Search Results

Wartime publicity frequently described Britain as a family and later images of the Blitz also stress the courage and endurance of families as a key institution that enabled the nation to surmount the crisis. While acknowledging positive representations of family, this chapter examines the equally widespread alarm among government officials, journalists and social work groups about wartime dislocation of family life—as measured by rising statistics for divorce, delinquency and illegitimacy, press stories about ‘good time girls’, and claims that sexual immorality was a pervasive problem. The chapter argues that to a striking degree these anxieties centred upon women from poor and working-class families. Family became a point of intersection for a range of public debates about child welfare, crime, sexual morality, and eugenic concerns about the nation's low birth rate—all of which shaped debates both about post-war reconstruction and social welfare reform.

Barbara Kahan spent a long time in the world of child welfare. Her professional lifespan coincided with many major developments for disadvantaged and deprived children. As a local authority practitioner, senior civil servant, writer, and campaigner, Kahan was always at the forefront. She won a state scholarship to the University of Cambridge in 1939, a development that changed her life. In 1943, Kahan was assigned as a government inspector of factories in the Midlands. From newspapers, she learnt about the campaign of Lady Allen of Hurtwood to improve the lives of deprived children. Kahan read and wept over the Curtis Report. She was determined to work among such children and applied for the newly created post of children's officer for Dudley. By the late 1960s, Kahan was a national figure within child-care circles. She played important roles in a committee chaired by Frederic Seebohm to consider what changes were necessary to ensure an effective family service, and in the passage of the Local Authority Social Services Act of 1970.

Despite the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and supporting international and regional instruments on the rights of children in detention, children around the world are frequently deprived of their rights. Global concerns include poor conditions of detention, the experience of violence and ill-treatment, poor education, healthcare and family contact and the absence of effective complaints and oversight mechanisms. These have recently been documented in the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty which illustrates that there are significant gaps between children’s rights standards and children’s lived experiences of their rights in detention. Drawing on the work of international human rights bodies, advocacy groups, and academic literature, a number of global concerns are identified including the use of solitary confinement, the absence of specialist approaches and effective monitoring, and the disproportionate impact of race. National and international campaigns for reform, including drawing on the experiences of children themselves, have supported more progressive approaches to children deprived of liberty. More ambitious and transformative system change is required to ensure genuine alignment with the international children’s rights standards.