It has long been my intention to record the lives and achievements of notable children's champions. When I submitted my proposal, I was delighted with the publisher's enthusiasm. However, there was a sting in the tail. They wanted a final chapter about myself. Their reasoning was that this would bring the story up to date and would touch on ‘child care in the community’ which was not a major theme of the six great figures. I am no child care champ, more a child care chump. But I have been close to most of the figures in this book and I am one of many whose own work has been shaped by their example. Further, I have had a personal life and a social work career which has coincided with the major social welfare events in Britain in the last 50 years of the 20th century. So, in this penultimate chapter, I will write, reluctantly, about my participation in these changes.

Participating in the evacuation (1939-45)

My paternal grandfather and grandmother came from rural Essex to urban Barking to look for work, and my grandfather found a job as a bricklayer. The early years of the 20th century were not easy for manual workers and in 1904 he became unemployed. There was no state unemployment insurance and his family was only saved from the workhouse by a kind landlady who allowed the family to stay rent-free in their rooms. They must have been similar to the kind of families who Eleanor Rathbone was observing in Liverpool: families pushed into destitution not because of unwillingness to work but because of the unwillingness of the state to improve social conditions and services. Eventually, he obtained a job on the railways.

I never knew my paternal grandparents. I have many memories of my maternal ones, however. My grandmother had been in domestic service and told me stories of how she ironed the newspaper so that there were no creases in it when read by the master and mistress. She possessed a great fear of destitution and would plead, “Don't let me finish in the Union” (Union being the Poor Law Unions: that is, the workhouse). My grandfather was a horses man in more ways than one. He had driven horse-drawn buses and, in retirement enjoyed being an illegal bookie’s runner.