ABSTRACT
Few issues cast such a powerful searchlight across the landscape of child care policy, as the rationale and function of family support. It is a debate capable, where it is permitted, of penetrating even unlikely areas of policy and practice, and of illuminating our understanding of the lengthy child care continuum. And nowhere is this more obviously the case than in the boundary between family support and adoption. It is to the credit of the editors of this volume that a discussion of family support has been allowed across it.
