The Voluntary Projects

Abstract

The review of the development of prevention in child care has shown that the voluntary agencies moved from having little interest to the position of being amongst its foremost supporters. Indeed, in the last chapter, attention was drawn to a policy statement by the National Council of Voluntary Child Care Organisations which not only gave priority to enabling families to stay together but also embraced the wider concept of prevention, which wanted to stop children experiencing social disadvantages, abuse and neglect in their homes. But how did this work out in practice? There was little detailed evidence on the matter, so in 1985 the Children’s Society released me part-time to study the preventative work of ten of its projects. This chapter will thus differ from the rest of the book in that it presents the findings of a particular study.