| Abstract: | Summary The personal social services did not receive a statutory mandateto undertake preventive work with deprived children until 1963.This paper looks at the history of child care services in thenineteenth and twentieth centuries to find some explanationsfor the delay in promoting prevention. The two major child caresystems during the Victorian era were the Poor Law and the voluntarychildren's societies. In terms of methods of care and philosophy,the two are often held as contrasts. But, in terms of wishingto rescue children from evil parents and of changing their charactersby educating them while completely removed from their naturalfamilies, they had much in common. Thus, both state and voluntaryservices exerted a strong force opposed to policies of helpingnatural parents to cope with their own or of rehabilitatingthem. Changing social and political conditions in the earlypart of the twentieth century appeared to give the prospectof different practices. However, these failed to emerge andsome explanations are put forward with particular referenceto the survival of the Poor Law and the stagnation of the voluntarybodies. Finally, an analysis is made of what steps had to betaken at the end of the 1930s if prevention was to become apart of the social services. |
