This collection of 12 new and revised essays on child care and children's services, written by leading child welfare historian Roy Parker, draws on his lifetime of research in this area. By exploring various topics these essays explain significant political, economic, legal and ideological aspects of this history from the mid-1850s. This unique and lasting review of child care services allows readers to understand how the services for some of society's most vulnerable children have become what they are, how well they have met and now meet the needs of those children. The collection provides a high-quality, historical reference resource that will inform and capture the interest of social work and social policy students as well as social and legal historians, political scientists and those involved in administration and government, struggling with the issues of the day.

During the 50 years following Confederation in 1867, some 80,000 British children - many of them under the age of 10 - were shipped from Britain to Canada by Poor Law authorities and voluntary bodies. How did this come about? What were the motives and methods of the people involved in both countries? Why did it come to an end? What effects did it have on the children involved and what eventually became of them? These are the questions author Roy Parker explores in a meticulously researched work that brings together the economic, political, social, medical, legal, administrative, and religious aspects of the story in both Britain and Canada. He concludes with a moving review of evidence from more recent survivors of child migration, discussing the lifelong effects of their experiences with the help of modern psychological insights. His book, Uprooted, will capture and hold the interest of the academic, the practitioner, and the general reader, as well as the relatives and descendants -