This quotation, of words given as witness evidence to the Ryan Commission, testifies to the importance of the child's voice or, in this case, its enforced silence. The Ryan Report (CICA, 2009: 4: 7.14 and 7.15) recommended that ‘children in care should be able to communicate without fear’, adding ‘childcare services depend on good communication’. The voice of the child is fundamental to good child protection practice. It is also a human rights concern that cannot be overstated. Child citizenship needs to be constitutionally acknowledged in a democratic society. Otherwise children become an oppressed minority, victimised by abuses of adult power.

In the light of proposals being made in the United Kingdom to privatise child protection services, allegedly with the support of some charities, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 (UNCRC) becomes of urgent importance. What we have learnt from the Ryan Report is that profit and charity in child protection results in the dehumanisation of children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Yet this Victorian legacy of child exploitation is once again visible in the shifting balance between ‘state–civil society–market’ that will determine welfare futures in the 21st century.

Children offer a vast market to be exploited for profit. In the article in The Guardian referred to earlier, Professor Eileen Munro, author of the influential UK Munro Report (2011), is reported to have stated that establishing a market in child protection would create perverse incentives for private companies to either take more children into care or leave too many languishing with dangerous families. The Ryan Report (CICA, 2009: 5: 4-9) clearly demonstrates that operating a child care system on a ‘for profit’ basis has a corrupting impact on both the state and civil society.

In this chapter we examine the cultural politics of child abuse. The chapter takes the narrative right up to the present day. We focus on two groups of children: (1) those from asylum-seeking backgrounds housed in direct provision accommodation and (2) the contemporary reality for children in care proceedings.