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The article discusses the newly released papers about the challenges in balancing paid work and family responsibilities by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) in Australia. The paper examined the manner in which men and women balance their work and family responsibilities and provided an outline of the new approach to alleviate the existing status. Moreover, the Australian government implemented laws to protect the workers having family and caregiver responsibility in the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and the Disability Discrimination Act.

This article focuses on the Australian Institute on Family Studies' Housing Across the Life Course project. This paper set out to illustrate how the key concepts of a risk society might become manifest in contemporary Australian housing careers. This led to a consideration of whether entry to home purchase shows signs of increased differentiation and disconnectedness. Analysis reveals no evidence of increased differentiation; on the contrary, the age-related norm of entry to home ownership appears to be strengthening. That is, entry to home ownership by later cohorts is increasingly likely to have been attained within a narrower span of years than earlier cohorts. The data suggest that if individuals have not entered home ownership by their early thirties, they are increasingly unlikely to do so. With regard to disconnectedness, analysis found that entry to home ownership is becoming increasingly disconnected from other life course events. The paper has provided brief illustrations of the manifestation of risk society concepts and what they might mean for our understanding of family life.

This paper examines the availability and dynamics of family supports across a range of Australian families to determine whether distinctive patterns exist for families from non-English-speaking backgrounds. The first part of the paper provides an overview of cultural diversity in Australia, the general directions of immigration and family policies, and a summary of current research in family exchanges. The second part includes an analysis of data from the Australian Institute of Family Studies Australian Life Course Study on exchanges within a range of culturally diverse Australian families, followed by consideration of the extent to which families from non-English-speaking backgrounds reveal distinctive patterns of exchanges. Developments in two government policy areas--immigration and settlement policies, and family policies--are relevant to family exchanges of immigrant families. A policy trend in immigration and settlement services during the 1990s has been in the direction of reduced government expenditure and a more economically focused migration program. This has led to tighter management of the migration pro- gram, the introduction of cost recovery for migration services, and the elimination of services to some categories of immigrants.

The article focuses on the ninth conference of the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC). The conference began with a warm and touching welcome of the attendees by Ali Golding, an Indigenous Australian from Sydney, New South Wales, and an adopted elder of the Eora people of Sydney. The atmosphere of harmony generated by this welcome provided a challenging context for the delivery of papers that together highlighted a diverse range of problematic social issues. This year also marks the beginning of close collaboration between the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Social Policy Research Centre in the evaluation of the Australian Government's innovative "Stronger Families and Communities Strategy." This important and intensive evaluation is being led by the SPRC, with the Institute as its partner. The nature of the strategy and ways in which it will be evaluated formed the basis of papers at the SPRC. As this work progresses, it will no doubt produce informative papers linking research, policy and practice.

The author proposes that a new definition of household, called extended family household, be added to the Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to encompass the complex familial structures of indigenous societies. The nuclear family structure, which is considered a starting point by the ABS, is not a natural outcome of aboriginal Australian kinship systems. The paper focuses on the complexity of cultural translation involved in evaluating the data from the ABS Indigenous Enumeration Strategy and uses case studies to analyze responses.

The article focuses on the Ninth Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference, titled "Families Matter," which was held in Melbourne on 9-11 February 2005. The conference was opened by the Minister for Family and Community Services, Senator the Hon. Kay Patterson. The conference concluded with a panel discussion on the topic "Family policy in the Asia Pacific region." Early childhood development, early intervention strategies and the development of effective children's services continue to be enduring themes of Institute conferences. A number of papers discussed children's well-being in childcare. A number of sessions were dedicated to exploring the interaction between family life and community life. The participation of international delegates provides an important networking opportunity for Australian researchers and policy makers attending the Institute's Conference. Feedback from delegates attending the conference was very positive. During and immediately after the conference, research presented at the conference was reported in more than 800 media items.

