The subject of these essays should not need to be explained, but it does. For many years that subject was called ‘the child care services’ or, more often, just ‘child care’. It covered those provisions that were made for the care and protection of children whose parents were unable to look after them or who were judged unfit to do so. Those who were familiar with these services understood what ‘child care’ meant; but for others there was some confusion. Did it include day care and nursery schools? And what about childminders? Or grandparents who looked after their grandchildren? In any case, caring for children was what parents did, wasn't it? Further complications arose from the use of the overlapping but more comprehensive term ‘child welfare’.

Within the last decade, however, what were referred to as the child care services have come to be called the ‘children's services’, partly as a result of the Children Act 2004 which, among other things, required directors of children's services to be appointed to be responsible for the education as well as the child care functions of local authorities. Put simply then, these essays are about what are now called the children's services but also about what was called child care. Hence the reader will find both terms being used, but in their appropriate historical settings.

More specifically, the essays are about the political economy within which these services have been and are located. By ‘political economy’ I mean the political and economic influences to which they have been exposed and which have formed the contexts within which they have evolved. It follows that the thrust of the essays is towards an historical appreciation of how and why policies and services for some of society's most vulnerable children assumed the character that they have and, indeed, how both the problems and remedies came to be seen at different times. However, as the book's title implies it is not solely devoted to accounting for the changes and developments that have occurred. It also identifies and explains some of the persistent continuities.

Some of the chapters that follow have been published earlier, although in most cases what appears has been substantially revised and enlarged. Other chapters are published for the first time.