Formal and informal help-seeking by Australian parents who misuse alcohol

Parental substance misuse has a pervasive impact on family functioning, parenting, and, ultimately, child wellbeing and development. Subsequently, linkages with informal and formal support networks are crucial for ameliorating risk. To facilitate engagement with these families prior to identification in child protection systems, it is vital to understand the factors inhibiting and promoting engagement with informal and formal support. This paper examines how different factors influence informal and formal help-seeking by alcohol-misusing parents with regard to parenting and family concerns. Parents reporting alcohol problems in a clinical range (n=322) were drawn from a representative parent sample (n=1991). Alcohol-misusing parents reported low help-seeking for parenting-focused support services. The findings particularly highlight the role of age, education, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, parenting stress, empowerment and trust in support services for predicting parents' help-seeking.Key Practitioner MessagesThe role of practitioners working in family welfare and child protection services in identifying and facilitating support for alcohol-misusing families is described.Parenting-focused support services need to be promoted, especially for vulnerable parent populations.Education of service providers along with the wider community is required to foster and increase trust and support uptake before alcohol-misusing families become involved with statutory systems

Reunification of intrafamilial child sex abusers

There is consensus held across cultures and continents that child sexual abuse is a social and moral problem and a violation of the human rights of a child. Subsequently a controversial issue for agencies working in context of child protection is the issue of family reunification. This chapter will explore the reunification of adult sex offenders and their families (biological children) and the reunification of adult sex offenders where vulnerable children reside (partner’s children as relevant). This will be explored in context of child protection in Australia, the professional agency responsible for making determinations about reunification of sex offenders to the family home. Research examining the prevalence of child sexual abuse, rates of recidivism and the impact of sexual abuse will be explored. Theoretical notions of attachment will be used to inform considerations for reunification

International planning directions for provision of mental health services

Internationally, there have been calls for more strategic mental health care delivery. For this to occur, individual countries need to define 'core' mental health services and set evidence-based, country-specific resource targets related to these. Via a web search, we identified 32 current mental health plans from five developed countries. We synthesised descriptive information from these documents, in order to compare profiles of 'core' services, resource targets relating to these services, and rationales for these resource targets. Most plans list 'core' clinical services, typically including a mix of inpatient and community services. Only four plans cite resource targets for these 'core' services, and these are difficult to compare due to different definitional and counting rules. All four provide rationales for the targets, though these vary in strength. The challenge remains for individual countries to develop plans that include appropriate resource targets, and to implement initiatives that move them towards these targets