The article presents a discussion about how young people are coping with the complexity and uncertainty of modern life in Australia. This paper reports the progress and perspectives of 1157 young people aged 19-20 years. Nowadays, however, the period following secondary schooling is often one of prolonged financial dependence, with young people progressing to further education and training at rates unprecedented in Australia's history. Employment opportunities are changing rapidly and have become more uncertain, and it is expected that individuals will traverse multiple career paths during their working life. Some have even suggested that one should begin thinking of the years from the late teens through the middle twenties as a new stage in the life-course, calling this the "emerging adult" period of development. There is disagreement about whether young people are doing well, or finding life difficult. There is an urgent need for Australian research that can provide information about how a large and diverse group of young adults is faring over a broad range of aspects of life, both positive and problematic. The most recent wave of data collected in the Australian Temperament Project provides such an opportunity.

'Growing Up in Australia' may be the most ambitious study of children's development ever undertaken in Australia. Tracking 5,000 infants and 5,000 four-year-olds forward over at least eight years, it aims to provide a strong evidence base for policy development and service delivery on a wide range of issues relating to children's development. Many parties have played important roles in bringing this study into the world, watching over it, helping it take its first steps, and offering expert advice and assistance. In this paper the authors provide a brief description of the study's development process, using the rather appropriate analogy of a child's birth. Then they briefly describe the data that will be available to researchers from the first survey wave, and offer some pointers to the sorts of questions that can be addressed using the dataset.

It is now a truism that the Australian population is ageing, and ageing more rapidly in some groups than others. Specifically, the number of older immigrants of non-English-speaking backgrounds has been growing at five times the rate of the Australian-born aged population in recent years. It follows that the current generation of Australians looks towards old age with the most diverse cultural faces in the Australian history. While the psychology of ageing is important to all of the U.S., this paper is confined to an overview of issues related to older migrants and their families. The dynamics of a substantial long-term migration program generate two groups of overseas-born aged, those who migrated young and grew old in Australia, and those who came here when they were already comparatively older. Those who came to Australia in the post-war years as young migrants have now been in Australia for most of their adult lives, and their children were either born here or came as young children. The later groups of older migrants consist predominantly of those who came under family reunion programs, sponsored by their adult children. The two groups have different settlement experiences, but now share several similar experiences in terms of family interactions.

Research into Australian families has been given an enormous boost with the recent release of the first wave of data from the longitudinal Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia Survey. In the first survey of its type in Australia, the Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia Survey will yield valuable insights into the dynamics of family relationships, parenting, housing arrangements, income, workforce involvement, and the health, well being and attitudes of young people and adults in Australia. This article examines the potential for the new survey to contribute to research on families in Australia. It summarizes the case for yet another survey; provides brief descriptions of the survey design and sample selection; outlines issues covered by the survey; and describes data collection procedures, wave one response rates, and characteristics of the sample. The second part of the paper discusses the sorts of family issues that could be explored with these data. INSETS: ISSUES COVERED BY HILDA SURVEY;HILDA WAVE ONE.

The article presents an edited version of a paper presented at the 1998 Sixth Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference "Changing Families, Challenging Futures," held in Melbourne, Victoria on 25-29, November 1998, concerning parental disability and the threat of child removal in Australia. The specific focus of this article is, first, to review the literature on the involvement of parents with intellectual disability in care and protection proceedings and, second, to propose several measures to ensure parents with intellectual disability are no longer subject to prejudicial treatment in care and protection proceedings. A study conducted in South Australia identified 77 parents with intellectual disabilities that were known to have 116 children; of these, it was estimated that one-third had been taken into care. In New South Wales, a survey conducted by the Family Support Services Association found that among their clients, parents with identified cognitive limitations were almost twice as likely as non-disabled parents to have involvement with the NSW Department of Community Services in matters of child protection.

Presents an edited version of a paper presented to the Sixth Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference "Changing Families, Challenging Futures," held in Melbourne, Victoria on 25-29, November 1998, concerning low pay and family poverty in Australia. To be in paid work but poor used to be a contradiction in terms in Australia's "wage earners" welfare state. In the early 1970s, the Commission of Enquiry into Poverty estimated that less than 2 per cent of families with an adult in full-time employment could be described as poor. In the 1990s, however, having employment is no longer a guarantee of staying out of poverty. The ACTU's Living Wage Case attempted to put working poverty on the public agenda by expressly linking the question of low pay with that of household deprivation. Yet many low-paid workers live in better-off households, and the links between individual and family income status are complex. A study in progress at the Social Policy Research Centre suggests that a trend towards working poverty has accelerated in the 1990s, and this article draws on the research to trace the links between individual low pay and family poverty.

