Setting the scene

This chapter places our co-inquiry in its wider historical, social and economic context, with particular reference to social work with unmarried mothers and their children at a time when stigmatising terms such as ‘illegitimacy’, ‘bastardy’ and pregnancy ‘out of wedlock’ were commonplace. The theory and practice of childcare and social work – residential and otherwise – came under scrutiny at this time. This period also witnessed the growth of statutory social work services and an accompanying decline in the voluntary sector&s;s influence within the wider context of the growth of the post-war welfare state, presaged by the 1942 Beveridge Report.