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When child protection caseworkers make first contact with the parents of a child (or children) who is suspected of being at ‘significant risk of harm’ they may encounter a range of hostile, angry and aggressive verbal responses from parents. If this contact results in a child being removed from parental care, it is not unknown for these responses to escalate into attempts at verbal intimidation and loud threats of personal violence. These behaviours then get recorded in case files and in materials submitted to the Children's Court to support the case for permanent removal of a child from parental care; these behaviours being presented as evidence of the parents’ unsuitability and unwillingness to comply with demands for changes in their child rearing practices. But how should child protection caseworkers view these less-than-helpful parental responses, and how should they, in turn, respond? This article explores this issue and offers a number of ways of understanding these behaviours, and canvasses new ways for caseworkers to respond when these behaviours occur.

A specialist Children’s Court has been in operation in New South Wales, the most populous state of Australia, since 1905. With this longevity, some strengths have emerged including a body of specialist workers with a strong sense of the purpose and philosophy of the court. Yet challenges to both the operation and function of this court persist. This chapter draws from 45 semi-structured interviews and 10 focus groups to examine the problems and prospects of the court as viewed by those at the coalface: specialist magistrates, care and crime solicitors, nongovernment advocacy groups and officers in government. Features of the New South Wales court include the Children’s Court Clinic, which provides specialist clinical assessments in care and protection matters, and a Youth Drug and Alcohol Court, which offers a specialist pathway for some young people in the juvenile justice system. One of the greatest challenges in New South Wales is the inability of the system to navigate its vast geography to offer every young person the same access to specialist court officers, functions and programmes. As well, court workers spoke unanimously of the complex social disadvantage faced by the children and young people coming before it, of the overrepresentation of Aboriginal youth, and of the intersections between care and crime matters. However, court workers shared a sense of interest in and support for further court innovation and reform.

This article argues that Australian child protection services are based on an error of logical typing. Across time, this has led to an over-reliance on mandatory reporting legislation, a forensic/investigative/prosecutorial model of practice, a risk-averse organisational culture and zero tolerance of any imperfections in parenting practices which are defined as child abuse and neglect regardless of their severity. All of these positions ignore powerful social stressors that surround complex family situations where abuse and neglect can occur. It is proposed that this error of logical typing is confirmed by the well-documented fact that Australian child protection services have for more than two decades been unable to prevent or reduce the incidence of child abuse and neglect. For this article, New South Wales is used as the exemplar state.

Social work's response to a rapidly changing health care system requires an empirical approach to practice. However, most empirical studies that evaluate social work services emphasize productivity and efficiency instead of effectiveness. This article examines the following ques tions : (a) What is the nature of contemporary social work practice in a medical setting? (b) What accounts for the effectiveness of social work interventions? (c) Does the currentpractice ofsocial workers meet the demands of a changing health care system? Social workers in a large metropolitan hospital collected data on 60 cases. Descriptive data regarding the types of presenting problems, nsk factors that complicate these problems, interventions, and obstacles to service delivery are presented. Regression analyses showed that the obstacles were the strongest predictors of the overall outcome of the cases. The authors discuss the implications of the rapidly changing medical system on social workers' activities.

Hematoma following primary total hip arthroplasty (THA) can require a return to the operating room. The purpose of this study was to uncover risk factors for hematoma and how it affects the outcome of THA. This case-control study identified 38 patients requiring reoperation due to hematoma following THA between 2000 and 2007. The 38 patients were matched with 117 patients without hematoma. The mean follow-up was 4.1years (range, 2.1-9.6). Multivariate regression showed that blood loss, administration of fresh frozen plasma and Vitamin K, perioperative anticoagulation and hormonal therapy were independent predictors for hematoma formation. Chronic anticoagulation and autologous blood transfusion were independent risk factors for mortality. Hematoma itself was found to be an independent risk factor for adverse outcomes, increasing morbidity and mortality, despite adequate treatment.

The construct ‘the best interest of the child’ is embedded in child protection legislation in all Australian states and territories. This phrase or construct in its modern iteration that dates from 1973 is constantly evoked when decisions are being made about a child's future following the substantiation of a case of child abuse and neglect. The use of the best interests of the child as a standard for decision-making, even though there is no consensus in law or social science as to what the construct means, needs to be questioned. What often follows from reliance on the best interests of the child is the placement of a child in foster care or kinship care in the hope that this will produce a better outcome for the child than if they remained in parental care. No doubt this is true for some children. Recent outcomes studies of foster care point to less than promising results for many children. As a result it can be argued that placing a child in foster care is a gamble with the child's future life.

At first glance the combination of social work and restorative justice may seem strange since in Australia social workers are not prominent in criminology and correctional systems. The editors of t...

In this paper, we examine selected research findings from a community-based study on engaging with nature to promote health. Combining participatory photographic research methods with an iterative process of dialectical analysis, we explored nature-based health promotion with community citizens, practitioners, and decision-makers from various sectors to examine the complexities of connecting with natural outdoor places in local contexts. Participants identified an array of barriers to and opportunities for everyday access to restorative outdoor places. The findings suggest that inter-sectoral governance with active citizen engagement in research, decision-making, and action may be essential to develop the ecological citizenship and communal norms and strategies that promote the health of people and their shared restorative places.