The article presents an edited version of a paper presented to the Sixth Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference "Changing Families, Challenging Futures," held in Melbourne, Victoria on 25-29, November 1998, concerning attachment theory and marital adjustment. Pre-marriage education has a long history in Australia and there is a wide range of pre-marriage and relationship education programs offered by religious and secular organisations. Some of these programs, through raising awareness and teaching relationship skills, aim to prepare young couples for marriage, while others provide opportunities for married couples to identify their strengths and develop ways of dealing with current and potential problems. Practitioners in both the education and counselling fields draw on a vast body of theory and knowledge about relationships which provides both descriptive and explanatory information, and experiential learning tools and resources. A rapidly expanding field of research, attachment theory, provides a framework for explaining how relationships form, develop, and break down, and offers educators and counsellors tools for informing and challenging those preparing for, and experiencing difficulties in, marriage. INSET: Attachment theory and research..

This article highlights references which have been selected from the Australian Family & Society Abstracts database, produced by the Australian Institute of Family Studies to monitor the research, policy and practice literature on families and the social issues that affect them. Recent references are selected from the Australian Family & Society Abstracts that examine the employment choices of parents-mothers in particular. The authors examine the preferences and participation for men and women in the workforce and show the patterns of hours worked in relation to the age of children, the actual versus the preferred working hours for women with children between the ages of 0-12 and the preferred working hours of women not in the paid workforce. Work and family issues, including the influence of work on family strength and well-being are examined in this report, which was prepared for the Department of Family and Community Services as a background paper for the National Families Strategy.

This article presents abstracts of research papers, government policy and practice literature on family and social issues in Australia. To mark the International Year of Older Persons this bibliography provides an overview of research dealing with families and older people. The main purpose of "Interim Report: Prepared for the Minister for Family Services," is to provide a summary of the work undertaken to date by the Conference for Older Australians in preparing for the 1999 International Year of Older Persons. A number of key themes and issues important to older people have been suggested as priority areas for consideration during the International Year. According to "Valuing Older Australians: Federal Budget Submission 1999-2000," the Council on the Ageing has responded to the 1999 International Year of Older Persons by publishing this submission to the federal government for the 1999-2000 budget. The Council on the Ageing has prepared this year's Commonwealth Budget submission from the point of view that there is a crisis of confidence amongst older people.

This article presents various family research reports from Australia. The Australian Divorce Transitions Project examines the superannuation assets of divorcing couples. The paper concentrates in particular on the growing importance of superannuation as a component of family wealth,the uneven distribution of superannuation entitlements between men and women, and the limits to the powers of the Family Court in dealing directly with superannuation assets. The paper reports findings from the Australian Divorce Transitions Project: data concerning the incidence of superannuation amongst the couples surveyed; how much couples knew about their own and their partner's superannuation; the absolute and relative importance of superannuation as a family asset and the way in which superannuation was taken into account, if at all, on divorce. Working Paper No.19 examines meanings and expectations of family life and support for people aged 50 to 70, focusing on social relations between generations. Age cohorts and family life stage are not synchronous, so this age group represents a broad range of family and personal change, with conflicting roles and priori- ties in accommodating needs of both younger and older generation family members.

The article focuses on the paper "Emotional Abuse: The Forgotten Form of Child Maltreatment," by Adam Tomison and Joe Tucci. This is the working title of issues paper no.8, the next in the series of issues papers from the National Child Protection Clearing House at the Australian Institute of Family Studies. This paper describes the current state of knowledge surrounding the relatively neglected area of the emotional abuse of children. Tomison and Tucci describe the history and development of definitions of emotional abuse, paying particular attention to comparing and contrasting emotional and psychological abuse. The paper includes overviews of research investigating aspects of emotional abuse - specifically, children's witnessing of spousal violence, the mislabeling of child maltreatment cases as emotional abuse, and the traumatisation of children in out-of-home-care. The paper concludes with a discussion of the prevention of emotional abuse and an outline of some future directions for research.

