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The article presents a study which analyzes poverty among households in which a member is employed in Australia. The study suggests that the continent remains a wage earners' welfare state and the persistence of poverty among a number of Australians in households, in which a member is employed, does raise the question of whether there is a gap on the continent's system of fair wages. The author explains that employment may generally be the most reliable way out of poverty but has not protected all people and is an issue deserving further exploration.

The article provides information on the history of social security in Australia. The author stated that charitable relief provided by benevolent societies, sometimes with financial help from the authorities, has been the dominant mode of support for people unable to provide for themselves. In addition, by the end of the decade, Australia has a comprehensive system of social security, supported by robust financial and constitutional powers that are to enable further expansion in the years to come. Furthermore, the prevalence of means tests, the use of funding from general revenue and the strong emphasis on participation are the strong elements of continuity in the social security system.

The article highlights the proposed child well-being and child protection reform in response to the child protection system in Australia. The author stated that high levels of statutory child protection activity may be justifiable if it can demonstrate that children actually benefited from their contact with the system. In addition, the potential disruption that structural change can bring to organisations and the costs of fundamental change must be recognized to achieve significant benefits from the systems change. Therefore, the process of change must be incremental rather than revolutionary and it must involve consultation and deliberation and must not lose focus from the ultimate goal.

The article provides an update on the federal family law system in Australia. The Family Law Amendment Bill 2008 has been introduced into the Commonwealth Parliament on June 25 to bring separating de facto couples under the umbrella of federal law relating to financial disputes following family breakdown. Reportedly, reforms will remove differences between the state and federal legislative regimes, which can result in different outcomes for the less financially secure partner. In addition, provisions of the Child Support Scheme include the introduction of a new formula that is more closely tied to the costs of children, the exclusion from child support calculations of extra income earned by non-resident parents and increased flexibility for parents to capitalise their child support.

The article presents an analysis of the impact of family changes, societal trends and policies on the social and emotional development of children. It explores several demographic changes such as fertility rate, significant developments in key aspects of relationships and social issues confronting Australia. It also examines the effects of changes in the interaction of children with the community, which flow from the reduction in the willingness of males to enter professions involving frequent contact with children and young people. Moreover, it is noted that these implications have served as essential components for Australia's policy for families and children.

The article discusses several issues regarding the assessment of well-being and the impact of economic factors on overall well-being. It explores the concept of poverty, deprivation and social exclusion and how they relate with each other, and examines the context of identifying and measuring poverty and disadvantage through the use of frameworks or indicators that reflect the range of factors contributing to living standards. It also describes the Left Out and Missing Out project in Australia in which it has led to the development of indicators that have the potential to effectively contribute in the establishment of policies designed to prevent and ameliorate the different sources of social disadvantage.

The article focuses on the concept of social exclusion and some of the issues surrounding the concept. It explores the international research for social issues and the role of social inclusion initiatives in the public policy development in Australia. It also examines the characteristics of people and families living in disadvantaged communities as well as the correlation between poverty, deprivation and social exclusion. It is noted that the discussion of social structures and problems surrounding other countries would serve as essential components for the development of successful Australian social policies.

The article discusses the prevalence of grandparent-headed families in Australia, which is considered as one of the fastest growing forms of out-of-home care for children in contact with the public welfare system. The author highlights the fact that information regarding the characteristics and experience of the grandparent-headed families is important in building a policy or service framework to address the health and wellbeing of these grandparents, as well as ensure quality and safe care of children and young people who are no longer able to live with their biological parents.

The article provides an overview of an evaluation of early learnings from Indigenous Community Development projects funded by the Telstra Foundation in Australia. The projects look at community-identified solutions for the serious social and health problems affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people. The projects also address themes such as early childhood development, youth participation and leadership, and the role of schools in facilitating change. Marlene Burchill, as the principal project worker, also provides her Indigenous perspective on community development.