Child protection legislation in every Australian state and territory prohibits the disclosure of the identity of a person who acts as a mandatory reporter. There is also provision in most child protection legislation that prevents the naming of children and families in protection cases. It is argued that disclosure is not in the interests of the child, the family or the general public. Children's Court proceedings in most states and territories in Australia are closed to the public so that, unlike in most other jurisdictions, interested parties are not able to observe the proceedings. Child protection authorities also have considerable power to collect information about children and families from many sources. This power to obtain information is compounded by legislation which removes confidentiality provisions from professional codes of ethics. Furthermore, the rules of evidence do not ordinarily apply in the Children's Court. This article uses New South Wales as the exemplar state and raises questions about all of these issues.

This article examines some aspects of child protection practice in various Australian states. It does so from a parent's perspective through the framework of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990). Australia was a signatory to both the Declaration and Convention at their point of inception. Of particular interest are articles 5 and 12 of the Universal Declaration and articles 5 and 9(3) of the Convention. The tentative conclusion is that the states cited in this article are from time to time in breach of these articles. The potential Australian Charter of Rights offers a way forward as a guide to development of legislation and service systems that will ensure the rights of children and parents while maintaining child wellbeing as a top priority.

In the 36 years since the 1973 publication of ‘Beyond the Best Interests of the Child’ by Goldstein, Freud and Solnit, the phase ‘the best interests of the child’ has achieved biblical standing and is now embedded in childcare and protection legislation worldwide. It also resonates through clinical reports and other materials that form the basis for proceedings in Children's Courts and in Family Law Courts. Such is the power of the phrase that it is to be found in Article 18 of the Convention on the Rights of Children that was adopted by the United Nations in September 1989. In 1996, Goldstein, Solnit and Goldstein, with Freud, indicated a preference for the phrase ‘least detrimental alternative’ rather than ‘the best interests of the child’. For this reason, and because the world in 2009 is a far different place from that which existed 36 years ago, we think it is time to re-examine this classic phrase both in terms of its underlying thesis and how it is used in present-day childcare and protection proceedings and practice.

The use of photo research methods is influenced by underlying ontological and epistemological assumptions. Variant assumptions about reality and knowledge converge to conceive a relationship between the knower and what can be known. These assumptions provide the rationale for decided ways of engaging participants in the process of scientific inquiry. In this paper, we examine how perspectives of realism and relativism may shape epistemological understandings and influence type and use of photo methods in qualitative research. Based on deliberations about underlying ontological and epistemological assumptions and related strengths and challenges of photo methods, we assert that photo methods contribute to the development of knowledge that both matters to participants and informs nursing practice.

A patient is reported who underwent cardiac catheterization 4 years following coronary artery bypass grafting. Cardiac catheterization revealed the presence of a fistulous tract in the wall of the ascending aorta, originating at the site of aortic anastomosis of a saphenous vein bypass graft and ending in the superior aspect of the right sinus of Valsalva. This complication was felt to have resulted from a inadvertent localized dissection of the aorta during bypass surgery. The fistula was also imaged by ultrafast cine computerized tomography which proved a useful non-invasive method for follow-up examination.

The spatial clustering of galaxies in galaxy clusters implies that the background of infrared (IR) light in the intracluster medium (ICM) may exceed the universal background. Cosmic rays injected within the ICM propagate diffusively and at low enough energies are trapped there for cosmological times. The photopion production interactions of cosmic rays with the IR photons are responsible for the generation of neutrinos whose detection may shed some light on the origin and propagation of high energy cosmic rays in the universe. Here we discuss our calculations of the flux of neutrinos from single clusters as well as the contribution of photopion production in clusters of galaxies to the diffuse neutrino background., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, submitted to PRD

In this paper we study the sensitivity of the flux of atmospheric muons to uncertainties in the primary cosmic ray spectrum and to the treatment of the geomagnetic field. We use the air shower simulation program AIRES to make the calculation for two different primary spectra and under several approximations to the propagation of charged particles in the geomagnetic field. The results illustrate the importance of accurate modeling of the geomagnetic field effects. We propose a high and a low fit of the proton and helium fluxes, and calculate the muon fluxes with these different inputs. Comparison with measurements of the muon flux by the CAPRICE experiment shows a slight preference for the higher primary cosmic ray flux parametrization., Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Instituto de Física La Plata

Social workers in hospitals are often involved in family conferences where patient, family members and hospital personnel meet together to exchange information about the patient's condition and to plan for the future. In this paper the complexities of these meetings as decision making arenas are discussed and an outline of the three phases of family conferences-preparation, the conference meeting and follow up-is presented. The final section reports on an exploratory review of recent conferences as perceived by social workers from an acute and rehabilitation teaching hospital. The social workers' comments indicate that the conferences achieve the desired outcomes, especially for hospital staff. In this hospital the conferences are more often used for providing family members with information, and for collective decision making about the patient's future care, than for providing information to the patients about their illness and treatment.

Schools need to consider alternatives to traditional semester and year-long courses, conclude these authors, who base their advice on data collected in 1976-77 from high schools in four midwestern states.

In Australia the family is often used as a model for provision of residential care for children. Associated with this model is an acceptance of the parent role as the appropriate one for residential child care workers. This article explores these ideas, outlining the positive and negative aspects of the family model and the parenting function. The alternative put forward is that of identifying residential child care personnel as child development workers.

Most agencies that provide residential services for children and youth make some attempt to work with natural family members; e.g. mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, sister, or brother of those placed within these programmes. Some common approaches to this include the employment of social workers or involvement of other social agencies to undertake this work. Alternatively, a member of the direct care staff in a residential programme may be designated as a family worker and required to make extra effort to maintain links between the child in the programme and the natural family. Under all of these arrangements, direct care practitioners in residential programmes are expected to be responsive to natural family members visiting a child in the programme. They are also expected to support a child planning to return home for a family visit or returning to the programme from such an event.