The Children’s Departments and Prevention

Abstract

In the later 1930s responsibility for deprived children was fragmented between a number of government and local-authority departments — none of whom saw it as their prime responsibility — and voluntary bodies. The Poor Law still wielded an influence over the treatment of children. Preventative work hardly existed. In 1948 legislation created children’s departments as the local-authority organisations with the sole function of looking after children deprived of a normal home life. In the same year the Poor Law was wiped from the statute book. In 1963 further legislation placed both powers and duties upon the children’s departments to undertake prevention. This chapter will be concerned to render an account of how these changes occurred and how prevention was implemented by the children’s departments.