Child Welfare is the first comprehensive text on social policy and child welfare. Children are all too often marginalised in accounts of the development of the welfare state, and the manner in which legislation has affected their lives is often ignored. This book provides an integrated study of children and social policy in England since the 1870s.

Harry Hendrick provides a full narrative of the history of child welfare, moving through the numerous reform campaigns and legislative Acts concerning, amongst other issues, infant life protection, sexuality, child guidance, medical treatment, nutrition, juvenile delinquency, adoption and 'children in need'. On another level, the book looks at the attitudes of the policy-makers towards children from within an interpretive framework of the socio-medical and the legal.

This raises questions about the nature of age relations and the extent to which children have been exploited by adults for social, economic and political ends. Hendrick reveals the way in which children have been viewed as threats to, as well as victims of, the society in which they lived, and considers the consequences of various policies for child welfare

1. Child Welfare will appeal to undergraduate students of history, social policy, education and welfare law. It will also be a useful reference work for lecturers and postgraduates.