Children and Social Welfare in Europe by K. Pringle, OpenUniversity Press, Buckingham, 1998. ISBN 0335197027 (Hbk),£45.00; ISBN 0335197019 (Pbk), £14.99.

This is a welcome book, one of an increasing number using aninternational perspective in an examination of social welfare. It iswelcome because it acknowledges the recent analyses of interna-tional welfare and focuses these on the speci®c area of child welfare,and in particular child abuse. The author is to be commended forhis well-documented use of sources and comprehensive coverage ofchild care provision and policy in Europe. Social workers in theUnited Kingdom will ®nd much that will aid them in re¯ecting ontheir own child care practice.

Pringle undertakes the examination of children and social workwith the contention that welfare is practised in social structuresthat have oppressing features. He highlights `ageism' as oneelement of oppression directed particularly towards children. Thistheme is considered consistently and becomes a focus in theexamination of welfare regimes. Welfare policy which countersthis form of oppression is seen as a barometer of the e�ectivenessand fairness of a country's welfare regime.

Pringle initially examines what we mean by the terms`Europe' and`social welfare'. Although this is a brief excursioninto a broader conceptual analysis, it is a necessary introductionto the focused study of children and social welfare in a range ofwelfare regimes. He draws on the model of Esping-Anderson(1990) for analysing `neo-liberal', `conservative' and `Nordic'regimes and Leibfried (1993) for the `Southern European' or`rudimentary' model of welfare. In addition to the generallyaccepted models of Esping-Anderson and Leibfried, Pringleincludes a chapter on Eastern European countries and on pan-European institutions. The ®nal two chapters use child sexualabuse in Europe as a case study which serves to establish theextent to which the children in Europe are subject tooppression. He identi®es two broad welfare responses to this:that of the English social protection approach and that of theEuropean family support model. Both are carefully consideredand found to be `disastrous as welfare responses to child sexualabuse'. In an all too brief conclusion, he suggests a `third way'drawing on feminist, pro-feminist and anti-oppressive ap-proaches and which includes service users in a partnershipwith service providers.

One of the problems a writer of a book of this scope has to face isthe mass of detail to be digested. Statistics relating children andyoung people, which are not always easy to obtain and makemeaning of, and the appreciation of details of di�erent cultures andsocial policies at this level of analysis require more than a super®cialunderstanding. Pringle has managed to produce a work thatconveys credibility in this matter. Throughout the detail ofinformation he has re¯ected the complex diversity of cultural,political and social structures in¯uencing children. While heappreciates that much of his critique may well be tentative, Pringlemaintains a strong conviction that whatever the complexities andparadoxes, children in Europe are massively oppressed and that

Child Abuse Review Vol. 9: 82±86 (2000)

Copyright *c 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

BookReviewsEdited by Corinne Wattam

`Pringle highlights

`ageism' as one

element of

oppression

directed

particularly

towards children'

this is an issue not only for professional welfare but for allEuropeans.

John WashingtonUniversity of Central Lancashire

References

Esping-Anderson G. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capital-ism. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Leibfried S. 1993. Towards a European Welfare State. In NewPerspectives on the Welfare State in Europe, Jones C (ed.).London: Routledge.

Child Welfare in the UK edited by O. Stevenson, BlackwellScience, Oxford, 1999. 216 pp. ISBN 0-632-04993-6, £24.99(Pbk).

This edited collection appears at a time when the shift to familysupport seems likely to constitute a key turning point in thehistory of child welfare, and provides a valuable backdrop tocurrent thinking by charting the development of policy andpractice over the last 50 years. Olive Stevenson has drawn togethera range of distinguished contributors, all of whom take theChildren Act 1948 as the starting point for their accounts ofideology, policy and practice across the spectrum of child careservices.

Part One addresses the broader picture by exploring the politicaland economic context, the impact of the other developing welfareservices and the emerging concepts of prevention and children'srights. Part Two describes the growth of child welfare services.The division of the book into two halves has the e�ect of cuttingthe analysis of political and ideological trends o� from theaccounts of service development, which, while ensuring clarity,misses the opportunity for identifying some signi®cant connec-tions between social policy and the experience of service users.The format of the edited collection inevitably results in somearguments not being pursued in the depth that they merit. InChapter Two, Keith Bilton identi®es the separation of care andcash as a key distinguishing feature of the British model of welfareand this point might have been usefully pursued further in relationto both child care social work and services for children leavingcare. Indeed, this chapter also provokes questions about the role ofcash support in relation to current family support policies.Similarly, Nigel Parton's opening chapter positions the patriarchalnuclear family at the centre of post-war welfare provision and thisanalysis might have o�ered a lens through which to view develop-ments in many of the services discussed in the second part of thebook.

`Olive Stevenson

has drawn

together a range of

distinguished

contributors, all of

whom take the

Children Act 1948

as the starting

point for their

accounts of

ideology, policy

and practice across

the spectrum of

child care services'

Book Reviews 83

Copyright *c 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 9: 82±86 (2000)