Diana Baumrtnd's typology of parenting is based on a two-factor model of "control" and "warmth" : Her recommended discipline style, labeled "authoritative parenting"; was constructed by taking high scores on these two factors. A problem with authoritative parenting is that it does not allow for flexible and differentiated responses to discipline situations. It is argued that a simpler, and more adequate, approach would be to switch to a model of discipline with a third factor, labeled "tolerance" : Parents of the most socially competent children are adept at knowing when they have a problem and when they do not. An example of the latter would be when a child expresses negative affect while complying fully with a request. Baumrind's notion of authoritative parenting was a useful "dialectic"; demonstrating that control and warmth are independent and equally necessary behaviors, but it did not go far enough. Baumrind's category of harmonious parenting (high warmth, moderate control, high tolerance), which she sees as an anomaly, should be substituted for authoritative parenting as the preferred discipline pattern.

The Review of Mental Health and Learning Disability, Northern Ireland commissioned the present consultation to support the work of its Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMH) subgroup. The investigation employed a two-stage qualitative approach to explore views and opinions held by users and carers about CAMH services. Nineteen services distributed questionnaires on a single day between 13 and 15 October, 2004 in order to provide a "snap-shot" of service user's views. Four focus groups, two consisting of parents/carers and two consisting of young people, were conducted. Responses from both stages were content analysed and key themes were drawn out. The content analysis of responses from the questionnaire study showed that 40% (six) of the derived categories described negative experiences of CAMH services, with 60% (nine) of the categories expressing positive views. Analysis of focus group data produced a total of 14 categories (88%) indicating dissatisfaction with CAMH services and two categories (12%) expressing generally positive views. These findings suggest that while users and carers valued CAMH services, they felt more could be done to help their children and wider families. Major areas for development highlighted include increasing capacity at all tiers of service, developing collaborative models of practice, developing public knowledge about child and adolescent mental health, and establishing meaningful structures for increased user participation in the planning and monitoring of CAMH services.

In order to effectively meet the needs of families, this paper argues that there is a need for people working in the arena of family support to incorporate theory and research into their practice and to engage in a process of reflective practice. An inter-disciplinary cyclical model of training for experienced family support practitioners is described, which involves identification and implementation of a practice task and subsequent reflection on the task one year later. The value of the model lies in the fact that it connects theory to practice in "real world" contexts, allows busy practitioners the time and space to reflect, facilitates the practitioners' agency to engage in service development, and, most importantly, supports services to examine how they can best meet the needs of children and families.

This paper provides an account of the design, development and implementation of a postvention model of responding to the needs of families within a community following the aftermath of a tragic event, including suicide. This model was developed for a specific disadvantaged urban community. The paper includes the context of the need for such an undertaking and discussion on the family support theories that underpin its development. A retrospective critique of the initiative and subsequent model is provided, including the inherent strengths and limitations and a description of further family support practice developments.

The parental role in childcare is explored by drawing on a whole child perspective and eco-systemic theory. Partnership between parents and staff in the formal childcare context is then discussed. A workshop undertaken with staff in a community childcare centre to explore the concept and reality of the parent as primary carer is then outlined, including the mechanisms participants identified for translating the theory of partnership with parents into practice. Finally, the strengths and limitations of the approach employed are noted, followed by an analysis of the future potential of this method.

Child care policy and practice within the four countries that comprise the United Kingdom can be seen to be in a process of ongoing and rapid transition. As Fawcett, Featherstone, and Goddard (2004) point out, the Labour Government has embarked on a clear interventionist agenda based on the principle of the social investment state. As can be seen by the title to the influential Green Paper "Every Child Matters", this approach supports strategies that invest in all children and that move away from the segregationary and more traditionally orientated concept of "children in need" (Frost, 2005). As such there are obvious benefits. However, as the authors of articles featured in this edition of Child Care in Practice variously indicate, a highly interventionist outcome-orientated framework can result in regulatory processes where targeting slides into a form of intensive scrutiny, which adds to the pressures being faced by those already experiencing the sting in the tail of welfare to work reforms.