In Australia, the family has undergone increasingly rapid change over the past century. This change has carried profound implications for people individually, and for economic and social policy more generally. Many broad social trends have affected families. The population increased more than fivefold over the past 100 years, changed from youthful to ageing, and from Anglo-Celtic to multicultural in its make-up; about 20 years were added to life expectancy, and living standards improved, especially after 1940. Other factors affecting family trends include education and employment patterns, economic recessions, wars, migration flows, technological advances, changes in gender roles, welfare support trends, globalization, and changing social attitudes. In turn, family trends have themselves influenced some of these factors including the ageing of the population and social attitudes. Thus, families living in the early, middle and late periods of the 20th century had widely differing experiences. The approach adopted in this article is to focus on changing patterns of common family transitions that have profound effects on each family member and on the structure of the family as a whole.

The article presents the author's views on family and its future. When the author spoke at the Australian Institute of Family Studies's last conference in November 1998, the portfolio of Family and Community Services had just been established. The Government's intent in creating this portfolio was to take a much more holistic approach to Federal Government policies and services that supported Australian families and communities. Eighteen months down the track, this has already delivered a new sense of purpose to social policy development. And the Australian Institute of Family Studies has a key role to play in this, as one of the four agencies in the Family and Community Services portfolio. Established twenty years ago in 1980, the Institute has developed a well-earned reputation as the leader in its field in Australia. In more recent times, the Institute's expertise in factors that affect family and marital stability and wellbeing has made a significant contribution to policy development.

This article focuses on a range of policy changes affecting the participation of mothers in the labor force in Australia. Looking back on the last 30 years of policy development it is hard not to be impressed by the range of measures now in place to help women have families but also remain attached to the workforce in some way. Mothers of young children have been increasing their labour force participation rate dramatically. This article examines two different frameworks within which people might think about the work-family-mother nexus, frameworks that take people beyond the current enthusiasm for identifying and praising family-friendly employers as harbingers of a bright new future. The first framework involves looking at the widest possible policy developments that are shaping the labour force experience of mothers. These changes include things like widespread increases in work pressure, and reduced industrial protection from un-family-friendly employment practices. The second framework is one that gives greater weight to the subjective experience of mothers, particularly the experience that is so often described as juggling, as though this adequately captured the skills required.

This article focuses on the changing system of state welfare in Australia and how it relates to family life. Reform of the welfare and social security systems is at the forefront of political debate in many western nations, including Australia, and in September this year the Minister for Family and Community Services, Jocelyn Newman, announced that welfare reform was to be a key priority in the Federal government's legislative program. Any reform of the welfare state obviously has important implications for Australian families. This is because, in some significant ways, the modern welfare state and the family can be seen as functional substitutes for each other. Obviously the state cannot supply the affection that people look for in family life, any more than the family can supply the range of services and level of support that the state can provide. Given that so many of the problems being confronted in Australian public policy are also being addressed in other developed countries. There are some striking similarities in the issues and debates currently taking place in the English-speaking countries such as Britain, the United States and Australia.

This article focuses on Australian government's objectives and achievements in family policy. The Commonwealth Government's approach to family policy is multi-faceted but has one primary objective, to develop and implement policies that strengthen families. The Government came to office in March 1996, elected on a platform of introducing the family tax initiative. This initiative responds to the needs of families with children for extra financial support to meet the high costs of raising those children. The Government's tax reform package builds on the belief that the tax system and Social Security payments for families need to be integrated so that families have a choice about how and when financial support is delivered to them. Through the introduction of the family tax initiative this Government has restored equity to assistance for families. The family tax regime recognises that in many families one parent remains at home until all the children are at school. Many families struggle financially during this period of their lives. Therefore, a higher level of assistance is available for single income families with children under five. Lone-parent families benefit from the family dependent spouse rebate and the sole parent rebate, and cash assistance, such as family allowance and basic parenting payment will be replaced by Family Tax Benefit, parts A and B. INSET: New Developments in the Government's Welfare Reform Agenda.

