ABSTRACT
The broader community tends to maintain its distance from the family hearth save in exceptional circumstances. This chapter introduces the key concepts of: childhood as a historically specific phenomenon; inalienable children’s rights; community approaches to child welfare; and professional interventions consistent with the concern to promote a child’s growth to their full potential. Children’s lot in the community in which they live can be a varied one which ranges from middle-class cacooning in a well-resourced environment to hardship and privation in a poor one. The ‘community’ to which a child is affiliated can be a locality, religious or culturally based one. Sometimes, these converge into one as in the case of a child of Jewish origins living in Hendon, a Jewish neighbourhood in London, for example. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
