The policies, practices and disputes that have surrounded the development of foster care go back a long way. An appreciation of that history helps to place current issues in a broader context than is commonly the case. Here, we begin at 1870 and continue the account up to about 1980, albeit only for England and Wales. These years witnessed changes in both the pattern of foster care and in the assumptions that have been made about it. At the same time much remains familiar; for example, the quest for appropriate foster parents, what best to do by way of supervision and support, questions about which children should be placed in which homes and what purpose the placement is intended to serve.

It will also be apparent that there has been a longstanding inter-relationship between foster care and residential care, with each affecting the evolution of the other. Furthermore, of course, foster care in the public sector has not stood alone. Several of the voluntary societies had boarded-out about a quarter of the children in their care by the end of the Victorian period. By contrast the private sphere of foster care has been informal and unorganised but is now moving to a more commercial footing. This has had, and will continue to have, a significant bearing upon foster care in the public arena, an issue that will be explored further in the final chapter. Likewise, the different history of foster care in Scotland warrants a separate examination although it will be touched upon in what follows.

I Boarding-out and the Poor Law in the nineteenth century

Little attention was paid to boarding-out as a method of providing for poor law children in England and Wales until the 1860s when the number of them under the age of 16 in poor law institutions rose steadily from some 43,000 at the beginning of the decade until, by 1869, it had reached an unprecedented peak of 58,000. The extra numbers, together with the growing insistence that children should be kept separate from adult paupers, confronted many boards of guardians with the prospect of having to embark upon new building programmes. Boarding-out began to find favour as a less expensive option.

Having read Judith Niechcial's biography of Lucy Faithfull I became curious about others of her generation who also entered the reconstructed children's services at a senior level in the wake of the Children Act 1948. The new children's officers whom the local authorities were obliged to appoint, together with their committees, were expected to implement the substantial reforms that the Act required. How did they get started and what difficulties did they have to confront? What qualities did they require and how successful were they? Are there still conclusions to be drawn about such reforms that are useful in today's world of regular administrative upheavals?

Of course, Lucy Faithfull (later Baroness Faithfull) was not one of these initial appointees but she was, at the time, one of the Home Office inspectors who, with their colleagues, endeavoured to oversee and guide what was happening at the local level. However, she did move to become the children's officer for Oxford city in 1958. In tracing her career Niechcial has provided us with a window onto the broad sweep of events that unfolded in the children's service after 1948 and, indeed, up to Lucy's death in 1996.

I A starting point

The Children Act 1948 established separate children's committees in all county councils and county borough councils in Great Britain. These were to be responsible for a more integrated service for children in need of care and for a service that was to raise the standard of the care that was provided. Children's officers were to be appointed to see these reforms realised and were to have no other responsibilities. We shall come to the question of how standards were to be raised later, but first it is important to appreciate the scale of the integration that was put in train because it was this that presented the children's officers with their initial practical and political challenges.

Before 1948 the public care of children deprived of a normal home life was divided locally between the public assistance committees, education and public health departments. The first of these was responsible for administering the poor law, one part of which concerned the ‘relief’ of children through their admission to care on a voluntary basis, although it was possible, in certain circumstances, for the local authority to assume the rights and duties of parents.

It's hard to say how the children's services might develop in the future, particularly the more distant future. New problems will arise, different policies will emerge and social trends may take us by surprise. Despite welcome advances in our understanding and in the amount of data that is available, prediction still remains hazardous. Nevertheless, there are several ways in which we can anticipate what may lie ahead, at least in the fairly short term.

One way is to see what significant changes are already discernible and then to consider how they might develop and what new issues that might provoke. The use of private for-profit children's services by local authorities is one such an example. An examination of statistical trends may offer another way of looking into the future of the children's services. There are numerous examples, but three offer useful illustrations as well as being important in their own right: children's ethnic origins, their disabilities and their gender. Yet another way of considering how the children's services may develop is to consider whether certain longstanding problems may be able to be moderated, problems such as how best to prevent the grave misfortunes that befall too many children. Each of these approaches is explored in what follows.

I The private provision of services

The rapid increase in local authority commissioning of private for-profit children's services in the last two decades was discussed in Chapter 7. Nevertheless, a brief recapitulation of the salient points will serve to introduce a consideration of the issues that are evident now and of others that may arise.

Foster care

Before 2001 statistics about private foster care related to the informal and unorganised service that was provided for parents who were unable to look after their children themselves. Those who took in children on this basis and were paid were required to notify the local authority and were then subject to inspection. In England in 2012 there were 1,780 such ‘notifications’. However, 2002 saw the publication of an additional set of statistics that recorded the number of children who were looked after by local authorities but who were living in foster homes arranged and supervised by ‘independent agencies’, mainly private for-profit but also voluntary.

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.