This article focuses on the issues surrounding the importance of developing a national family policy in Australia. Over the past few decades, national material prosperity, both in Australia and elsewhere in the industrialised world, has improved. But few people would dispute that the life of children is more uncertain today than at any stage since the Second World War. While the causes of these problems are complex, a common factor is the breakdown of marriages and the disintegration of family structures. In "To Have and to Hold," the Parliamentary report on strategies to strengthen marriage and relationships, the House of Representatives Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs surveyed the research about the impact of marriage, separation and divorce on the health of individuals and on children, both at the time and in their subsequent adulthood. A considerable body of research evidence indicates that adults and children are at increased risk of mental and physical problems due to marital distress.

This article examines how welfare reform works for the indigenous communities in Australia. The people and the location that the author worry about is the indigenous community of Cape York Peninsula. Australian economic and social situation is parlous, and the statistics so outrageous that they are routinely greeted with numb acceptance. The social situation of Cape York has displayed these steadily worsening statistics for more than two decades makes even more horrific the failure to have developed any initiative that is even vaguely urgent that discloses some understanding that there is a social crisis. The problems are so overwhelming that even the Aboriginal society comes to accept its own state of dysfunction. The creation of the welfare state is one of the great civilising achievements of the Australian democracy. It gave expression to the social responsibility towards others in society, the aged, the vulnerable and those temporarily disengaged from work in the real economy. The welfare state was developed in an industrial economy when work was abundant, and it goes without saying that structural unemployment has challenged one of the central assumptions of the welfare system that was devised in the old economy. Rather than being a temporary condition, where the state guaranteed income maintenance for people moving between jobs, unemployment became a permanent condition for increasing numbers of Australian breadwinners and their families.

This article examines how welfare reform works in Great Britain, Australia and the United States. In Britain the reforms that have emerged from current thinking are based on the British Labour government's espousal of a new set of ideas about social issues. The New Labour has adopted a philosophy emphasising the reciprocal obligations of citizenship, and has argued for a new contract between the state and the individual. It is claimed that past welfare policies encouraged passivity and dependency by paying benefits without placing sufficient demands on the recipients to find work. New Labour rejects the dependency and passivity that old Labour policies allowed, and it rejects the minimalist role of government towards joblessness and dependency that the Conservative governments of the 1980s adopted. Changes in welfare policies or in approaches to joblessness are likely to have direct consequences for the family. The most obvious example of this relates to lone parents, most of whom depend to a greater or lesser extent on welfare support. In Britain, Australia and the United States, the numbers of lone parents claiming welfare support have risen sharply over the last thirty years, and in all three countries it is reasonable to suppose that lone parenthood could not have expanded to the extent that it has unless governments had provided cash support.

This article comments on the article "Redefining Progress: Shaping the Future to Human Needs," by Richard Eckersley, published in the Summer 1999 issue of the journal "Family Matters." The traditional argument against capitalism and the market system was always that the system had difficulty in meeting the material needs of the mass of the population. Eckersley's article in the last issue of "Family Matters" is a case in point. Australians, he tells people are now on average nearly five times richer in real terms than they were one hundred years ago. On current trends, he says, people will be twice as wealthy in twenty years time as they are today. All this means that the mass of the population today can take for granted life styles which would have been unimaginable to all but the most privileged just a generation or two earlier. In their day to day lives, people continue to enjoy the individual autonomy and material comfort which the modern world affords them. And it really comes as no surprise to learn that young people bemoan the state of their society.

This article presents evidence on the inadequacies of government policies in Australia in supporting caregivers of older people. One of the major issues in social gerontology is the nature of family support for older people. This is not surprising given that the family is the most basic social institution in the society. This research has increased the knowledge about changes in kinship structure over time, the status of the elderly within the family, marital relations over the family life cycle, adjustment to the ageing process within the family context, and the onset of and adjustment to family-related role transitions, such as the empty nest, widowhood, divorce and childlessness. The family as a care-giving unit was being investigated by feminists as a potentially inherently oppressive institution for women because it confines them to domestic and caring roles. This involved the integration of four Acts which had previously covered the area of home and community care into the Home and Community Care Act 1985.