The article presents information on trends in family studies in Australia. It monitors trends in the literature, both published works and unpublished papers such as conference and research papers and other non-commercial literature from universities and non-government agencies. The database also makes possible the identification of organisations and individuals working in particular subject areas. The database is divided into 70 broad subject categories. This structure makes it possible to analyse the amount and type of literature indexed in each category and to make observations about the attention or concern different social issues receive in a given time period. The majority of categories are surprisingly stable, mostly recording a slight increase each year, or occasionally a small decrease, in numbers of documents indexed. This year, 25 categories recorded more than 50 new documents; 13 with between 50 and 99 documents; nine with between 100 and 199 documents; and three categories with more than 200 documents.

The article provides updates on "Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC)." The third round of interviews for LSAC have been underway for most of 2008. Meanwhile, the paper "How Important is Marriage to Australians' Health, Wealth and Happiness?" has been presented by Linda Bencic. Furthermore, a paper on "Determining the Effects of Housing Costs on the Well-Being of Australian Families" has been presented by Sebastian Misson.

The article reports that the Australian Institute of Family Studies, in partnership with RMIT Publishing has launched a new database, Family & Society Plus. Family & Society Plus is based on Australian Family & Society Abstracts, the database produced by the institute since 1984, but has a much higher proportion of full text material, especially journal articles normally available only on subscription. For busy researchers, service providers, and policy makers, Family & Society Plus provides instant access to online versions of the latest journal literature, conference papers, government reports, academic working papers and research reports. Family & Society Plus was launched by the Director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies, Professor Alan Hayes, at the Family Services Australia Conference in Sydney on October, 24 2004.

The article focuses on family law reforms in Australia. The year 2005 marks 30 years since the proclamation of the Family Law Act 1975. The anniversary falls on the cusp of significant changes, not so much to the Act itself but rather to the family law system as a whole that has evolved since the Act commenced operation on January 5, 1976. The Australian Government's community consultation process on the proposed reforms drew to a close on January 14, 2005, with the receipt of more than 400 submissions. It is anticipated that the Government will announce its final package of reforms in the near future, with legislation likely to be introduced later in 2005. A public education program of some kind is proposed to help explain the changes to the law. As foreshadowed in the Government discussion paper released in 2004, the proposed legislation is likely to include changes to the substantive law seeking to promote shared parenting and shared responsibility for children, procedural reforms relating to the conduct of cases involving children (modeled in part on the Family Court's Children's Cases Program), and amendments introducing compulsory pre-filing mediation.

The article presents information on various articles that were published in the June 2003 issue of the journal "Family Matters." While a range of topics is covered, a number of papers address aspects of children's well-being and factors which can pose challenges to their healthy development. The Institute always tries to be in position to contribute to debate and discussion on important current issues related to families in Australia. A topic that is currently high on the policy and community radar is the debate about how parents should share the care by their children post-separation. The Australian Government is currently holding an inquiry on this issue specifically around the question of whether, for cases, which come before the Family Court, there should be a rebuttal presumption that both parents should share the parenting of children equally.

The article presents the author's views on the journal and a conference of the Australian Institute of Family Research. This edition of the journal "Family Matters" presents the keynote addresses and a selection of other key papers from the Institute's very successful Seventh National Conference, held in Sydney from 24-26 July 2000. The Minister for Family and Community Services, Senator Jocelyn Newman, opened the conference, the theme of which was Family futures: Issues in research and policy. Some 363 people attended and there were 121 presentations, including 15 by staff of the Institute. The conference represents an important opportunity to present the Institute's research to a broad audience, particularly as it is one of the few conferences in Australia that brings together researchers, academics, practitioners, policy advisers and government public servants to talk about research and policy issues in the family area. The conference is also an important means by which the Institute fulfils its role of encouraging and coordinating research on factors affecting family stability and wellbeing. It provides an opportunity for key stake-holders in the development and implementation of family policy in Australia to meet and discuss current research and policy directions.

The article presents information about recently published books related to family. The book "Social Capital and Public Policy in Australia," edited by Ian Winter, offers a number of different routes into discussions on core questions about community by drawing together contributions from authors who write from a diversity of professional experiences, academic disciplines and political positions. Chapters provide insights into the origins of the concept of social capital in classical economics, sociology and political philosophy. They illustrate the practice of social capital in different arenas, and they examine how social capital relates to public policy, including health, education and social welfare. "Family Panel Survey Update," a new briefing paper outlines some of the design proposals that have been developed for the Australian Family Panel Survey. The survey represents a major research undertaking by the Australian institute of Family Studies that will help the Institute meet its principal task of identifying and understanding factors affecting the stability and well being of Australian families.

