Firstly, what does ‘Children in care’ mean?
The definition of a child in care has changed throughout history, dating right back to medieval times, to the present day. In simple terms a child in care is simply a child who is looked after by someone other than their biological parents. This includes children who have been adopted; children who are in foster care; children who are looked after by different family members; and children who are in various types of placements like children’s homes or specialist placements.
This article looks at the entire history of children in care and how it has changed over time- dating right back to the medieval times to current times!
There has always been a need for children to be in care ever since people began to have children. This was often due to parents’ death, or illness, as it was common for one or both parents to die before a child reaches adulthood. Despite kinship being the most common form of care, the biggest shift over time is the involvement of the state and changes in law.
Medieval Times (roughly 1000s-1500s)
This is the first documented time of children being in care. There were many different types of care for various different reasons.
What were the different types of care?
- The most common was their kin such as aunt/uncle or grandparents.
- Another common form of care was putting children to work in a household as a servant, thus their employers became the ‘parent’. Although, they had a duty to feed, clothe and train them, affection was a limited expectation.
- Poor and even middle-class children, aged 14-21, were often apprentices, once again meaning their employers became their ‘parents’ with similar duties of feeding, clothing and training them. It differs slightly as the child’s family often bought them the apprenticeship, making it a legal contract and allowed the families legal support if they felt the child was being mistreated.
- There were some institutions (known as hospitals) run by Catholic or other religious charities that were similar to boarding schools. They trained children to become nuns or monks and were aimed at children whose both parents had died.
However, the state was not involved with any form of child welfare or child-care in this period. The only exception is very wealthy people who appointed their children a guardian to look after their inheritance. It was also common for the wealthy children to spend considerable amounts of time away from home. For example, babies might have a wet nurse- someone who breastfeeds, thus allowing the mother more time to educate the other children and run the household; sometimes consisting of up to 50 people!
Early Modern (Tudors to Queen Victoria, roughly 1500-1800)
The biggest changes this period sees is the growth of empire, state involvement through the ‘poor law’, non-religious institutional care. Once again, the most common forms of care are:
- Kinship by aunts/uncles and grandparents
- Apprenticeships for poor and middle-class children.
We also now have more evidence of paid care. Many single mothers got jobs as servants and couldn’t take their children with them so they paid a foster parent to look after their children, though this was very variable and each situation likely unique. Sometimes the children kept in touch with their biological mother and formed close relationships with their foster parent. Othertimes, they were vulnerable to neglect and didn’t keep in contact with their biological mother.
The next biggest change is from 1601: there is formal state involvement due to the legislation known as the Old Poor Law. Overall, it set up a welfare state to some degree, allowing people in need to have assistance from their local community. It meant that poor and orphaned children had a right to claim help from the parish, such as giving their parents a cash payment, work or items like clothing to help them keep their family together, or, they would organise a foster parent who was paid by the parish.
The next significant change is later in the 1700s workhouses were begun to be built and they clothed, fed and housed families, siblings or lone children.
Another new change is the growth of institutions for raising orphans. Some were basically like boarding schools, and for middle class children, and others were for raising babies who were abandoned by their parents. Some examples include:
- Edinburgh Orphan Hospital founded 1733
- The London Foundling Hospital founded in 1739.
Modern (Queen Victoria onwards, roughly 1800-present)
Big changes: charities andchild welfare legislation.
Kinship care and informal paid fostering continued in similar ways to earlier centuries. There is a bit more evidence that confirms that there was a lot of variety in the way that children were treated. We also know that children were often moved between carers, e.g. from a grandparents’house, to a paid foster carer, to their birth parent, back to the grandparent etc.
The state continued to manage foster care for children whose parents were very poor, through the poor law, arranging and paying for care in private homes or workhouses. And institutional care continued, in workhouses and institutions like the London Foundling Hospital, but also through a range of institutions that were motivated more by discipline, known as reform schools (similar to young offenders’ institutions).
However, in the Victorian period there was a big growth in the involvement of charities and a growing concern for child welfare, through legislation and state involvement, but also through charities such as the NSPCC (founded 1883). This happens at the same time as growing concern about children generally, and alongside legislation restricting the hours children can work and requiring them to go to school.
More legislation is introduced from the Victorian period until more modern times such as:
- 1872 Infant Life Protection Act – response to the baby farming scandals, required foster parents of children under one year old to register with the local authority, but inspection was very patchy.
- 1889 Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children – increases the penalties for neglecting a child and empowers the court to remove children from birth parents’ custody and place the child with a relative or foster parent, for children under 14 (boys) and under 16 (girls). This was the first time that the state could remove children from parental custody.
- 1926 Adoption of Children Act – this created the legal category of adoption. Prior to this all adoptions were informal and not enforceable by law. Before 1926, the birth parents remained the child’s legal parents and could reclaim the child at any time. The 1926 act also required birth parents to consent in order to stop forced adoptions, and to stop secret adoptions, but the Act didn’t apply to every adoption. It was optional, and so many adoptions organised by charities continued to be secret and unregulated by the state.
- 1939 Adoption of Children (Regulation) Act – required adoptions to be confirmed by a court order, increasing state supervision out of concern for child welfare.
- 1949 Adoption Act – this introduced the principle that an adopted child was treated under law as if they were the birth child of their adoptive parents, e.g. they would inherit their adoptive parents’ property automatically, like a birth child would.
Overall, there has been many similarities and also differences between the care for children in care.
Historical consultancy by Dr Kate Gibson
References
Department for Education. (2015). Children looked after in England (including adoption). London: Department for Education. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-looked-after-children
Foundling Museum. (n.d.). History of the Foundling Hospital. London: Foundling Museum. Available at: https://foundlingmuseum.org.uk/about-us/history-of-the-foundling-hospital/
Hendrick, H. (1994). Child Welfare: Historical Dimensions, Contemporary Debate. Bristol: Policy Press.
Hindle, S. (2004). On the Parish? The Micro‑Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England c.1550–1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Home Office. (1889). Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. London: HMSO.
Ministry of Justice. (2013). Youth Justice Statistics. London: Ministry of Justice. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/youth-justice-statistics
NSPCC. (n.d.). History of the NSPCC. London: NSPCC. Available at: https://www.nspcc.org.uk/about-us/history-of-the-nspcc/
Slack, P. (1995). The English Poor Law, 1531–1782. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stone, L. (1977). The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800. London: Harper & Row.