Epilogue

Abstract

Abstract The epilogue brings together the implications from previous chapters for understanding broader histories of child welfare and for contemporary care practices. Faced with burgeoning questions today about the duty of care and protection of children in England and Wales, driven by recent inquiries, the epilogue ties together historical and contemporary knowledge about the type of care that children need. In doing so, the epilogue demonstrates how embedded and of pervasive importance notions of home and family have been in such debates since the mid-nineteenth century, while also drawing attention to how such institutions and their roles have come to be understood. Finally, in highlighting an alternative way of thinking about and evaluating experience within children’s institutions that moves away from practices of reform and discipline, the epilogue proposes several new directions for the study of childhood, welfare, and children’s care in the past and in the present.