Then the death of five year old Maria Colwell, murdered by her step father in 1973, despite being supposedly under the protection of the local authority, shocked the nation. It seemed the paraphernalia of local protection had failed, but despite the outcry, and the increased weight of responsibility placed on social workers, the death of Maria was followed by further, equally shocking, deaths: Jasmine Beckford, Heidi Kosea, Tyra Henry and others.

Now the media was in full cry after the social workers whose job was to protect these children. Social workers, it was assumed, were falling down on the job, allowing children to be beaten and killed in their own homes.

In the last third of the 20^th century an even more sinister form of abuse was identified as a problem. This time the focus was on child sexual abuse, which many people found so repugnant they could scarcely bear even to think about it. It seemed that once again, the services which had been set up to protect children were failing. It’s possible that child protection services were bounced into over-reacting.

Certainly, there followed three high profile scandals of children being removed by social workers from their homes on suspicion of widespread parental sex abuse in Cleveland (1987), Rochdale and Orkney (both 1990). Parents or other adults were suspected of practices, such as satanic abuse, without conclusive evidence. The public enquiries which followed these cases mired social workers - and medical staff who claimed to have uncovered endemic parental sex abuse - into even deeper suspicion by the public.

Nor did the residential child care services escape from the atmosphere of neglect and corruption. During the last decade of the century, cases relating to activities in Residential Children's Homes during the 1970s saw many former staff members being convicted and imprisoned.

More recently, the profession took another blow with the death of Victoria Climbié. The grotesque suffering of one vulnerable child remained unnoticed by an army of professionals. While John Bradley's children were left home alone because everyone hoped someone else was coping, Victoria Climbié was killed because those who saw her failed to recognise her distress or talk to each other.

Although the history of child support has been marked with terrible, memorable errors and omissions, these shouldn't be allowed to obscure the very real and important gains won both at a national level through the work of reformers, and on an individual level, with countless children's lives touched and improved by the dedicated work of thousands of social workers.

Child protection has gone through many changes over the past century, re-defining its objectives as our understanding of abuse has changed. Now it includes not only neglect, economic exploitation, and cruelty, but emotional, psychological, and sex abuse as well.

So child protection enters the 21^st century with a substantial depth of good – but often painful - experience of welfare and law. It must attract people of integrity, with a love of children and justice, people with wisdom, patience and vision, able and willing to work within the statutory framework. Could you be one of them?

A generation passed before the next piece of legislation, the 1932 Children's and Young Person's Act reminded society that there were children still at risk. The Act's main aim was to establish working conditions for young people leaving school as well as for those still at school and working part-time.

However, it also established the principle of supervision of young people, when outside the family: a responsibility placed firmly in the hands of local authorities, and laid the foundation for modern local authority children's services.

The second half of the 20^th century saw an accelerating rate of change, both in the definition of child abuse, and the growing need for child protection. In the post war years, cruelty remained the criterion of child abuse. The scandal of Dennis O'Neill, a twelve year old boy killed by his foster-father in 1945 led via the Monkton report to the 1948 Children's Act.

Child protection was placed mainly under local authority control, but the NSPCC and other voluntary agencies retained a significant role. A specialist children's service was set up in every local authority nationwide, backed up by specialist child care training. A generation of children's officers presided over local authority services, until reorganisation in the early 1970s brought child care and social services into a generic service with a single form of training. Residential homes were set up and staffed by local authorities.

Once more there was a comfortable feeling that the problem was under control.

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Content last updated: 25/10/2004

About our expert

Barbara Bilston worked for the London Family Welfare Association and later as a medical social worker before moving into social work education, where she taught, amongst other subjects, the History of Social Work. She has worked in the Open University for many years, and for some years was staff tutor for the Diploma in Social Work in the eastern region of the Open University. She now works as consultant for the School of Health and Social Welfare.

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