The 1940s to 1960s could be called a golden age of child care: the 1940s witnessed public concern about children ‘deprived of a normal home life’, which led to the government establishing the first local authority service, the Children's Departments, to offer specialised help to such children. In the 1950s the employees of these departments struggled successfully to build up children's services. The 1960s were marked by a further expansion of the Children's Departments as their skilled staff were given even wider duties in regard to the children's own parents and to young offenders. The 1960s also witnessed studies which established the fact that family poverty had not been abolished by the welfare state.

The Children's Departments were founded and run by a remarkable set of people. Many of them outlasted the departments which were amalgamated into social services departments (social work departments in Scotland) by 1971. A few continue in active service until this very day. It appears to me that social work students now know very little about these champions for children. Some of these champions also backed social reformers who continued to highlight child poverty. The latter are also champions for children.

My intention in this book is to record and so preserve the characters and deeds of six of these champions. I could have chosen many more, had space allowed. The six selected represent politicians, campaigners, children’s officers, writers and researchers. My choice is shaped by the fact that I have known or at least met these champions. The exception is Eleanor Rathbone, who died in 1946, but I consider her efforts to combat child poverty so important to the children of subsequent years that she had to have the initial chapter. Furthermore, I feel I almost knew Eleanor through our mutual friend, Margaret Simey.

At first glance, it might appear that the six champions divide into two groups: Eleanor Rathbone and Peter Townsend, who strove to abolish child poverty, and Marjory Allen, Barbara Kahan, John Stroud and Clare Winnicott, who developed services for children deprived of satisfactory lives with their own parents. In fact, there was always an overlap. Eleanor Rathbone witnessed abject poverty in Liverpool but later she became concerned about the quality of the home life of children whose fathers spent long periods away in the armed forces or the Merchant Navy.