Suchergebnisse

The fires of Ash Wednesday, 1983 have been a significant turning-point in the history of disaster management concepts and practices in Australia. Disaster recovery management has been identified as an important area of management in its own right, containing complex and prolonged programs and activities and requiring the participation of the affected community and involvement from the wide community.Recovery from disaster is no longer seen merely in terms of response and relief activities, or as a physical process of reconstruction. It is an enabling and supportive process, which allows individuals, families and communities to attain a proper level of functioning through the provision of information, resources and specialist services.

In this the International Year of the Child the law relating to children's rights has come very much under scrutiny. I do not propose in this article to canvass the rights of the child under the Criminal Law but to examine the rights of the child in that area of the civil law which in these days of increasing marital breakdown, (at a rate from between 1 in 7 to 1 in 5 of every marriage in Australia) is most likely to affect him, namely under the Family Law Act.I then want to postulate as to how those rights can be extended and improved both by statutory recognition as well as policy administration.

Marriage and marriage breakdown are the reasons we have the much discussed Family Law Act, Family Courts and the current boom in divorces. Divorce and the legal machinery which deals with it is more easily discussed in the media than is marriage and the processes by which it breaks down. This helps people to ignore marital problems until they become so painful and difficult that divorce seems the only solution. It is easier to read and write about sex, divorce and violence than about marriage, love and emotional closeness. Unless this is changed the rate of marriage breakdown and divorce in Australia is likely to remain higher than society can afford.

Describes the debate in Australia on legal voluntary euthanasia, and provisions of 1995 legislation introduced in the Northern Territory, Australia.

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.

As a home-based care option for children at risk of significant harm, kinship care placements are steadily increasing in Australia as they are in other western countries. This article describes a qualitative research study undertaken with 65 kin (relative) and kith (nonrelative) carers in Victoria in the years 2004–2007. The aims of the research were to explore the lived experience of carers and to understand their support needs. The findings distinguish similarities and differences between the experience of formal and informal grandparent carers, non-grandparent relative carers and nonrelative carers. The article discusses the role of caregiving for the different groups, family relationships, finances (having enough money, as well as having too little), relationships with government agencies, respite and peer support.

In Australia the number of children removed from birth parents and admitted to State care, i.e. foster care, kinship care, other home-based care, group homes or residential care, continues to rise. Because the number of foster carers (the preferred care option after kinship care) has fallen and the recruitment of new carers has become more difficult, this rise in admissions to care is a critical issue. This paper explores those factors that drive the increase in the number of children that are taken into State care and makes suggestions about how this trend might be reversed. New South Wales is used as the example for this purpose although the points made are applicable in other States and Territories.

Over the past decade imprisonment rates in Australia have substantially increased. As imprisonment rates rise, so too do the number of families affected by the imprisonment of a parent. Yet the needs of parents in prison and their families have received little attention in social policies and service delivery practices. As the specific issues faced by parents in prison and their families cross many areas of government and community services responsibility, they all too easily slip from policy agendas. This paper outlines the challenges to, and potential for, restorative practices with families affected by the imprisonment of a parent. It draws on recent research undertaken by the authors into the family support needs of parents in prison and their families.

This paper addresses the issue of contact centres, which have evolved to address the needs of children and parents affected by separation and divorce. The author notes the emergence of contact services in Australia and the establishment of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Children's Contact Services (ANZACCS). The bulk of the paper outlines the development of children contact centres in France, summarises findings from the evaluation of 10 centres, and describes examples of three different French contact centre models. Brief summaries are also included of the situation in the UK and the USA. Some suggestions for Australian services are made, including the need for multi-disciplinary working parties in each State and Territory to advise programs.

Some leading philanthropic trusts and foundations in Australia, like those in North America, are increasingly interested in moving away from a reactive funding model in which they merely respond to requests for funding to a more proactive model in which they develop, in collaboration with those in the field, the broad parameters of innovative programs they wish to support, and then invite agencies to make expressions of interest in relation to these program dimensions.Selected programs need to be committed to evaluation and prepared to help disseminate their innovations and experiences to the field. It is this last step, from innovation to dissemination, which has often not been taken in the past, resulting in lost opportunities for valuable and cutting edge pilot projects to make an impact on practice and policy.

In the current debates about citizenship, children and young people are profoundly affected by the exclusionary criteria that determine who is and who is not a citizen. This article asks how young people are currently treated as citizens. The Victorian Crimes Amendment Act (1994) provides a case study illustrating some of the ways young people's rights are denied in Australia. The article also asks how prevalent are certain assumptions that preclude young people from the category of citizenship. In a post-industrial context characterised by rapid transformation of traditional institutions critical to most young people, ie, 'the family' and full-time labour market, the importance of the inclusion of young people into the category of citizen becomes apparent.

On Wednesday February 25th 1976, a Joint Committee of both Houses of the English Parliament was set up to consider the whole matter of intra-familial violence. This development is, it is suggested, of very considerable significance because it marks, really for the first time, an official awareness of the phenomenon of violence in the family. Clearly, certain aspects of the matter have received parliamentary attention, but this is the first time in jurisdictions analogous to Australia that a total overview of the matter has been attempted. Accordingly, it is the purpose of this article to consider the problem from an Australian point of view and to suggest policies which might adequately protect the victims of such violence.