The article features the Australian Institute of Family Studies web site on various worldwide family research and family policy resources. Australia is one of the top ten countries for Internet use, making the World Wide Web an effective medium to disseminate research and policy information on Australian family issues. There are a number of new features on the Australian institute of Family Studies Web site--all part of this year's planned improvements and new developments. A new page to record presentations and conference papers by Institute staff gives a more informal view of the Institute's research activity before published reports are available. The Family Court site has an extensive collection of information for clients, lawyers and students of family law.

The article focuses on the home page of the Australian Institute of Family Studies which is now accessible via the World Wide Web. Like most Web sites, the Institute's Home Page will be an ongoing project and a means of reporting on the Institute's activities, of disseminating information from its databases and resource collections, and promoting the development of networks with other organisations concerned with family research and policy. The inaugural March 1996 version offers information about the Institute, the Institute's research program, information services and projects. Plans for the addition of new items in the next financial year include access to the Institute's library catalogue, to selected abstracts from the Australian Family and Society Abstracts database, and to databases and full text documents from the National Child Protection Clearing House. The full text of selected Institute publications and papers will also be made available, for example, the papers from the Institute's forthcoming Australian Family Research Conference.

The article informs that Family Services Australia Ltd. is the peak body representing the Commonwealth Government funded programs: Adolescent Mediation & Family Therapy, Family Skills Training Program, Marriage Counselling; Marriage Education; and Family Mediation. It published the first issue of a new journal titled "Scope": Journal of Family Services Australia. The journal aims to cover each of these program areas with papers by professionals involved or interested in them, and to provide a vehicle for exchange of information. This first issue provides summaries of the programs funded by the Attorney-General's Department and includes a paper by Michele Simons addressing the implications of the National Council for the International Year of the Family's report Creating the Links: Families and Social Responsibility.

The article focuses on the report "Representing the Child's Interests in the Family Court," prepared by a Family Court committee in Australia. The paper suggests guidelines for the respective roles of Separate Representatives and Court Counselors working together in representing the child's interests in the family court. It also includes a consideration of the current relationships between the two professional groups as they operate in each State, and an examination of what that relationship should be in view of recent cases and the overall objective of producing the best outcome for the child. The report also contains a chapter on interviewing children. This emphasizes both the difficulties involved, and the importance of involving counselors, whose training enables them to provide an interpretative framework and context for the views a child may express. The paper recommends that once the privileged counseling is finished the counselor should be able to inform the separate representative about the family dynamics, the involvement of other agencies, case management recommendations, counseling or therapy indicated for the child, urgent issues and any child abuse notifications.

This article presents information on features of Web sites of the Australian Institute of Family Studies on the family. The Institute's Annual Report 1998-99 and a number of new Institute papers can now be accessed from the Publications page at: www.aifs.org.au/institute/pubs/pubsmenu.html. The Institute has recently established two email discussion forums to support discussion and networking in the fields of child abuse prevention and marriage and relationship education, and an Institute announcements list. Childprotect aims to promote the exchange of information and ideas between Australasian and other professionals working in the field of child abuse prevention and child protection, including child protection workers, other health and welfare service providers, people working in the criminal justice system, in education and training or in policy and service planning, researchers and information providers. Marriage and Relationship Education aims to establish a network of marriage and relationship education researchers and practitioners, and to provide a forum for discussion of issues related to the research, practice and further development of marriage and relationship education in Australia. Aifs-alert has been set up as a means of keeping people up to date with Institute activities and new developments on the Web site.

