This survey-based research explores data from a diverse range of 54 professionals involved in collaborative team working to support children with specific needs. The survey investigated the individual's perception of their own role, and the interactions within the team. The survey collected some quantitative data, such as age and length of time in…

In May 2012, nine men from Rochdale were convicted and jailed for grooming girls with alcohol, drugs and gifts before forcing them to have sex with multiple men. Following the case in Rochdale similar cases of grooming and sexual abuse/exploitation of young girls came to light in various towns and cities across the UK. In 2017, the BBC aired the…

This article analyses child development "as text" to highlight newly emerging contemporary tropes of northern, normalized childhoods in relation to gender, racialization and familial organization. A recent UK marketing campaign for the washing powder Persil is analysed for the ways it mobilizes discourses of childhood and child rights.…

Within developed countries child poverty is a social problem with significant negative effects. With a backdrop of austerity, the UK's first child poverty strategy was released in 2011. Pervaded by neo-liberal ideology this strategy identifies preschool services as key to remediating the negative effects of child poverty on children and families…

It is widely acknowledged that, across the United Kingdom and the USA, childcare practitioners often struggle with cases of child neglect, because of the difficulties involved in attempting to define the problem at hand, and balancing these cases with others in the caseload that may appear more pressing, such as physical abuse. Consequently, in an…

This paper reviews different perspectives of the changing nature of childhood, comparing these to state responses that seek to improve children's well-being. Unlike previous generations of children, children today spend much of their time under cover and under the watchful eyes of adults. It is likely that this change has had a negative impact on…

The adoption into the UK of children who have been reared in severely deprived conditions provides an opportunity to study possible association between very early negative experiences and subsequent brain development. This cross-sectional study was a pilot for a planned larger study quantifying the effects of early deprivation on later brain…

Drawing on imagery from promotional literature produced between 1930 and 1960 by the National Children's Home, a British child welfare charity, this article focuses upon constructions of childhood and child development in the context of residential care for children. It suggests that photographs and their related captions are rich sources through…

Social enterprise is being increasingly encouraged as a solution to social problems concerning social exclusion, child development and family welfare within both developed and developing countries. This article considers these policy contexts and two case studies of social enterprises that provide children's services in the United Kingdom and…

In a recent report, "Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries," UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre looks at the well-being of children and young people in 21 nations of the industrialized world. The report measures child well-being in six categories: (1) material well-being; (2) health and safety;…

This paper underlines the difficulties of working with looked after children and their carers. The author discusses a particular approach to respond to the complexity of looked after children's emotional difficulties, and their impact on the network of professionals making decisions about their life in care. As their own parents are no longer in a…

Theory of Mind (ToM) and Executive Function (EF) have been associated with autism and with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and hence might play a role in similar syndromes found following profound early institutional deprivation. In order to examine this possibility the current study included a group of 165 Romanian adoptees, of…

The rationale and focus for this paper is a discussion from five perspectives on the issues surrounding childhood freedoms and levels of physical activity. From our different perspectives we argue that beneath these very real and proper concerns that parents have for their children's safety are societal concerns and perceptions concerning the…

Longitudinal analyses on normal versus impaired functioning across 7 domains were conducted in children who had experienced profound institutional deprivation up to the age of 42 months and were adopted from Romania into U.K. families. Comparisons were made with noninstitutionalized children adopted from Romania and with nondeprived within-U.K.…

Cognitive outcomes at age 11 of 131 Romanian adoptees from institutions were compared with 50 U.K. adopted children. Key findings were of both continuity and change: (1) marked adverse effects persisted at age 11 for many of the children who were over 6 months on arrival; (2) there was some catch-up between ages 6 and 11 for the bottom 15%; (3)…