Relevant and reliable research should inform both policy and practice. Nevertheless, the use of evidence remains decidedly patchy: serious obstacles remain that arise from the nature of the evidence at issue, from the unavoidable need for judgement, from the underlying values involved and, finally, from the vicissitudes of ‘political will’.

I Evidence

How confident should we be in what research concludes? Rather crudely one might begin by identifying three levels: evidence that is fairly conclusive, evidence that is indicative and evidence that is tentative. Of course, all kinds of scales can be used to make such distinctions. Quite simple devices could serve reasonably well. However, the problem is that the evidence is never complete. It is never wholly satisfactory; there are always deficiencies and there are always gaps.

Nonetheless, there is at least one test that can be applied: that of convergence. Do the results in question confirm the conclusions of other similar studies? Indeed, are there comparable studies against which they can be assessed? Furthermore, has this or that study been designed and reported in such a way that it could be replicated? If one looks back to Bowlby's influential report to the World Health Organisation on maternal deprivation in the early 1950s one sees that not only was he drawing upon his own research but upon other studies that went back to the 1920s. Most of that research pointed in the same direction as his, and that was partly the reason why his report made the impact that it did. My early research on foster care provides another example. One of the most important findings (as explained in Chapter 3) was that foster homes where there were ‘own’ children of about the same age as the placed child were significantly more likely than others to disrupt. Indeed, that one single factor – the presence or absence of own children around the same age – accounted for a large proportion of the variation between those placements that were successful and those that were not. Somewhat earlier, Trasler had arrived at a similar conclusion from his study, and many of those that followed produced the same finding.

There is such a variety of inquiries (together with reviews, inquests, tribunals and inspectors’ reports) that they do not lend themselves to easy generalisation. However, for the most part they are political instruments. They may be set up to advance particular policies, as a defence against unwanted pressure, as an expedient response to a public outcry, to sound out influential opinion prior to the introduction of a new policy or new legislation, to establish the facts of a disturbing case or to challenge prevailing assumptions: and so the list could be continued. Thus, although inquiries share a political character their functions are varied; and a single inquiry may well serve several purposes, not least because the interested parties seek different outcomes.

If one accepts that inquiries are essentially political (in the broadest sense) then it becomes important to appreciate why they are initiated, by whom, the timing, the form that they take, the interests that are reflected in their deliberations, the consequences of the conclusions that are reached and, of course, the relationship between these various matters. Let us consider a few features of each, having in mind their frequency in the field of child welfare.

I Variety, scope and classification

The initiation of an inquiry usually follows an event, often one that is vivid enough (or is made vivid enough) to speak for similar issues. Nevertheless, those events can be of two kinds: the general and the particular. The general might be exemplified by the health select committee's inquiry into the welfare of former British child migrants that reported in 1997 or by the royal commission on the funding of long-term care for the elderly that reported two years later. Just when and how such concerns gain enough momentum to prompt an inquiry is, of course, of considerable significance; but two factors are noteworthy. One is the availability of statistical evidence, especially about trends that show a worsening situation. The other is the role played by interest groups, and sometimes by research, in creating a sufficient groundswell of disquiet to make a political response necessary.

The three Children Acts of 1908, 1948 and 1989 each reflected the times in which they were enacted. Sometimes, as in 1908, politicians spoke of ‘a propitious moment’ or, as in 1989, of recent years having offered ‘an historic opportunity’ to reform child care law. What was it, therefore, in these instances, and in 1948, that created the climate in which it was judged both necessary and opportune to introduce these major legislative reforms?

I The ‘Children's Charter’ 1908

Although the Liberal Party had won a landslide victory in the election of January 1906 it is doubtful whether they came to power with a clearly formulated programme of social reform. However, sufficient measures followed, such as the Children Act of 1908 and the Old Age Pensions Act in the same year, for their administration often to be credited with creating the foundations of a welfare state. Yet the reasons for this departure are complex. Some lay within the Party where those such as Churchill and Lloyd George were keen to advance the cause of social reform. Some lay in what has been termed ‘the pressure from below’; that is, in a fear of the possible repercussions of working-class discontent and in the election of 29 Labour MPs in 1906. Even so, there was a more pervasive influence that encouraged social reform; namely, a growing concern about the decline of British power in the world.

The British Empire, seemingly so secure in the past, now looked under threat from the military and imperial aspirations of other European powers, especially Germany. Supremacy could no longer be taken for granted, a fact that had been starkly illustrated by the army's deficiencies in the Boer War (1899–1902). In future much was considered to depend upon improving the efficiency of the armed forces. Yet compelling evidence emerged of the unfitness of potential recruits. A large number of young men, not long out of school, were being rejected on medical grounds. An article written by a Major General in the Contemporary Review in 1902 put the proportion at 60%. A year later the Director of the Army Medical Service, although questioning the exact proportion, nevertheless drew a similar conclusion. The implications were clear. If the problem were to be remedied then the health of the rising generation had to be improved; and this conviction merged with growing support for the eugenics movement in influential circles and for the ideas of those who promoted the case for ‘national regeneration’.

