The Public Care System — I

Abstract

This chapter (and chapter 8 which deals with emergency protection) investigate the question of compulsory intervention into family, the ways this can be done and the limits on such coercion. In the past child care legislation was designed primarily to control delinquents, not to protect children from abuse and neglect (Dingwall et al., 1984). A concern with the latter has occurred all too rarely. It should not be forgotten that child abuse was only rediscovered in the 1960s and that as recently as 1980 a DHSS Circular on registers did not recognise the existence of sexual abuse. The phenomenon of organised abuse (Tate, 1991) is only just now beginning to be recognised as a social problem (the new edition of Working Together, 1991, para. 5.26 gives official guidance on it for the first time).¹