Abstract
In January 2006, Tony Blair promised to step up his government’s plan to tackle antisocial behaviour through the so-called ‘Respect Action Plan’. The plan promised to increase measures available to deal with ‘low level crime’ and to provide greater means of treating ‘problem families’, identified as the main cause of disorder in under-privileged areas. Parenting programmes represented a crucial aspect of the plan. They foresaw compulsory education schemes for parents of ‘out of control’ children, including residential parenting centres. Experimental residential centres are already run in a few areas of the country, targeting families already homeless or about to lose their home. Their main aims are to teach parents how to manage their home, maintain a routine and keep control of their children. Stress is put on families’ commitment to pay bills and maintenance costs, as well as to attend courses in good parenting, including healthy eating, housework and literacy. Most importantly, parents are ‘observed’ in the daily domestic activities carried out within their flats. In presenting the new scheme, Blair described it as an attempt to respond to a new emergency, characterised by a lack of respect in every day interactions. This was not, Blair claimed, an attempt to go back in time, but rather a way of facing a new challenge with innovative instruments of intervention.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
F. Furedi, Therapy Culture. Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age, London and New York, Routledge, 2004, p. 63.
B. Dobson, ‘Children, Crime and the State’, in Golson, B., Lavalette, M. and McKechnie, J. (eds), Children, Welfare and the State, London, Sage, 2004 (first published, 2002), pp. 120–121.
P. Aries, Centuries of Childhood, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1962
H. Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Societies since 1500, London, Longman, 1995.
In particular H. Hendrick, Child Welfare: England 1872–1989, London, Routledge, 1994.
L. Rendel, ‘The Administrative Framework’, Children Without Homes, Proceedings of a Conference called in London by the Women’s Group on Public Welfare, 8–9 February 1945, London, The National Council of Social Service, 1945, p. 2.
M. King, ‘Welfare and Justice’, in M. King (ed.), Childhood, Welfare and Justice. A critical examination of children in the legal and childcare systems, London, Batsford Academic and Educational, 1981, pp. 109–110.
J. Heywood, Children in Care. The Development of the Service for the Deprived Child, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978, pp. 148–149
N. Middleton, When Family Failed. The Treatment of Children in the Care of the Community During the First Half of the Twentieth Century, London, Victor Gollancz, 1971, p. 18.
M. Lancellotti Mari, ‘Breve studio su alcuni concetti di ordine etico e giuridico’, in Relazione della Commissione Speciale per un’Indagine sulle Condizioni dell’Infanzia nella Provincia di Milano, Milano, Giuffré, 1955, p. 142.
According to an inquiry conducted in 1954, only 5 per cent of the institutions operating in Italy (for children and adults as well) were run by the state or local government, AAI, Guida Nazionale degli Istituti di Assistenza con Ricovero, Roma, Stabilimento Tipografico Fausto Failli, 1954, p. vii.
A. Napoli, MI, 1, January–February (1948), pp. 25–26 and Ibid., 4, July–August (1948), pp. 201–202. Napoli was the chairman of the Association of the ONMI’s Federation of Catanzaro in Southern Italy.
A. Vigorelli, ‘Orfanotrofi’, MI, 3, May–June (1948), p. 135.
I. Pini, ‘Duecentomila bambini negli Istituti Italiani per l’Infanzia’, MI, 2, March–April (1951), p. 8.
Camera dei Deputati, Atti della Commissione Parlamentare d’Inchiesta sulla Miseria in Italia e sui Mezzi per Combatterla, Roma, 1953, Vol. III, pp. 28–29.
LAs — under the supervision of the Ministry of Health — were responsible for ‘Poor law cases’ and for the supervision of children under nine fostered for rewards or placed for adoption ‘by private persons’. Welfare authorities’ child protection visitors inspected institutions receiving children under nine years of age ‘for rewards’, while the HO held responsibility over children sent to ‘approved schools’ for remedial training or placed in ‘remand homes’ awaiting a Court’s decision. No public authority was responsible for children over nine and for those placed without rewards, and no powers of inspection existed in the case of homes not receiving public contributions and not dealing with Poor Law cases, Report of the Care of Children Committee, London, HMSO, 1946, Cmd. 6922, para. 95–99, pp. 24–27;also, Heywood, Children in Care, pp. 143–144. Similar points were made for Scotland by the Clyde Committee, Report of the Committee on Homeless Children, Edinburgh, HMSO, 1946, Cmd. 6911, para. 13, pp. 31–33.
J. Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health, Geneva, WHO, 1951
H. Lewis, Deprived Children. The Mersham Experiment. A social and clinical study, Oxford, The Nuffield Foundation/Oxford University Press, 1954, pp. 128–134
O. Stevenson ‘Reception into Care — its Meaning for all Concerned’, (1963), in R. J. N. Tod (ed.), Children in Care. Papers on Residential Work, London, Longman, 1976 (first published, 1968), pp. 8–17.
Among the others, R. Lowe, The Welfare State in Britain Since 1945, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1999 (first published, 1993), p. 263 and Hendrick, Child Welfare in England, p. 219.
B. Holman, Putting Families First. Prevention and Child Care, London, Macmillan, 1988, pp. 35–36.
Hansard, House of Commons, Standing Committees, session 1947–1948, Vol. III, coll. 10–18, also R. Parker, ‘The Gestation of Reform: the Children Act 1948’, in P. Bean and S. MacPherson (eds), Approaches to Welfare, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, p. 202.
J. Stroud, An Introduction to the Child Care Service, London, Longmans, 1965, p. 11.
N. Frost and M. Stein, The Politics of Child Welfare. Inequality, Power and Change, London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989, p. 33.
M. Allen and M. Nicholson, Memoirs of an Uneducated Lady. Lady Allen of Hurtwood, London, Thames and Hudson, 1975, Chapters 7–12 in particular.
Children Society’s Archive (from now on CSA), Annual Report for 1944, Report of the Executive Committee for the year ended 31 December 1944, p. 2.
A. F. Philp and N. Timms, The Problem of the ‘Problem Family’. A critical review of the literature concerning the ‘problem family’ and its treatment, London, Family Service Units, 1957, p. vii.
A. F. Philp, Family Failure. A study of 129 Families with Multiple Problems, London, Faber and Faber, 1963, pp. 288–289
T. Stephens (ed.), Problem Families: An Experiment in Social Rehabilitation, Pacifist Service Units, Liverpool, 1947.
P. Starkey, Families and Social Workers. The work of the Family service Units, 1940–1985, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2000, pp. 32, 45.
M. D. Sheridan, ‘The Intelligence of 100 Neglectful Mothers’, BMJ, 14 January 1956, p. 91. Follow up studies showed that improvement had occurred in the majority of cases, but also that this had revealed more difficult in the case of women of higher intelligence and greater emotional instability.
G. Savalli, ‘Maternità e lavoro’, MI, xix, 1, September-October (1947), pp. 35–37.
L. D. Veronese, ‘Bambini mendicanti’, MI, xxii, 1, January–February (1950), p. 14.
S. Barbano. ‘Occorre rivedere il metodo’, MI, 9 (1953), p. 17.
The Report on the Care of Children, para. 141, p. 39. On the lasting inheritance left by 19th century approach to the organisation of children’s institutions, S. Millham, R. Bullock and K. Hosie, Locking up Children. Secure provision within the child-care system, Westmead, Saxon House, 1978, p. 17.
For instance, K. Wood, The Story of St. Mary’s Cold Ash, Child Care Study Paper n. 7, London, Church of England Children’s Society, 1981, pp. 10–11.
On the situation of playing facilities in children’s homes, E. Ingram, ‘Play and Leisure Time in the Children’s Home’, Case Conference, Vol. 7, January 1961, in Tod (ed.), Children in Care, pp. 40–54.
M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, London, Allen Lane, 1977 (originally published, 1975), pp. 149–156.
See, for instance, M. N. Bloch, ‘Becoming scientific and professional: historical perspectives on the aims and effects of early education and child care’ in Popkewitz, T. S. (ed.), The Formation of School Subjects: The Struggle for Creating an American Institution, New York, Philadelphia and London, Falmer Press, 2000, pp. 25–62.
For a discussion of conditionality in relation to citizenship and welfare, P. Dwyer, Welfare, Rights and Responsibilities: contesting social citizenship, Bristol, the policy press, 2000, pp. 4–5, 129–169.
G. Lewis, ‘Coming Apart at the Seams: The Crises of the Welfare State’, in G. Hughes and G. Lewis (eds), Unsettling Welfare: the Reconstruction of Social Policy, London, Routledge, 1998, pp. 39–80.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2007 Stefania Bernini
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bernini, S. (2007). The Edges of the Family: State, Citizens and the ‘Children deprived of a normal home life’. In: Family Life and Individual Welfare in Post-war Europe. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287389_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287389_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-54178-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28738-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)