This article focuses on various issues affecting the family in Australia. The September 1, 1999 edition of "Family Matters" focuses on the theme of families, welfare and social policy. In a speech at the National Press Club on 29 September 1999, Senator Jocelyn Newman, Minister for Family and Community Services, announced that social policy would be a major reform priority of the Australian Prime Minister John Howard Government. Senator Newman announced the formation of a Reference Group on Welfare Reform to guide the development of a comprehensive Green Paper on welfare reform. Welfare dependency is a key issue for investigation by the Reference Group. The Australian Institute of Family Studies's interest in the issue of welfare reform has been a long one, indeed, the Institute held a Workshop as long ago as 1983 on the subject of "Single Parents: Work or Welfare?" Since its inception 1980 the Institute has built up and shared a wealth of experience and knowledge on issues affecting the well being and stability of families. Research areas have included: the social costs of child and family poverty and marriage breakdown; the living standards of low and middle income families; labour force issues; housing; family income transfers, child support and tax; educational and other disadvantage suffered by children in poor families; and child abuse and neglect. INSET: NEW AIFS DIRECTOR APPOINTED.

This article identifies various worldwide family research web sites. The Australian Institute of Family Studies' web site continues to grow to the extent that a review, redesign and revamp of its structure have been underway over the last few months. All pages now have a consistent look with navigational headers and footers and colour coding for key areas to assist movement between main pages such as Research, Information, Publications and Conferences. They have introduced a Media Releases page that records formal media releases to the press. The Institute's Publications page has been redesigned for easier use. The main page now lists all publications in chronological order, with the most recent first, and whether the title is available in hard copy or online. The Institute's Australian Family & Society Abstracts data base, which records the literature of family and social issues in Australia via citations and abstracts, now offers direct access to many documents available in full text on the World Wide Web. For example, Institute publications, many government documents, conference papers and journal articles. When an online document is available, an active Internet link will appear after the citation leading database users directly to the online document. INSET: Adolescent relationships and wellbeing study.

This article reports on the status of Australian bills dealing with domestic relations. The article focuses on the Federal Magistrates Bill, that was introduced into Parliament just before it rose for the winter recess; and the Family Law Amendment Bill is expected to be introduced early in the Spring sittings. Almost simultaneously the consultation period for comments on the discussion paper "Property and Family Law: Options for Change," expired and a Bill is expected to be introduced before the end of the year. The Federal Magistrates Bill has now been referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee which must report by 30 September. Accordingly, there may be changes to its current format and content. As it was introduced, the Bill establishes the Federal Magistrates Court which is intended to deal with matters of a less complex nature than are currently dealt with by both the Federal and Family Courts. This, it is said, will reduce the workloads of those courts and provide a quicker, less formal and cheaper option for litigants. There will be an emphasis on counseling and mediation, and the Bill foreshadows that the Federal Magistrates Service will be able to refer clients to existing Family Court counseling and mediation services as well as community agencies.

This article reports on Australian government measures to strengthen and support families. The new National Families Strategy has committed the Commonwealth Government to working closely with the State and Territory governments, as well as with the voluntary sector, to develop a national framework to support and strengthen family life in Australia. The main emphasis of the new strategy will be on preventing family breakdown by developing effective early interventions. Such interventions include things like relationship education and parenting training, both of which will be extended, as well as various programs aimed at preventing child abuse, domestic violence, youth homelessness and crime. The government says that it will further support and strengthen family life in Australia by reforming the tax and benefits systems, by enhancing access to child care, and by providing more help for rural and regional families. The basic philosophy underlying the National Families Strategy is clearly set out in recent budget paper, Strengthening and Supporting Australian Families. This states that the government believes strong families are crucial to maintaining a cohesive and compassionate society. Families are at the very heart of Australian life.

This article presents information on contemporary developments that matter to families. Compiled from reports provided by a panel of corresponding consultants with expertise in the many dimensions of family research and policy making, the article provides a snapshot of family research and policy issues from a range of research perspectives and geographic locations around Australia. Research on indigenous families is a mainstay of work at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Canberra, Australia. Using census analysis and ethnographic techniques, a series of recent working papers on the economic status of indigenous households and families has clearly illustrated the continuing socio-economic disadvantage of indigenous sole-parent families. Furthermore, the income poverty among indigenous families with children, in 1991, is such that nearly half of all indigenous children, compared to around 18 per cent of other families, were in families with incomes below the poverty line. INSET: Family matters corresponding consultants..

