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Child welfare policy making is a highly contested area in public policy. Child abuse scandals prompt critical appraisals of parents, professionals and the child protection system creating a tipping point for reform. One hundred and six transcripts of debates in the West Australian Parliament from August until December 2006 relating to child welfare and child deaths were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The analysis found that statistics about child deaths were conflated with other levels of childhood vulnerability promoting blame, fear, risk and an individual responsibility theme. The key rhetorical strategy was the use of numbers to generate emotion, credibility and authority to frame child maltreatment narrowly as a moral crime. Rhetoric and emotions is about telling causal stories and will remain ubiquitous in social policy making. So, in order to guide policy debate and creation, ground their claims and manage ambiguity and uncertainty, policy makers, researchers and practitioners working with complex social issues will do well to step into this public and political discourse and be strategic in shaping more nuanced alternative frames.

This paper analyses a fourteen-year period of Western Australian data from the client information system of the Department for Child Protection and Family Support. Western Australia saw a large increase in the number of children in state care similar to trends across Australia as a whole. The study shows the following trends: changes in response to 'referrals' with particular increases in the number of findings of neglect and increasing proportions of these followed swiftly by entry to care; changes in patterns of entry to care with more children under one-year-old entering; increased length of stay of children in care; and, the high incidence of Aboriginal children entering and remaining in care. The data demonstrate unequivocally that increased 'referrals' are not associated with increased substantiations of harm or 'acts of commission with dangerous intent', but that neglect assessed early in the lives of children was the major precipitant for entry to care and particularly so for Aboriginal infants. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.]

Rather than a single focus on assessing risk and diagnosing deficit, this book recognises that our child protection systems bear down disproportionately on those from disadvantaged and marginalised communities and argues that what is needed is real support and practical assistance for poor and vulnerable parents and children. It uses real-world case examples to illustrate the relevant ethical and practice principles, and ways in which students and practitioners can practise ethically when dealing with complex, multi-faceted issues.

This qualitative research examines the perceptions of forty-five married Malay individuals about what they understand to be the ingredients of quality marital relationships. It utilised semi-structured interviews as a primary data-gathering instrument. In this paper, the researcher explains some of the reasons for the research question about quality of marital relationships, why the researcher decided to use a qualitative research design and how these interviews were conducted. Finally, this paper describes how the data are being analysed and identifies some issues that have arisen during this process.

"For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong (M.L. Mencken, US writer and social commentator). Nowhere is this quote more apt than when applied to finding over-simplified solutions to the complex problem of looking after the safety and well-being of vulnerable children. The easiest formula is, of course, to ‘rescue children from dysfunctional families’, a line taken recently in the monograph by the right wing think tank, Centre for Independent Studies (Sammut & O’Brien 2009). It is reasoning with fatal flaws. This commentary provides a timely reminder of the strong arguments which lie behind the national and international shift to supporting children and families through universal and specialist community-based services, rather than weighting all resources into statutory child protection interventions. A brief outline of the value of developing the resources to support children in their families, and the problems with 'rescuing' children through the child protection system are discussed.

Child protection is one of the most high profile and challenging areas of social work, as well as one where children’s lives and family life are seen to be at stake. Vital as child protection work is, this book argues that there is a pressing need for change in the understanding and consequent organization of child protection in many English speaking countries. The authors present compelling evidence from around the globe demonstrating that systems across the Western world are failing children, families and social workers. They then set out a radical plan for reform: • Providing an overview of contemporary child protection policies and practices across the English speaking world • Presenting a clear and innovative theoretical framework for understanding the problems in the child protection system • Developing an alternative, ethical framework which locates child protection in the broader context of effective and comprehensive support for children, young people and families at the neighbourhood and community levels Grounded in the recent and contemporary literature, research and scholarly inquiry, this book capitalises on the experiences and voices of children, young people, families and workers who are the most significant stakeholders in child protection. It will be an essential read for those who work, research, teach study in the area.

In this thesis, the subject area of privatisation as it relates to the privatisation of human services in particular, is explored. The international and Australian literature on privatisation is examined in some depth and a comprehensive account is given of the development of the language of privatisation and of its adoption in various guises on a worldwide basis. Alongside of this analysis a comprehensive account is provided of cross-disciplinary definitions and depictions of privatisation. In broad terms, the research purpose was to explore the impact and implications of privatisation on the human service sector in Western Australia with a particular locus in the non-government sector and with a particular focus on perceptions of consumer benefits. A multi-method research design was used. By means of case studies, participant observation, focus groups and questionnaires, the perceptions of people involved in human service policy, planning and delivery were obtained. Importantly, these accounts include data from consumers of human services as well as practitioners and policy makers. The term 'human services' is used in preference to narrower descriptors such as social services and welfare because the crucible for the research was the experiences of the broad not-for-profit sector (including areas such as health, welfare, employment and housing) in Western Australia in the 1990s. The research identifies the main features of privatisation of human services as they were perceived by a range of people who were involved in human service delivery in Western Australia during a time of significant privatisation initiatives. The result is a rich tapestry of views about changes to human service delivery in which some expected and some unexpected patterns are evident. These patterns are explicated with reference to the sociological theory of Habermas and others.

Williams N.J., Harries M., Williams A.M. (2014). Gaining Control: A New Perspective on the Parenting of Children with AD/HD. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 11(3), 277-297. Available here