As explained in the preface, this chapter is my view of the state of the child care services in 1984. It has not been brought up to date and the use of the present tense refers to that time. This was deliberate because, standing largely as written, it provides an historical benchmark. It focuses mainly on what questions needed to be addressed in order to improve the standard of these services. In the light of subsequent events the reader might like to judge the accuracy of my analysis as well as the kind of progress that has been made since, perhaps with the help of subsequent chapters.

Our child care system has been shaped and sustained by powerful and persistent perceptions. These images have become so much a part of the way in which questions of policy and practice are approached that they generally pass unnoticed. Even when they are recognised they tend to be taken for granted. That is not surprising, for some of these images trace their origins back at least as far as the spate of child and family legislation of the 1880s. Yet we have reached a point where a reconsideration of these dominant perceptions is needed if improvements are to be made. Admittedly, many issues are being reassessed and important new developments are being introduced. But the framework of perceptions within which they occur remains much as it always has been; and that constrains the scope for imaginative reform. It is also liable to distort the way in which problems are defined. Both constraints and distortions arise because the conventional perspectives of child care are: (1) narrow, (2) undifferentiated, (3) static and (4) imitative.

I Narrowness

The debate about child care usually revolves around children for whom local authorities are more or less responsible. They owe their separate enumeration to the existence of the legal and administrative categories into which they fall. The problems that face these children and their families then come to be seen as of a different order (rather than of a different degree) from those that face many others as well. As a result policies are rarely located in the wider context of family and child policy. This becomes a hindrance to the energetic pursuit of prevention, integration and the alleviation of some of the serious disadvantages to which children are exposed.

This opening chapter sets the scene for what is to follow. It does not offer a detailed introduction but it does identify some of the issues that subsequent chapters address. In that respect it is intended to whet the readers’ appetites, encouraging them to read on. Several themes reappear. There is the importance of appreciating the historical background of current issues. Another is the significance of the political and economic contexts within which children's services have evolved. A third is the need to understand how and why the problems in these services arise, rather than simply describing them and attributing blame or approbation. One further theme is the complicated inter-play of evidence, constraints, values and judgement that makes safeguarding vulnerable children and responding to troubled and troublesome adolescents such a demanding responsibility. However, we begin with an emphasis upon change and continuity.

I Legislation

Major legislation is commonly taken to reflect important shifts in the climate of opinion, in public concern or in realignments within the political system. In the children's field it is also often regarded as evidence of greater enlightenment and of an abandonment of what has been found to be unsatisfactory. This view tends to be strengthened because it is unusual for substantial controversy to arise during the passage of children's bills through Parliament, although particular clauses may be hotly contested. Of course, much will have led to a government's decision to introduce a new measure. Indeed, almost all legislation is the culmination of political processes that have been shaped by many forces, often in combination. They will have included the emergence of new information, new theories, new technology, scandal, shifts in economic conditions and in prevailing beliefs and ideologies, including those within the governing party. Yet in order for them to result in significant legislation they need to be orchestrated and politicised. Sometimes governments will take the initiative; at other times campaigning groups will be driving matters forward.

Against such a background a number of assumptions are liable to be made. One is that major reforming legislation represents a break with the past. However, there are several qualifications to be made. In the first place no children act has been comprehensive.

In Britain the Victorian era witnessed a remarkable proliferation of institutions. There were new workhouses, prisons, hospitals, lunatic asylums and barracks. Boarding schools were built for the children of the middle and upper classes and reformatories, industrial schools, refuges and homes for those of the poor. Despite recurrent bouts of economic depression, it was an age of construction that was closely associated with the development of the cities, of factory-based industry, of the railways, canals and docks. Public buildings, from baths to museums, multiplied as local government gradually acquired enlarged responsibilities, more resources and a sense of civic pride, typically captured by the many magnificent town halls that were built in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Building labour was cheap and, apart from the central areas of the main cities, so was land. The domestic brick industry was rapidly expanding and new techniques, for example in the production of cement, did away with many of the former cumbersome and time-consuming processes of construction. However, the quality of building varied. Housing for the swelling ranks of the urban working class was built down to a low standard. By contrast, homes for the wealthy and grand edifices for corporate bodies were often of the highest quality and meant to last. There were, for example, the great railway stations that, like other such monuments, proclaimed the stability, reliability and economic prosperity of their owners. They were symbols of assertive self-confidence.

I The Poor Law influence

The multiplication of institutions for children from about the 1860s onward has to be seen against a backcloth of this history of building and building costs. Yet this alone does not explain the widespread and enduring conviction among many of those of influence that the institution was an appropriate remedy for a wide assortment of social ills. Nor are they sufficient to account for the deep repugnance with which a broad sector of the population viewed the prospect of having to be admitted to an institution. Other factors have to be added, prominent among which is the nature of the English Poor Law that survived, in one shape or another, until 1948.