This article focuses on the conditions of older persons in Australia. Recognition of the multiple advantages of home ownership to families, governments and society at large has in effect constructed a social contract, with individual saving for home ownership being rewarded by favorable tax and pension treatments. The perceived advantages of home ownership have long been recognized and valued by Australian families. Home ownership typically provides a secure home base over which the owners enjoy a high degree of control, and increases in house values over time can lead to capital gains for home owners. The reason home ownership has come to play such a central role in Australian society is, in part, explained by its position as a cornerstone of the welfare state. The policy frameworks of the past that supported home ownership engendered an attachment and wide-spread cultural commitment to home ownership. To the extent that the home ownership rate continues to fall, other forms of saving will have to provide income sufficient to cover housing costs in later life, and clearly fewer families would have the asset of a house to trade upon to support them in their old age. INSET: Government Initiatives in the International Year of the Old....

The article reports on the Fifth Australian Family Research Conference. The Commonwealth Minister for Family Services, Judi Moylan, drew out the theme of the conference "Family Research: Pathways to Policy" in her opening address. She stressed the need for better communication between policy makers and researchers, policy relevant research that presented findings in an accessible manner and the inclusion of policy makers and practitioners in the design stage of research programs. Ron Burke, representing the major sponsor of the conference, the National Australia Bank, argued for the corporate sector to take responsibility for the rebuilding of social capital, for it not to ignore the community stress that could be caused by corporate decision making and to balance the interests of share holders with community obligations. He maintained that there was a role for the corporate sector in providing financial and marketing assistance to community groups as they attempted to rebuild social capital which, while easily depleted, is not easily replaced.

The article discusses family studies in Australia. Family studies is a hybrid. Its sources range from national statistical collections to experimental studies. A family research conference cannot, however, be all things to all people. Whatever the new directions, maintaining quality and drawing on new areas of study are goals for future conferences and for family studies in general. One such extension for future conferences might be to attract more international participants. International comparisons serve to discriminate between macro causes of family changes and national or group effects. The conference "Pathways to Policy" opened the way for examination of the complex relationships between policy development and research. In its simplest form the research-policy nexus can be described as either research directed by specific policy objectives. Symposia on sibling relationships and divorce outcomes for children are examples of basic research with a range of policy implications. The interface between family relationship and public policy is nowhere more difficult than where abuse and violence are concerned.

The article reports developments in the Australian Institute of Family Studies in 2008. The author notes that the launch of the research report "Fertility and Family Policy" in Australia in February generated considerable interest. Its focus on the fertility aspirations of Australians and how they stand relative to trends in other Organization for Economic Co-operation Development (OECD) countries stimulated debate in the media as well as among policy makers and the wider community. Also, he contends that support for families is well entrenched in Australian public policy and historically the country has led the world in making it a policy priority.

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.

This article presents views on how the images and interests of older people influence public policy in Australia. The author says that a coincidence occurred when he was preparing this article for the Australian Institute of Family Studies. He found that articles on ageing have a formula start, the totally unconnected articles written ten years apart that he read started with "Australia's population is ageing." A second theme he detected in the ten-year-old articles was grey power. There were two elements to these articles. Abolishing mandatory retirement has been achieved throughout Australia with the Commonwealth Government being the last to legislate this year. Usually this was a considered process over time. In extending the accommodation bond to nursing homes, the Government overlooked the different trajectory into that type of residence. All political parties realized that policies for older people need to be more carefully considered. In contrast to the discussion on political influence is the component of fear that pervades individuals in the older community. INSET: Council on the Ageing.

