Welcome to the first issue of Children Australia for 2012. This year Rachael and I are continuing in our roles as co-editors with the continued support of our editorial consultants, and OzChild staff. However, this year I will be taking long service leave and leaving the journal in the safe hands of Rachael for the months of May and June. This break will give me a chance to travel and I am hoping to meet with a couple of our editorial consultants in New Zealand and Tasmania along the way.

As we rapidly approach the end of another year, and think about Christmas and being with family members, we often remember the people and events that have had an impact on our development. One of the things that I remember most strongly is the routine established in our household which entailed an early start in the morning to practise music. I played the piano and my brother the violin. With our mother a professional musician, learning to play an instrument was an imperative and practice likewise. For us this meant rising by 6 each morning and doing an hour of practice before a quick breakfast and the usual rush to be ready for school. One of the enduring impacts for me has been the impossibility of sleeping in beyond about 7.30am, but there are others of much greater importance. I will refer to these as this editorial unfolds. The topic, as you might have guessed, is music and arts for children and young people.

In preparing the June issue of Children Australia, the editors, Jennifer Lehmann and Rachael Sanders, have shared the task of writing the editorial and developing the content. Beginning with Jennifer's thoughts on the ‘Slow Movement’, followed by Rachael's overview of the articles and reviews in this issue. Also included is information about the journal's recent change of publisher to Cambridge University Press, as useful information for those planning to submit to the journal.

I will begin this Editorial by sharing a conversation I had with my five-year-old daughter at the end of her first year of school. During a typical conversation about the day's events, she made a ‘factual’ remark about things that God had done. As she was previously not a believer in God, I asked her how she came to decide that He was real. She replied: ‘Because school said he was real and my school only tells me the truth.’

Joanne Holmes was a respected and valued colleague, a champion for her people, a dearly loved wife, mother and grandmother, and a woman who met challenges with style. Joanne was born in Wynyard, Tasmania, a Palawa woman whose father died in the Hobart bushfires and whose mother subsequently moved to Melbourne. Joanne met and married Kevin Holmes in 1974 and, in the 1980s after having her first son, Matthew, decided to train as a teacher. After undertaking a number of teaching roles, Joanne had a second son, Jeremy, but 1992 brought ill health following a dental procedure and Joanne became the first Aboriginal woman to receive a liver transplant. Poor health dogged her footsteps on and off from this time on, but Joanne was unstoppable. She enrolled and completed a Bachelor of Social Work degree graduating with Honours in Social Work from the Institute of Koori Education at Geelong (Deakin University), and until her death maintained her determination to advocate passionately for services to children, young people and their families throughout the northern regions of Victoria and beyond.

When young children tell their mothers that they are being sexually abused by their father, the mother faces a dilemma; if she does nothing, state child protection services can remove her children as being in need of care and protection. If police are called, she is likely to be told to leave the family home to keep her children safe. If she does, the father is likely to turn to the federal family law system1 to seek time with the children. If the mother seeks an order for supervised, or no further contact with the child to protect them from abuse, she may lose residence of the child and the child may be ordered to live with the abusing parent.

There are well-recognised and articulated difficulties in the provision of health services to communities in rural and remote areas. These difficulties encompass practicalities and geography, economics and politics, as well as the personal and professional. This article describes a multi-level model developed by a group of regional services to address the mental health and well-being needs of infants and small children of rural and remote families, utilising existing resources creatively and collaboratively. The model draws on understandings from attachment theory about the nature and needs of humans as relational beings.

Planning for ‘permanency’ or a ‘family for life’ has been an aspiration for many children in the out-of-home care system who are unable to return to live with their parents. It is a concept derived from research, which indicates that children who ‘drift in care’ have generally poorer outcomes than those who find at least a more stable, if not ‘permanent’, home. This article examines the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW] data that reports publicly on child protection and children in out-of-home care to find evidence about how Australian children in out-of-home care are faring against this dimension of the care experience. Little can be said on the basis of this data. The article is written as a ‘think piece’ to raise questions about why, if such a dimension of the care experience is considered important for a significant group of children, the data is so opaque.