The article informs that the Sixth International Symposium sponsored by the Australian Rotary Health Research Fund (ARHRF) was held at University House, Australian National University, Canberra, on May 23-25, 1966. The purpose of the symposium was to establish a framework within which an agenda could be established for a research initiative on "Health and the Family." Participants in the invitational symposium included family and health researchers with national and international reputations in medical, psychiatric, psychological and social science research. They also included representatives from government and community policy makers, service managers and service providers. To have people from such diverse backgrounds present at the symposium was deliberate strategy on the part of the organizers, intended to foster communication and collaboration between stakeholders with shared interests in the field of family health research but whose approaches to the issues derive from different perspectives. INSET: Papers presented at the rotary symposium..

The article informs that as part of National Child Protection Week last August, the Federal Minister for Community Services, Mr Larry Anthony, launched a key issues paper, "Exploring family violence: the links between child maltreatment and domestic violence," which showed that in many families where either child abuse or domestic violence was identified, both forms of violence are likely to be present. As a society we must strive to learn more about this subject and continue developing effective child-focused responses, Mr Anthony said. This report adds to a growing knowledge base we are developing though initiatives such as the Government's Partnerships Against Domestic Violence Strategy, he added. The report gives us a better insight into the links between family violence and child abuse, and provides important information that can be used to develop further initiatives targeted at prevention and early intervention, he said. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that different types of violence may occur simultaneously in the same family, and that the presence of one form of violence may be a strong predictor of the other.

This article focuses on the Australian Institute of Family Studies' Web site. The Web site provides Institute research, information projects and publications, and access to Institute databases and resource collections. A feature of the Institute's Web site for the past two months has been the Institute's conference, "Changing Families, Challenging Futures," held in Melbourne, Victoria in November 1998. The Institute's Web site offers a full listing of Institute publications with descriptions, prices and information for ordering print copies. A growing collection of papers is also directly available from the Web site. Users should select "Publications" and click on "Current Publications," to find works arranged in subject groupings and also a list of titles available in full text. Child protection and youth suicide prevention are the foci of two specialist information projects hosted by the Institute. To provide access to the current literature in these subject areas a series of regularly updated bibliographies has been compiled.

The article discusses several developments concerning the Australian Institute of Family Studies. The institute invites registrations from people wishing to attend the sixth Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference, to be held at the Carlton Crest Hotel in Melbourne from November 25-27,1998. The conference will provide a valuable forum for those interested or involved in family research, the development of family policy, or providing services to families in Australia. The conference will focus on family issues in Australia and feature the presentation and discussion of findings of the Institute's own studies, along with work from other researchers, government bodies, service providers and community organizations. It reports that over 150 presentations will be made during the course of the conference. The conference will include keynote addresses, papers, symposia, display and discussion poster presentations, and workshops. All have been grouped into the following broad themes. The article also presents information on family values and family relations, effects of divorce on family members, demographic change, life courses and family futures, and others.

The article focuses the research paper "Working Women and Child Care." The article explores issues relating to the use of child care by non-English-speaking background women, English-speaking background women and Australian women.

This article focuses on the report "Child Care at the Crossroads: National Child Care Summit." It presents papers delivered at a child care summit organized by Community Child Care Victoria. across Australia. The author argues that Australia is now at a turning point in the history of children's services. Recent moves by governments suggest a distancing from responsibility for children's services. The community must demand that governments acknowledge their responsibility to protect and nurture children and show their commitment to intervention and regulation in the marketplace.

The article presents feedback on materials on child protection received by the National Child Protection Clearing House in Australia. Two publications--a newsletter and an issues paper entitled "Spotlight on Child Neglect," by Adam Tomison, researcher at Australian Institute of Family Studies--have been produced and distributed to those on the Clearing House mailing list. Currently responses to the questionnaires are arriving at the Institute, but in fewer numbers than hoped for.

The article presents the paper "The National Census of Homeless School Students," by D. MacKenzie and C. Chamberlain from the December 1994 issue of the journal Parity. The authors presents findings from the first national census of homeless school students, which was carried out in the final school week of May 1994. The National Census identified 1948 Government and Catholic secondary schools across Australia, and 99 per cent of these schools completed a census return. Fieldwork was also carried out in 100 schools in order to gain "on the ground" knowledge about the situation in different schools. The Census enumerated 10,440 homeless school students across the country. The authors stress that policies directed towards early intervention must focus on schools, as these provide an institutional setting where young people can be reached before they become deeply involved in the "homeless" subculture.