Practitioners working within this rapidly changing policy framework can struggle to operate proactively rather than reactively and to manage the competing demands and pressures placed upon them. In this edition of Child Care in Practice, emphasis is place on a range of strategies to enable practitioners to operate in a user-orientated, strengths-based, sensitive and supportive manner while also managing the targets, performance indicators and measurement criteria required by current childcare policies.

International perspectives have a wide-ranging utility as practitioners and policymakers, by looking at research and practice elsewhere, can formulate utilizable ideas, can identify possible benefits and pitfalls, and can determine what is transferable and what is not. The first three articles in this edition provide a valuable international perspective and focus on findings from a range of research projects. Greenspan, from the USA, reappraises Baumrind's typology of parenting and, drawing from the findings of a small-scale research study, proposes a model that incorporates tolerance and autonomy promotion. Greenspan argues that "harmonious" parenting is preferable to "authoritative" parenting as a basis for a normative theory for advising parents on matters relating to child discipline. Halme, Tarkka, Nummi and Astedt-Kurki from Finland explore the effect of parenting stress on the availability and engagement of fathers with their children. Their study indicates that fathering stress is closely associated with the extent of the father's commitment to parenthood and that increasing stress can result in a cycle of alcohol use, which in turn limits both direct and indirect contact. Teggart and Linden investigate service users' and carers' views of Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHS) services in Northern Ireland. Their findings show that while the majority of users and carers appear to value CAMHS services overall, major areas for development are highlighted. These include increasing capacity at all service tier levels, developing collaborative models of practice, increasing public knowledge about CAMHS and establishing meaningful structures for increasing user participation in the planning and monitoring of CAMHS services.

The final three articles concentrate on issues relating to Family Support Services. Dolan, Canavan and Brady look at an approach to Family Support training that aims to enhance the practical, critically reflective and conceptual skills of individual workers, while also contributing to the advancement of family support research, policy and practice in Ireland. This is discussed in the context of a Higher Diploma/ Master Degree in Family Support where students are encouraged to complete and analyse a demonstration practice task in their own workplace. This ensures that the task is relevant and also enables students to enhance their analytically orientated research skills. Forde and Devaney present a "postvention" model of responding to the needs of families within a community following the aftermath of a tragic event, which includes suicide. They evaluate the strengths and limitations of this model, emphasizing the importance of keying into existing coping strategies and support networks while making it clear that no model can be seen to have a universal utility. Prendiville provides a retrospective critical analysis of family support in practice in the arena of childcare. Emphasis is placed on eco-systemic theory and on the necessity of employing a whole child perspective. Prendiville also highlights the importance of viewing parents as active partners and ensuring that attention is fully paid to the context in which parents are rearing their children. She further emphasizes the need for practitioners to continually evaluate and critically reflect on their practice and to both fully recognize and to respond to power imbalances and communication issues.

In the United Kingdom overall, the Labour Government has embarked on a highly publicized modernizing agenda. This is about "joined up" services, preventative programmes and putting money into key "investment" initiatives such as Sure Start. However, it is also an agenda that has the potential to simplify, standardize and ignore what appear to be awkward contradictions (such as the obvious one between service user involvement and centralized output measures) and to apply a surface gloss to relational power imbalances at interagency and service user and agency levels. The collection of articles in this edition of the journal looks at how practitioners can use research findings, evolving practice models, evaluation and critical reflection to not only operate at the interface of theory, policy and practice, but to manage the many demands and contradictions that confront them on a daily basis-and, perhaps most significantly of all, to enhance professional confidence and credibility.

References
Fawcett, B., Featherstone, B., & Goddard, 1. (2004). Contemporary childcare policy and practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Frost, N. (2005). The Child Welfare System in the UK. Seminar presented at the University of Sydney, 15 December.