Integrated service delivery in the early childhood education and care sector is burgeoning as a direct result of government agendas in Australia that privilege services for young children and families, especially those considered most vulnerable and at risk. In many cases this means reviewing and revising current practice to work more collaboratively with other professionals. This paper reports the findings of one aspect of a larger Australian study entitled: ‘Developing and sustaining pedagogical leadership in early childhood education and care professionals’. The focus of this paper is the understandings and practices of professionals in both Queensland and Victoria working in integrated Children's Services across the education, care, community and health sectors. The notion of transdisciplinary practice is also explored as a way to sustain practice. Qualitative data collection methods, including the ‘Circles of Change’ process, the ‘Significant Change’ method and semi-structured interviews were used. The findings indicate concerns around professional identity, feeling valued, role confusion and the boundaries imposed by funding regulations. Working in a transdisciplinary way was generally considered a useful way to move practice forward in these settings, although the ramifications for leadership that this approach brings requires further consideration.

The Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction is a multilateral treaty that seeks to protect children from the harmful effects of abduction and retention across international boundaries by providing a procedure to bring about their prompt return. The ‘Child Abduction Section’ provides information about the operation of the Convention and the work of the Hague Conference in monitoring its implementation and promoting international co-operation in the area of child abduction. There are currently 58 member countries and 22 non-member countries. Australia signed the Convention five years after its introduction. The Family Law (Child Abduction) Regulations 1986 enshrined in Australian law the principles espoused in the Convention which came into force in 1987. The Regulations are to:

1. (a) secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to or retained in any contracting state, and

2. (b) ensure that rights of custody and access under the law of one contracting state are effectively respected in the other contracting states.

Local and international research suggests an overrepresentation of young people leaving state out-of-home care in the youth justice system. A range of factors appear to contribute to this correlation including child abuse and neglect, placement instability, experiences of residential care, and unsupported transitions from care. This article presents the findings of a Victorian pilot study conducted in partnership with Whitelion, a not-for-profit organisation specifically offering support to ‘young people involved with or at risk of involvement with the youth justice and/or out-of-home care and leaving care services’ (Whitelion, 2012), to examine the interrelationship between the child protection and youth justice systems, and particularly to explore the processes that take place when young people involved in the youth justice system leave state care. A series of interviews and focus groups with Whitelion workers were used to explore whether leaving care plans and policies address and minimise involvement with youth justice; the role, if any, of formal consultations by child protection services with youth justice regarding this group of care leavers; and the ongoing role of youth justice postcare, particularly when young people are in custody at the time of their exit from care. Some significant implications for policy and practice are identified.

A decade of inquiries into the child protection and out-of-home care sectors across Australia has revealed a legacy of systemic abuse and individual neglect. The findings presented in this article form part of a larger research project that examined the experiences and needs of children and young people in out-of-home care within this broader context. Using document analysis, the larger study involved developing an in-depth understanding of their experiences and needs, and specifically, constructing a taxonomy of needs. The study also explored a series of salient findings about children and young people's experiences and needs in care and a number of these were explained using an innovative visual display method known as tag clouds. The aim of this article is twofold. First, to discuss the salient findings around the experiences and needs of children and young people in care in Australia using the tag clouds to illustrate the study's findings, and second, to discuss the potential use of tag clouds as an effective tool for providing visual representations of qualitative data.

Permanency, stability and continuity are essential components of quality out-of-home care. Permanency planning is a case planning process designed to promote stability and long-term connections for children subject to child protection intervention. This paper outlines findings from a small qualitative study that explored perceptions of permanency planning held by child protection practitioners, carers, and the parents of children in care in Queensland, Australia. Findings show that each group emphasised different aspects of permanency. Practitioners tended to focus on placement arrangements, carers focused on relationships and security, and parents were concerned about the quality of care their children received. Everyone involved in permanency decisions – whether children and young people, parents, carers or child protection practitioners – has ideas, theories and knowledge that they draw upon in expressing their views. Understanding these perspectives is useful for the decision-making process, as each stakeholder communicates with others about what they think is most important for the child. Implications for child protection practice include having a clear practice language and approach to permanency planning, exploring the unique areas of importance to different stakeholders on permanency planning, and ensuring quality participatory practice.

This article reports on a study of Children's Court files relating to completed applications for variation of care orders (section 90 applications) in three specialised Children's Courts in New South Wales. All files that could be located for completed applications were reviewed and nonidentifying data was recorded. The study attempted to examine the type of applications, the characteristics of applicants and the outcomes of the applications. One hundred and seventeen applications were reviewed: almost half of these were made by the then Department of Community Services (DoCS), and about the same proportion of applications were made by parents. After the section 90 applications were determined there was an increase in care orders allocating parental responsibility to the Minister for Community Services with 73% of the children placed under the care of the minister to age 18.

