Within schools the teacher has membership of a small group which provides belonging, support and validation. Counsellors, who often cover many schools, also have a need to be accepted as a member of a group. This need is too easily overlooked as the role of counsellor is frequently seen as one who provides for the needs of others.

Sexual abuse of children is not an uncommon crime. It has received widespread media coverage over the last four years, resulting in a heightened public awareness of the problem. Yet to many, the sexual abuse of children remains a taboo subject. Guidance officers, school counsellors and teachers play particularly important roles as part of a community's response to child sexual abuse. In this paper, some of the literature regarding difficulties in defining child sexual abuse and the subsequent problems in assessing the prevalence and extent of child sexual abuse is examined. Additional problems involved in the recognition and reporting of child sexual abuse are discussed and the reasons why many professionals are reluctant to report suspected cases to statutory authorities are explored. The school psychologist plays a key role in intervention, and some of the options available are proposed. Finally, the importance of appropriate training for the psychologist is highlighted.

This study was conducted to determine whether verbal mediation strategies and group process skills implemented in small cooperative group settings of learning disabled children and low progress children, were effective in improving the children's expository writing performances. Measures of writing behaviour which were monitored included words per story, and two measures of complexity-number of T-units per story and number of words per T-unit. The results indicated that there was a larger increase in the target children's performances over baseline in both the number of words per story and the number of T-units per story. However, there was no significant difference in measures of words per T-unit. The results obtained suggest that the relatively simple procedures which were adopted to facilitate group interaction and commitment to tasks did contribute to the gains made by the children in the cooperative condition.

This paper reports a brief history of the Adolescent Coping Checklist (ACC). In its current form the ACC comprises 80 items which reliably assess 18 conceptually and empirically distinct coping strategies. These allow for the measurement of adolescents' responses to both specific concerns and concerns in general. A short form of the instrument, comprising 18 items has also been developed. It has been demonstrated that this is a useful indicator of a respondent's performance on the long form of the instrument. Both the long and short form of the ACC independently provide support for conceptualising coping in terms of three styles, each comprising a number of conceptually distinct strategies. These represent both functional and dysfunctional aspects of coping behaviour. The uses of such an instrument are addressed.

It is likely that volunteer helpers in many community health programs have an inappropriate action-oriented or advice-giving approach to helping. This orientation promotes contradictions between aims and practice when the former has to do with prevention and reduces the effectiveness of programs. This paper evaluates a training program designed to remove the ambiguity between helping role and service delivery in volunteers about to work with adolescents. This was done by training to increase the tendency to respond in facilitative and to decrease the tendency to respond in action-oriented ways. Changes in tendencies pre- to post-training using this different from usual approach suggest that it was highly successful.

Currently, modes of resourcing ‘disadvantage’ in Queensland secondary, primary and special schools is a contentious issue. It appears that neither the criteria nor the procedures for decision making in this area are satisfactory or consistent. Accountability and professional standards require processes which can be shown to be just and use objective criteria. This study seeks to recommend more objective and comprehensive criteria and procedures for identification of, and resource allocation for, the educationally disadvantaged. A Departmental Reference Group was consulted regularly throughout the development of this project in order to incorporate appropriate Departmental perspectives and practices and to expedite the dissemination of material to schools. The findings of a literature review were used in conjunction with consultation with a regional reference group for social justice issues, survey information, and a field test to formulate a profile which assessed disadvantage. This instrument was trialled in 16 Darling Downs schools and evaluated with a view to its usefulness, practicality and accuracy.

This paper outlines a cognitive-behavioural-motivational social skills training program for children and adolescents in a clinic or school setting, with a treatment or preventive focus. The approach is didactic and experiential, reflected in its core skill and process – the STOP THINK DO method of social problem solving and relating, following the traffic light cue. The program is broad based to include essential social supports, namely parents, teachers and peers to encourage transfer and maintenance of social skills and pro-social attitudes. Essentially, STOP THINK DO is a behaviour management method for adults and social skills training method for children. A future direction involves the implementation of a curriculum based program as a primary prevention strategy through the formal promotion of social competence in Australian school children. This application represents the confluence of theory, research and practice in social development, plus the interface between developmental, systems and community psychology.

The self-concepts of mildly intellectually handicapped (MIH) children (N=30) in special school, MIH children in a regular school not receiving special education assistance (N=30), and controls (N=30) in regular school were compared using the Self Description Questionnaire (SDQ) (Marsh, Smith, & Barnes, 1985). Multivariate analysis of variance revealed a significant relationship between the educational placement of children and their self-concepts. MIH children in special school scored significantly higher than MIH children in regular school and controls on physical appearance self-concept, peer relationship self-concept, mathematics self-concept, general school self-concept, and general self-concept. Additionally, MIH children in special school scored significantly higher on both academic and non-academic self-concepts when compared with both other groups.

The Aggression Replacement Training (ART) program is a comprehensive intervention for aggressive juvenile delinquents incorporating three components: Structured Learning, Anger Control Training and Moral Reasoning Training (Goldstein & Click, 1987). This paper investigates the efficacy of ART within a high school setting. Eighteen significantly aggressive students were selected using the Achenbach and Edelbrook (1986) aggression scale. Students (mean age 13 years and 9 months) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: Condition 1, the entire ART program; Condition 2, the Moral Reasoning component only; and Condition 3, a no treatment condition. The dependent measures were performance on: Behaviour Incident Reports, aggressive and coping behaviours, the Kendall-Wilcox Self-Control Scale, Situation Tests, and a Sociomoral Reflections Measure. Two-way repeated measures ANOVAs were used to analyse the data. Compared to the two control conditions students completing the ART program: showed a significant decrease in aggressive incidences; a significant increase in coping incidences; and acquired significantly more social skills. Students in Condition 1 improved on the Combined Kendall-Wilcox Scale for Self-Control and Impulsivity. No significant differences were noted on the Sociomoral Reflections measure. ART appears to be an effective intervention for aggressive youth within a high school setting.