" The child has lost her life and the government is now trying to take actions to revamp the system. Under the new system, Children's Trusts will be set up "at the local level to bring experts - psychologists, social workers, education officials - together, with a local director ultimately accountable."

There may appear to be few similarities between EPL and current social welfare policy but when we closely study their impact, we fail to accept the notion that a lot has changed. EPL was ineffective in controlling child-related problems. Children were subjected to cruel working conditions, they had hardly any proper means of nutrition and overseers probably did not care much about them. The same is true today. While there are protection agencies, social workers and others working for welfare of children, there is little if any improvement in their condition especially in the cases of child abuse. Children are still regularly being subjected to inhumane treatment by cruel adults.

The only difference we really notice is in the case of working age which had helped in reduction of child labor. Underage children are no longer allowed to work and their welfare is supposedly government's responsibility. However in other areas, children continue to suffer.

Social welfare policy needs to pay...

Unemployment and poverty are definitely important issues but children cannot be sidelined when social welfare is being overhauled. Lack of attention to children and problems faced by them has resulted in serious cracks in social welfare policy. This in turn has caused an alarming increase in violence against children. While government is investing heavily in other areas including healthcare, hardly any attention is being paid to children who are worst affected by loopholes in an ineffective and hopeless social welfare policy. "The government has been spending generously on health in general to upgrade the decrepit National Health Service, but it remains unclear how much funding will be available to support the new plans for child welfare." It is high time government starts paying closer attention to children and their problems. It is a sad truth that children are suffering such height of neglect and abuse in a supposedly modern western state.
REFERENCE:

1. Mark Rice-Oxley, Child-abuse tragedy spurs British overhaul of social services; the government unveiled a plan last week to keep better records on children and streamline the bureaucracy.(WORLD) the Christian Science Monitor; 9/16/2003

2. Bliss (1908), "Elizabethan Poor Laws" pp. 918-920.