The exploratory study of meanings of volatile substance use (VSU) on which this article draws (involving 28 young people living in Melbourne, Victoria, Australa, aged from 13 to 24 years, each with experience of VSU, and 14 expert workers) was not designed to investigate any relationship between VSU and living in out-of-home care while subject to protective orders. However, when asked about their lives at the time they commenced or intensified VSU, 8 participants were adamant that living in out-of-home care was a significant factor. Two narratives reiterated by these young people are identified in the article: first that VSU is part of life in out-of-home care, and second that VSU ceases to be appropriate after leaving care. Young people who are living in out-of-home care report substantially higher levels of VSU than occur across the general population. This article shows how narrative accounts (even when expressed by small numbers of participants) provide insight into how VSU and other drug use may become embedded in particular institutional settings through assuming meanings and utility for users that are specific to these environments. While previous literature on the aetiology of VSU generally emphasises individual or familial risk factors, this article argues that out-of-home care may function, at least in some instances, as an institutional ‘risk environment’ for VSU and that this should be further explored through future research. Adjusting models of care may offer new strategies for responding to this form of drug use.

This article, which is built on media discourse analysis, provides an insight into how public opinion on the work of courts has developed into a discourse of disapproval. The discourse of time is often used to evaluate the work of courts and tends to meet with disapproval when related to sentencing and when the Family Court fails to deliver equal parental access to children. The Family Court is also the subject of discourses of fear within the media, with stories often focusing on child abuse and horror stories of neglect designed to attract and recruit an audience to media outlets. In addition, the discourses facing the Family Court are now firmly tied to time as a major aspect of decision-making. Because of this contested view, child protection may be reduced to a secondary perspective. This paper recommends a change to discourses surrounding courts by all parties in order to facilitate better understanding.

The Discovering Relationship Using Music, Beliefs, Emotions, Attitudes & Thoughts (DRUMBEAT) program used drumming as a way of engaging at risk youth in a form of musical expression, while simultaneously incorporating themes and discussions relating to healthy relationships with others. The program targeted young people who are alienated from the school system. An evaluation was undertaken with a sample of 60 program participants in Western Australia's Wheatbelt region. The evaluation used both quantitative and qualitative methods, including informal discussions with staff and participants, observation, participant and teacher questionnaires, and school attendance and behavioural incident records. Pre- and postintervention data were collected on self-esteem, school attendance, antisocial behaviour, and levels of cooperation and collaboration. Students participating in DRUMBEAT increased their scores over a range of social indicators that act to increase connection with the school community. The results support the underlying program theory, that combining the therapeutic potential of musical expression with basic cognitive–behavioural therapy can be used successfully to deliver a range of social learning outcomes, including emotional control, improved relationships and increased self-esteem. Further longitudinal studies are required to assess the sustainability of the measured outcomes and their vulnerability to external factors.

This brief report investigated coping strategies and their perceived effectiveness in response to a social stressor for 7–12 year olds with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASDs). Ninety-eight participants completed a self-report coping scale in response to a self-identified socially stressful situation. Responses yielded three categories of use and perceived effectiveness: (1) strategies used frequently and viewed as effective, (2) strategies not used frequently and not perceived as effective, and (3) strategies used frequently but not perceived as effective. Respondents reported high frequency use and high perceived effectiveness of six strategies that are generally considered as positive/engagement oriented coping. They also indicated low frequency use and low perceived effectiveness of five strategies broadly regarded as negative and avoidant/disengagement coping. The last cluster of four strategies, identified as frequently used but not effective, consisted of strategies less clearly categorised as positive/engaged vs. negative/disengaged. Implications for future research and clinical considerations are proposed.

The victims of filicide in the context of parental separation and divorce have recently been identified as the largest group among all filicide victims in Australia. Nevertheless, research into this group of victims has been sparse, fragmentary and contradictory, with the consequence that confusion has prevailed. This article critically reflects on the existing research on filicide and argues that it has been insufficiently comprehensive and reliable and, therefore, is not suitable for use as a knowledge base for professional individuals, programmatic and policy interventions, and prevention. The article suggests ways of developing more reliable research for knowledge building and details the data developed so far that underpins their recommendations for a national programme of research.

Due to the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the out-of-home care system many children will not always be cared for in a culturally appropriate placement. Therefore, cultural support planning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people must be a high priority for all staff, carers and volunteers of out-of-home care services. Six themes have been identified as assisting in the provision of cultural support planning within placements. Each theme has a detailed list of resources that can be accessed for children and young people, carers and professionals.