do so as we are all affected by broader changes in the social structure and changes in ideology. Nonetheless, rates of change in various areas are not always synchronous. Today, I want to look at some broader changes in society and point to some of their implications for child care policy.

To many accountants the idea that welfare agencies would require computerised accounting may seem incongruous. However, Children's Welfare Association of Victoria have found, as a welfare field response to the standardised financial reporting system that they developed during 1981/82, that the need for such a system is clearly established. This mainly resulted from the focus of the reporting system on functional accounting which had not been addressed fully by many welfare agencies prior to the implementation of this system. In 1982 the Victorian State Government expressed a clear commitment to programme budgetting for all Government departments and as the voluntary child welfare field is heavily reliant on Government funding, it is expected that all agencies will need to respond to this commitment as if they were Government organisations. Programme budgetting needs as its base, a clear functional classification of income and expense. Therefore, the need for this form of accounting has become more obvious over the last twelve months.

This is the second part of a two part feature on hyperactivity. The first part was published in the Winter 1983 edition. It focussed upon how to recognise hyperactivity and parenting the preschool child who is hyperactive.

In this second part, the focus is upon introducing the hyperactive child to kindergarten and later to school. The authors offer practical suggestions on how to work with the child and his/her teachers to help the child through a difficult time.

There is a folk-tale about three blind men who were trying to picture what an elephant looked like. One felt the elephant's ears and said: ‘An elephant is similar to a winnowing basket’. Another felt the strong legs of the elephant and thought that the elephant looked like a big, solid pillar. The third felt its tail and to him an elephant was akin to a riding crop.

‘How do we understand that which we seek to act upon?’ Theory puts things which we see or know or hypothesise about into a system in order to make sense of what otherwise would be inscrutable in order to spot gaps and biases, and also to challenge the illusion that we know answers which we do not yet have. Some people become very uneasy by the fact of multiple points of view or the absence of complete agreement. They choose one point of view and they seek to destroy or denigrate all others. Or they may repudiate all concepts and use only intuition, common sense it's called. I suppose that the middle ground might be meriting our attention. I don't think that in our complex field of human relations and services to parents and children that it is very easy to simplify. You remember the comment There's a solution to all human problems. It's neat, and it's obvious and it's wrong'.

Child focus does not necessarily imply children's rights. For a child's rights to be exercised, the child must be seen in the context of his or her family and community, and hence the parents’ rights must also be respected. Recognition of children's rights by default rather than affirmative action leaves open the possibility that the child's rights may not be adhered to.