Three main time periods were examined: from 1948 to the mid-1970s, from 1974 to the mid-1990s, and from the mid-1990s to the present. Throughout the 1950s the focus of the Children’s Departments was on improving the quality of out-of-home care by supporting foster care and small group family homes. By the mid- to late-1950s the focus shifted to working with families to prevent child maltreatment, including the provision of financial assistance to needy families. Morale in the Children’s Department was generally high at this time. The period from 1974 to the mid-1990s, on the other hand, was marred by a decline in social support for child care social work, greater bureaucratization of child care social work, a shift away from a specialist focus, and the recognition of pervasive child abuse throughout all levels of society. The early 1990s also witnessed a significant backlash against the intrusive character that child abuse social work had taken on throughout the late 1970s and 1980s and increasing managerial demands burdened over-worked social workers throughout the 1980s and 1990s due to a series of health and welfare reforms. The final period under study, mid-1990s to the present, witnessed a wide range of initiatives designed to raise the standards of child care social work intervention, such as the Quality Protects programme in 1998 and new requirements for child assessments as well as new standards for training and information sharing. In closing, the author identifies several strengths of child care social work, including its well-established knowledge base in areas such as attachment theory and child needs, its role in shaping laws that relate to children and families, and its strong ethical value base. Despite these strengths, there remains a need for greater cooperation and coordination between agencies working with children and families. References