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The disciplinary practices used by mothers to control their children in four ethnic groups in Australia are compared from a developmental perspective. A vignette approach was used in which each mother was asked to say how she would deal with 12 situations involving her oldest child at 8 years of age and at 4 years of age. The responses were coded as power assertion, love withdrawal, induction, and permissiveness. Twenty mothers of each of the ethnic groups, Geek, Lebanese, Vietamese, and Anglo, from the same socioeconomic level and geographic area were randomly chosen from lists of families that met the criteria for inclusion in the study. The results showed that for all four groups of mothers, power assertion was the most frequently used disciplinary technique. However, power assertion was reported less frequently by the Vietnamese mothers than by mothers from the other ethnic groups. Inductive techniques were relatively more often used with 4-year-old children and mothers were relatively more permissive with 8-year-old children.

With the international trend towards individualised funding packages that allocate funds to individuals to spend on disability support needs, the challenge of ensuring parents can readily access useful information to make decisions becomes paramount. The present research used a two stage, mixed method sequential approach (with 291 parents surveyed and 56 parents participating in focus groups) to determine how parents acquire information to enhance their understanding of their child's disability and determine how to use an individualised funding scheme to benefit their child and family. Parents attested to the importance of person-to-person communication and valued information that originated from other parents of a child with a disability, and from professionals who knew their child. Parents also spoke about the limitations of the internet, noting that reliance on the internet could cause confusion as the validity of information could not be assured. Early childhood intervention services emerged as a key instrument in developing the capacity of families to make informed choices. Understanding families' perspectives on the utility of information sources is critical and timely as policy-makers and service providers within the disability sector shift practice to meet the rise of individualised funding internationally. IntroductionFamily-centred practice has been widely accepted as best practice in the field of early childhood intervention for more than two decades (Espe-Sherwindt, 2008;Fordham, Gibson and Bowes, 2012;Moore, 2010). If parents are to engage genuinely in family-centred practice and make decisions around issues that affect their child and family, then the provision of information is paramount (Gallagher, Smith, Hardy, et al., 2012). Optimising parents' access to useful information not only plays a pivotal role in bolstering family-centred practice, but also has a direct positive impact on both the well-being of families and outcomes for children (Trute, Hiebert-Murphy and Wright, 2008).

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