ABSTRACT
This book is taken up with accounts that users of social service have given of their experiences in one or other of our social services. The services are concerned with children: an adoptive mother describes her application for a baby from a voluntary society and contrasts this with a second application to a local authority, also briefly describing her experiences with a Child Guidance Clinic; another mother describes two adoptions from a statutory authority; a nineteen-year-old girl recalls her year’s treatment at a child psychiatric unit when she was twelve; two older adolescents discern some important features of their time in the care of a local authority; finally, a foster mother describes at length her experiences as both giving and receiving service. A range of agencies and a variety of problems are surveyed, but each contribution represents the user’s view given entirely in their own words.
