Welcome to the first issue of Children Australia for 2013. We trust you had an enjoyable festive season and are now firmly back into your work/life routines for the New Year. This year Jennifer and I are continuing with our commitment to bring quality research and practice-based commentaries about issues important to children, young people, families and the professionals who work with them. Later in the year we will see a special issue guest edited by Dr Nicola Taylor from the Centre for Research on Children and Families, Otago University, New Zealand. The special issue will focus on matters related to family law, the court system and separation/divorce. In addition to our regular invitation to submit your papers to Children Australia, we invite experts in the field to make contributions to the special issue.

School bullying and victimisation is a pervasive problem within schools. Research within Australian schools has not considered the relationship that ethnicity, strength of ethnic identity or acculturation orientation may have with bullying and victimisation. A self-report measure was completed by 421 children (Mean age = 11.8 years, SD = 0.6). Ethnic majority children reported experiencing more direct and indirect victimisation than ethnic minority children. For ethnic minority children, weaker ethnic identity was associated with direct victimisation. Ethnic minority children who adopted an assimilation acculturation orientation experienced more direct victimisation in comparison with ethnic minority children who adopted an integration acculturation orientation. Ethnicity and acculturation are important aspects to consider when understanding bullying and victimisation in Australian schools and although ethnic majority children were more likely to report victimisation, weak ethnic identity and assimilation acculturation orientation leaves ethnic minority children particularly vulnerable to direct victimisation. This should be considered in the application of anti-bullying programmes within schools.

Objective

The study reviewed a 25-year dataset of child abuse and neglect concerns, examining child and family factors associated with re-referral.

Methods

Suspected child abuse and neglect data collated from a variety of sources including child protection, health, police and education by a multidisciplinary Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect team for the 25-year period of 1980 to 2005 was entered for analysis. Case referral criteria for the team included clinician perception of the case as being complex and necessitating multidisciplinary case planning. The dataset contained 6669 cases of child abuse and neglect concerns, relating to 5943 unique children.

Results

The majority of children (90.5%) experienced only one referral to the team, with the remaining experiencing between 2–6 referrals. Through the utilisation of regression analysis, the factors of number of abuse types present at the initial concern, parental abuse as a child, parental intellectual disability, parental history of violence, perpetrator of intrafamilial origin, disabled children in family, and financial stress in family were found to significantly predict complex case re-referral respectively.

Conclusions

Children within this Australian sample of complex cases experienced rates of re-referral similar to those reported internationally. Family and child factors identified as predictors of re-referral in this 25-year dataset support previous international studies on statutory child protection re-referral, and evidence for the association between previously unstudied variables and re-referral likelihood for complex cases.

Children placed in permanent care often display a range of challenging behaviours that can affect the quality of carer-child relationships. The current study examined the relationship between children's emotional and behavioural difficulties and the quality of carer-child relationships in permanent care (N = 46). Permanent carers of children ages 3 to 12 completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1999) and Child-Parent Relationship Scale (CPRS; Pianta, 1992). Results indicated that child emotional and behavioural difficulties were related to carer-child relationships. The SDQ scales Conduct Problems and Pro-Social Behaviour were the strongest predictors of relationship quality. The findings of the study suggest that fewer conduct problems and more pro-social behaviour is important for positive carer-child relationships.

Children in care, who have been maltreated, consistently demonstrate poorer educational outcomes than their peers. A number of reasons have been suggested for this such as a lack of stability and opportunities, as compared to their peers. One possible contributor to the poorer educational attainment of children in care is their underlying cognitive vulnerabilities. Cognitive deficits in maltreated children are thought to arise as a result of the impact of trauma on the developing brain. These cognitive deficits include difficulties with executive functioning. Executive functioning abilities include the ability to inhibit behaviour, plan ahead and switch from task to task and are critical for navigating the day to day requirements of educational settings. This article summarises what we know about the cognitive vulnerabilities of maltreated children in care and outlines the implications of these cognitive deficits for supporting maltreated children.

The education of children in care suffers significantly from a range of disruptions by virtue of them being in care. Research shows that the academic attainment of children in care is lower than that of other children in the general population. Consequently, many young people leave care with minimum or no educational/vocational qualifications and subsequently face adversity in adulthood. Using two case examples this article argues that workers need to look for the strengths in children in care and facilitate the mobilisation of those strengths for them to work their way towards a successful adulthood.