Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Terry Bamford
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Social Work in 1970
- 2 Social Services Departments: Success or Failure?
- 3 Regulation and Inspection of Social Work: Costly Distraction or Stimulus to Improve?
- 4 Continuity and Change in the Knowledge Base For Social Work
- 5 Social Work Education: Learning From the Past?
- 6 Practising Social Work
- 7 Looking Back, Looking Forward: Two Personal Views
- 8 From Clients As Fellow Citizens to Service Users As Co-Producers of Social Work
- 9 The 1989 England and Wales Children Act: the High-Water Mark of Progressive Reform?
- 10 Social Work With Offenders
- 11 The Impact of Scandal and Inquiries on Social Work and the Personal Social Services
- 12 British Social Work: International Context and Perspectives
- Afterword
- Index
9 - The 1989 England and Wales Children Act: the High-Water Mark of Progressive Reform?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Terry Bamford
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Social Work in 1970
- 2 Social Services Departments: Success or Failure?
- 3 Regulation and Inspection of Social Work: Costly Distraction or Stimulus to Improve?
- 4 Continuity and Change in the Knowledge Base For Social Work
- 5 Social Work Education: Learning From the Past?
- 6 Practising Social Work
- 7 Looking Back, Looking Forward: Two Personal Views
- 8 From Clients As Fellow Citizens to Service Users As Co-Producers of Social Work
- 9 The 1989 England and Wales Children Act: the High-Water Mark of Progressive Reform?
- 10 Social Work With Offenders
- 11 The Impact of Scandal and Inquiries on Social Work and the Personal Social Services
- 12 British Social Work: International Context and Perspectives
- Afterword
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In the history of children's services a small number of Acts of Parliament can be identified as important exemplars of the dominant social and political eras within which they were framed. The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, the 1948 Children Act and the 1989 Children Act might all be seen as such signposts, as, more recently, can the 2017 Children and Social Work Act. In spite of the deficits that can be identified in the implementation of the 1989 Act, it stands in stark contrast to the patchwork of children's social services legislation across the preceding four decades and, indeed, since, with respect to broader child and family welfare provisions. It incorporates a clear vision for the delivery of child and family social work services, and of the nature of professional child and family social work. Thirty years on, although housing, health, education and social security Bills have come and gone, the 1989 Act remains barely changed. Moreover, it has consistently had an unusually high and very positive profile both in the child care policy literature and in the hearts and minds of social workers, past and present. Accounts of opposition to recent proposals to undermine it, as in the defeated ‘exemption clauses’ in the 2017 Children and Social Work Bill, describe it as ‘carefully crafted’ (Jones, 2019, p 55) and emphasise its evidence-informed design and implementation: ‘the Act had an unusually empirical gestation period’ (Tunstill and Willow, 2017, p 44). The Bill was, after all, first introduced in the House of Lords in the previous year by the Lord Chancellor as:
the most comprehensive and far reaching reform of child care law which has come before Parliament in living memory. It brings together the public and private law concerning the care, protection and upbringing of children and the provision of services to them and their families. (Hansard, HL Deb, 6 December 1988, vol 502, col 488)
That is not to say that everything about its original design or likely implementation process was ever seen as entirely unproblematic.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social WorkPast, Present and Future, pp. 157 - 172Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2020