This article discusses the importance of home ownership to older Australians in the light of the prevailing fall in home ownership rates and an explicit policy to support home ownership. Home ownership plays an important and multi-faceted role in Australia, not the least of which is providing affordable good quality accommodation to older people. Home ownership typically provides a secure home base over which the owners enjoy a high degree of control, and increases in house values over time can lead to capital gains for home owners. For families seeking to enter home ownership, new policy priorities are now competing for home deposit savings. A weakening of policy support for home ownership is at odds with the ongoing preference for home ownership in Australian society. The policy frameworks of the past that supported home ownership engendered an attachment and wide- spread cultural commitment to home ownership. The extent to which home ownership can be used as a source of support in later life in the future will be shaped by the proportions of home owners among over 65-year-olds in 30 or 40 years time.

The article lists seminars offered by the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), which are scheduled in 1995. The Institute has introduced a series of monthly seminars designed to provide a forum for Australian and international research on contemporary family research and policy issues. Seminars are convened and coordinated by AIFS Senior Research Fellow. The program "Child Protection in the United Kingdom Research Overview" by Mike Little, Reader in Sociology and Deputy Director of the Dartington Social Research Unit, University of Bristol, Great Britain, will be conducted on January 25, 1995. The program "Social Policies Towards Lone Parents in Scotland" by Sue Robertson, Director, Scottish Council for Single Parents, will be conducted on February 27, 1995. The program "How Would We Know if They Were Lonely? Methodological Challenge of Understanding Suburbia" by Associate Professor Lyn Richards of Department of Sociology, La Trobe University, will be conducted on March 28, 1995.

The article examines the evidence for the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns in preventing child maltreatment in Australia. It highlights the aim of the campaign to prevent child maltreatment by raising public awareness of the issue and educating and fostering prosocial behaviors within families. It notes 12 campaigns relating to child maltreatment which were identified as having published evidence of impact and outcomes evaluation in the review.

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.

This article presents information on several books related to family and published in Australia. The chapters of the Australian Institute of Family Studies's new collection, "Social Capital and Public Policy in Australia," edited by Ian Winter, coalesce around three main themes: the conceptual and empirical boundaries of social capital; the practice of social capital in different arenas; and social capital as it relates to public policy, including health, education. This book is the first in Australia to address Australian work on social capital and to link these themes to public policy. The Institute's newly published "The Looking After Children Approach in Australia," by Sarah Wise, provides an informative account of the development of "Looking After Children in the United Kingdom," an assessment, case-planning and review system designed to promote positive development outcomes among children and young people who are required to live away from their families of origin, and an analysis of its applicability in Australia. It argues that the Looking After Children approach may have measurable benefits for child care services in Australia.

Presents letters to the editor related to various family issues in Australia. Analysis of the development and implementation of a coordinated approach to family policy in Australia; Benefits of repartnering divorced people following relationship breakdown; Effort to find effective and useable methods of measuring family strengths; Assessment of the unfairness of family law in divorce settlements especially in a property and maintenance outcome.

This article presents several references from the Australian Family & Society Abstracts database produced by the Australian Institute of Family Studies to monitor the research on welfare reform. The article "Distinctive Features of Social Policy Reform in the United States," by A. Breuer, discusses social policy reforms implemented by the United States under the legislation known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, reforms which have introduced the idea of time-limited social assistance. To understand why such reforms have been introduced, the author first investigates the specific social and economic trends that have influenced policy makers in the United States. The book "Civilising Global Capital: New Thinking for Australian Labor," by M. Latham, assesses the means by which Australian Labor might renew its program for social democracy. The author declares as irrelevant the old politics of the Left/Right divide, and embraces a different set of values and policies, social responsibility, equality of opportunity and merited reward, public mutuality and the wholesale devolution of governance.

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 discusses the status of homeless elderly people in Australia. There are varying degrees of homelessness ranging from people living in insecure, unsafe or unaffordable housing who are at risk of home-lessness to people living on the street, parks or in squats who are in a state of outright home-lessness. Only a small proportion of homeless service users are elderly people despite public perceptions that homeless people are elderly. Some elderly people are at risk of becoming homeless as their housing tenure is insecure and the cost of their housing is not consistent with their ability to pay. Some elderly people are at risk of becoming homeless as their housing tenure is insecure and the cost of their housing is not consistent with their ability to pay. It is difficult to count elderly homeless people accurately as many live in inappropriate or insecure housing, and even on the streets. One quarter of the households on the waiting list for public housing consist of elderly people.

