Foster care in Victoria is under strain. As Victoria implements major legislative and service system reforms, we should consider how the future of foster care can be informed by its past. To that end, this paper revisits the document on which Victoria’s current system of foster care was founded, Tierney’s 1973 report ‘Prospects and Tasks in Foster Care’. With reference to that template, this paper examines some of the service system changes that have threatened the viability of foster care, and draws attention to some enduring qualities of foster care that nevertheless are worthy of preservation.

During 2003-2005, Anglicare Victoria conducted study groups for their advanced caseworkers. This program was developed in consultation with senior staff within the context of Anglicare Victoria’s Services Practices Manual, including Theoretical Frameworks. It aimed to provide senior practitioners with peer support, education and discussion.

The study group model was a collaborative approach using adult teaching principles and strategies. Central to each session was a case presentation from one of the participants which provided an opportunity to integrate learning with theory and practice. A training model of the study group is presented.

Evaluation indicated that the study group reduced participants’ isolation, increased their confidence in engaging family members, including fathers, and broadened their conceptualisation of family problems. Learnings and proposed changes to future study groups are identified.

The 2004 Forgotten Australians report is the most recent in a series of enquiries highlighting the prevalence of abuse in Australian child welfare institutions. The final report was heavily reliant on oral evidence from survivors and called for ongoing historical research to investigate the conditions which allowed such abuse to exist. This paper is a preliminary response to that call.

Drawing on the records of a range of Victorian child welfare organisations, it argues that there is evidence in the archives both for the existence of institutional abuse and of individual and systemic responses to the problem. However, the evidence is not always found in the obvious places, nor does it support a simplistic explanation of the prevalence and tolerance of abuse in such settings.

This article is written as a bold opinion piece. It stems from the fact that once again we are seeing reports of abuse in residential care while at the same time there are calls for the reclaiming of residential care as a positive choice for children and youth. Yet there seems to be confusion as to exactly what function these programs should perform in the broader out-of-home care system. There are also important questions about the knowledge and skills that staff would require if such programs are to be non-abusive. A rejoinder to this opinion piece would be welcome.

Particularly in western societies, the notion that children are biological property has been a strongly implicit idea for many generations. It has therefore also been an idea that has implicitly pervaded our child welfare legislation and practice for generations, despite frequent legal rhetoric about the rights of the child. In this paper, the author traces the negative effects on welfare practice that this notion of children as property has had over the last half century. In doing so, the author calls not only on his professional experience, but also on his personal experience as a foster, adoptive and permanent care parent. Some provisions within the new Victorian child protection legislation are examined to gauge their capacity to address the negative effects on practice of this persistent notion, and reason found for some guarded optimism.