In 1981 and 1982 the authors worked at a Family Centre which dealt exclusively with the families of children who had been physically or emotionally abused, neglected, or who were failing to thrive. Sources of information used for studying the children and their mothers included casefiles, unstructured interviews, and observation of children at play and with their mothers. The families and their histories are described, and the results of the observations are detailed according to individual children. Despite intervention with families in which nonaccidental injuries had occurred, a substantial proportion of the children involved appeared maladjusted when compared with their peers at school, and physical injury per se formed only a small part of the maltreatment to which they were subjected. In the children studied, severity of injury was not the major determinant of the degree of disturbances that they showed; the family environment that they were continuing to experience played a far more significant part. 104 references, index, and appendix.