The article discusses social capital. The phenomenon of social capital is demanding attention from academics, governments and social observers all over the world. Social capital, put simply, is the mutual sense of reciprocity and trust which enables groups of people to live and work together successfully. In rich supplies, it fosters a thriving, prosperous society. Recently, there has been a growing, collective awareness that perhaps there is something missing within Australian communities. People have become conscious of what social capital means. When people trust one another and are bound by a sense of mutual obligation, they share an impetus towards common objectives. They form strong social connections and respect similar values. Collective norms, networks and values can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions. The resulting social capital becomes a rich resource whereby collective goals and personal satisfaction can be achieved. Ongoing research is raising the awareness of the importance of effectively functioning communities, and their relationship to the overall well-being and prosperity of society at large.

The article discusses the report "Creating the Links: Families and Social Responsibility" of Australia's National Council for the International Year of the Family. The National Council for the International Year of the Family was appointed by the Minister for Family Services as an advisory body to consult with the community and provide advice to the Government on issues relevant to Australian families. Within the overall theme of "Supporting the Many Faces of Families," the Council identified ten key issues for community discussion and recommendations during the Year. The report is based on information gathered during 70 days of public consultations held around Australia and 550 written submissions to the Council, as well as the Council's own policy research. Three themes dominate each of the ten key issues under discussion: the relationship between social and economic policies as they affect family well-being; the connections between private family responsibilities and public obligations to support family contributions to society; and the necessity to intensify resources and services for families to assist them in their caring and nurturing roles.

The article informs that staff of the Australian Institute of Family Studies attended a forum hosted by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research on 6 April 2000. The Forum focused on the Interim Report of the Welfare Review Reference Group. Presentations were made by Professor Peter Dawkins, Director of the Melbourne Institute, at the University of Melbourne, and Ms Elizabeth Morgan a social policy specialist. Both Professor Dawkins and Ms Morgan are Members of the Reference Group. Michael Raper, President of the Australian Council of Social Service, was the commentator on the presentations by Professor Dawkins and Ms Morgan.

This article reports on the appointment of executive David Stanton as director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies. David Stanton has had a distinguished career in the Australian Public Service over some 32 years. His career in the Public Service commenced with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, before moving to the Department of Social Security. For some years he was Assistant Secretary in charge of the Research and Statistics Branch in the Development Division of the Department of Social Security, where he was responsible for managing the Department's research program. He then held various positions as First Assistant Secretary in the Department of Social Security in Canberra, including responsibility for the Performance and Control Division, and then the Evaluation and Services Division. For some five years, from 1992 to 1997, David was responsible for the national management of the Family Programs of the Department of Social Security. This included responsibility for policy development and analysis, program management and implementation, and research and evaluation in relation to all family programs.

The article reports on developments related to the Australia Institute of Family Studies as of the summer of 1998. Appointment of Peter Saunders as research manager; Highlights of the Sixth Australian Family Research Conference; Research program of the institute. Peter Saunders will be joining the Institute in January 1999 as Research Manager. Prior to his appointment, Peter Saunders was Professor of Sociology, School of Sociology at the University of Sussex in Great Britain. Saunders is the sole author of some eight books and joint author of three, all related to family issues. He has served on the editorial board of the British Institute of Economic Affairs, Health and Welfare, whose primary focus is on family policy and welfare provision. Professor Saunders has been a regular contributor to international conferences in the field of sociology. The Institute's Sixth Australian Family Research Conference, "Changing Families, Challenging Futures," held in Melbourne, Victoria on November 25-27, 1998, was opened by the Minister for Family and Community Services, Senator Jocelyn Newman.