B ASPCAN was founded in 1979. The moving spirits in the early years were Alfred White Franklin and Christine Cooper, two consultant paediatricians of rare insight and considerable energy. In the early 1970s there was considerable debate about child protection in the United Kingdom following the death of Maria Colwell (DHSS, 1974). Alfred had organized two multi-disciplinary conferences in 1973 (DHSS, 1974) and 1976(Franklin, 1977). In the United States a paediatrician, Henry Kempe, described the `battered child syndrome' (Kempe and Helfer, 1972; Helfer and Kempe, 1976) and in 1976 he set up the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN). These activities were the birth of multidisciplinary work in this country and were partly stimulated by people who later founded BASPCAN.
The Founders' Fund was established in 1991 as a tribute to those moving spirits. We have helped two people to attend foreign conferences, but few active steps have been taken to enlarge the small fund, which was originally built up by generous donations. In recent years it has been dicult to justify encouraging funds away from BASPCAN itself. We have, however, taken the view that the Fund should remain in existence to ensure that we can, if necessary, fund a lecture at a conference such as this, and if, in the future, a particularly attractive proposal presents itself, we could consider providing assistance. If you are looking to help a charitable organization, the Fund would use your money well.
BASPCAN has held national conferences, organized study groups and published seminal works. We started with a newsletter, which progressed to a Journal in the mid-1980s and has now developed into the ยฎne Child Abuse Review.