Fall edition of the Journal of Children's Services, out now!

The new edition of the Journal of Children's Services looks at challenges that have arisen in relation to the services to promote child welfare that were at the heart of the England and Wales Children Act 1989.

The second instalment of a two-part special edition is guest-edited by Rupert Hughes and Wendy Rose. Both were in the Department of Health at the time and closely involved in taking the Act through Parliament and, for some years after, in efforts to get it implemented.

Contributors examine support, protection and care services, and consider the challenges facing practitioners, such as how to balance safeguarding and welfare and how to prioritise between universal and targeted services.

Articles focus respectively on the views of children, the education of children in care, the changing role of family centres, the professionalisation of early years provision, the effect of the legislation on disabled children, the status and strength and Local Safeguarding Children Boards, and the capacity of services to make a difference in the face of deep and worsening inequality.

The first part of the special edition, published in June 2010, considered the court system heralded by the Act.