In 1999 this Journal opened up, through its Special Issue (Volume 13 No. 4), a discussion about the expansion, development and growth of prevention services for children and their families. It was recognised that under the incoming Labour Government prevention had become a major feature of new policies and initiatives concerning children and their families (Parton and Pugh, 1999). For example, Glass (1999), then a senior Treasury official overseeing introduction of the Sure Start initiative for children under four in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, reviewed its history. He described how it emerged from the Government's first cross-departmental Comprehensive Spending Review in 1997 and became a key component of national policy for tackling child poverty and longer-term social exclusion. Other developments followed from different government departments: for example, the Home Office included an early intervention programme called On Track in its Crime Reduction Programme. A Children's Fund was also established, to pay for services for children aged five to 13 considered to be 'at risk' of later social problems, administered by a Children and Young People's Unit. Both the Unit and Sure Start have since been made part of a new Children, Young People and Families Directorate at the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).
Until this switch of policy focus, prevention tended to be a marginal component of service provision for children and families, although the value placed upon it varied (Freeman, 1999). The 1989 Children Act placed requirements on local social service authorities to combine their child protection work with families in crisis with preventive work with the families of children 'in need '. Yet, as Tunstill (1997) argued, a combination of scarce resources in the 1990s and a vague definition of 'need' turned the legislation into an instrument for rationing services, rather than furnishing better support. While the range of preventive services increased, the families receiving them were mostly those whose children had already