Introduction

Abstract

Children’s lives are to a considerable extent shaped by social policy. They are among the principal recipients of welfare services, and their experience in areas such as housing, health and education will do much to determine not only their present well-being but also their future life chances. Yet they make only shadowy appearances at best in most of the social policy literature. In the early 1980s it was suggested that:

Children have been the companions of women in the closet of political science. A few short years ago women began to set up such a clamour that a few were released … Children remain, with few exceptions, both silent and invisible. (J. Elshtain, 1982)