Child abuse is not a recent phenomenon. The mistreatment of children – including infanticide, abandonment, severe physical punishment, prostitution and hard labour – has been recorded throughout history. While there is evidence to suggest that there has always been some degree of public and state concern over cruelty to children (Corby et al, 2012), this issue really only began to be recognised as a major social problem during the late 19th century. Philanthropic organisations in Britain and Ireland, most notably the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), were set up to meet the needs of poorer children and campaign for legislation outlawing child cruelty . By 1908, the main components of child protection law that exist today were in place (Corby et al, 2012). Indeed, in Ireland, the Children Act 1908 provided the main legal framework for child care for over 80 years. The physical abuse of children was ‘rediscovered’ during the 1960s when Henry Kempe and his colleagues published groundbreaking work on ‘the battered child syndrome’ – a clinical condition in young children who had received serious physical abuse, generally from a parent (Kempe et al, 1962). Their work had a significant impact on the development of child protection policy and practice in the United States, Britain and Ireland. However, public awareness of the issue remained minimal until a series of high profile cases – such as the Maria Cowell case in the UK – catapulted this issue to the top of the political agenda. Professional and public concern over the problem of child sexual abuse developed more slowly, emerging as a serious problem in the 1970s (in the USA), 1980s (in Britain) and 1990s (in Ireland). During the 1990s there was also a shift in emphasis from intra- to extrafamilial abuse, particularly within institutional settings, including residential homes and schools. In Britain, a number of high profile child murder cases (notably that of Sarah Payne in 2000) also received huge media coverage, fuelling public concerns over ‘stranger danger’.

The transformation of child welfare and protection from a marginal to a central issue of public concern and policy-making is nowhere more evident than in Ireland.