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Editorial
Supporting children: Research, reviews, and practice
Lawrie Moloney
School of Public Health, La Trobe University; Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne VIC
Article Text
Welcome to the second issue of the special 'Children in Focus' Volume of the Journal of Family Studies. Like the April issue, this one contains papers that reflect the ongoing work of the 'Children in Focus' team, Jenn McIntosh, Tom Fisher and Lawrie Moloney. Much to the delight of the team, the Commonwealth Attorney General's Department supported an extension of the 'Children in Focus' project into 2003. One result of this has been the production of a CD ROM, designed primarily for use as a resource in training mediators and counsellors/therapists in child-focused practices.
As noted in the April edition, the primary focus of future issues of the Journal of Family Studies will be on the impact of family change and transitions on the wellbeing of children. Though the main focus in the current Volume has continued to be on separation and divorce, there are, of course, a multitude of transitional events that have the potential to enrich or destabilise the lives of children in families. In the next Volume, for example, we plan to include Helen Gardner's research on children in foster care and adults who were in foster care as children. Gardner focuses on perceptions of inclusion and exclusion as members of these families. Her beautifully written autobiographical novel, My Mother's Child, is reviewed in the present issue.
In this Issue, we have included the results of a very interesting research project conducted at the University of Thessaloniki on professionals' thoughts and fears about dealing with the emergence of mental illness within the family. The research by Ionanna Bibou-Nakou points to tensions around how to communicate what is happening to the children and how to discuss and deal with issues of parental competence. There is an all to familiar ring to the statements in the 'Conclusions and Recommendations' section, which includes the following: 'The adult-imposed hierarchies of knowledge tend to equate experience with adulthood and to deny the very fact that children live with their mentally ill parent'.
The present Issue also introduces a new Forum section. The aim of this section is to permit individuals to write on a child and family-related topic with a little more freedom that is conventionally afforded in more research or review-based articles. The first Forum reproduces a speech made at the launching of the Don Chipp Foundation in August of this year. It speaks to some of the mysteries of deciding to have children in the first place and of then negotiating with a partner about how to engage with and parent them.
Penny Holmes has written a very engaging piece in the Practice Notes section, which illustrates some of the subtleties that can be involved within the practice of child-focused mediation. In the case described, the two children were at considerable risk of losing all meaningful contact with their father, whilst they continued to by hyper-vigilant about their mother's wellbeing. Holmes' articles is complemented by Smyth and Moloney's substantial review of the range of research-based approaches to divorce mediation that include counselling or therapeutic input. These approaches, when combined with child-focused practices, can hold considerable promise for families at the high conflict end of the spectrum.
A step beyond clinical responses to individual families - group interventions for separated parents in entrenched conflict - is considered by McIntosh and Deacon-Wood. The authors review the existing research, which, they note, 'is trying to catch up with the rapid development of separation education and treatment programs of the past decade'. This gap between practice and research is especially notable in Australia, making it particularly important that current programs include funding for a careful evaluation of outcomes. As McIntosh and Deacon-Wood point out, United States-based research suggests that 'more may be better' and that it may not be so much a question of information that is needed, but time and commitment to the process of flushing out origins of conflict and factors that maintain it. Paradoxically, perhaps, there is evidence that parents do not necessarily enjoy the programs that produce the best results.
McIntosh's article on children and domestic violence comes from developmental perspective. She grapples with distinctions between parental conflict and domestic violence but clearly supports moves away from earlier comforting but ultimately false notions of children as 'silent witnesses' to violence. McIntosh points to recent research that links exposure to violence with damage to neurological pathways. She identifies infancy and adolescence as times of special vulnerability. Her conclusion is thought-provoking:
[Developmental research] impels us to move away from ideological debate around domestic violence, away from polarising perspectives and practices, towards a proactive public health perspective that invites far-reaching prevention of family-based trauma, and opens up opportunities for early intervention with children in particular.
The article by Fisher addresses the often-neglected subject of how mediators and conciliators communicate about children and parenting, with a lawyer whose duty is to act on behalf of a parent. The socio-legal context in which this communication takes place is described by Fisher and Pullen in the April issue of the Journal of Family Studies. The topic is brought to life by an imagined dialogue between a community-based family mediator and a lawyer representing a mother. Versions of this dialogue were trialled in role-plays during the National 'Children in Focus' program during 2002. They never failed to produce vigorous debate and much of the essence of these debates is captured in the commentary that punctuates the dialogue. Fisher conceptualises the tensions between the professions by adopting the stance of a cultural anthropologies. Importantly, too, he reflects on ways in which mediators and lawyers may find areas of common ground.
The very important article by Murphy and Pike points to where the future may well lie in dealing with violence and child abuse allegations within the Family Court. It is not unfair to suggest that the Court has struggled to respond adequately to this difficult issue, partly because of work-loads, partly because it has not always prioritised these cases and partly because of the ongoing Consititutional issues that continue to cause children at risk to be dealt with across different jurisdictions. The Columbus project is unique in Australia in that it addresses all of these issues. Importantly, the quite painstaking work of Murphy and Pike reported here, places this approach within a carefully costed framework. The key to success appears to be sound management and cooperation across the professions. It seems that in this most trying of areas, the sort of cooperative practices advocated Fisher, are being manifested. As responsible researchers, the authors are not ready to make a call regarding costs. But the signs at this stage are that Columbus may well prove to be not only a more effective form of intervention that much of the stop-start litigation practices that have featured in these cases to date, but also a cheaper one. From children's victims' and the Court's perspective, could we really be looking at a win-win solution to these difficult cases?
Finally, it gives me great pleasure to report that subscriptions to the Journal of Family Studies have increased by more than 20% in 2003. Feedback on our first 'Children in Focus' issue was very positive. I feel confident that this issue matches the first with respect to interest and depth of scholarship. I trust that readers will continue to support the Journal in 2004.
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