ABSTRACT
This chapter examines issues relating to the loss of links between children, their parents and the social services department that is looking after them. Parental loss is often portrayed as transient, as when parents and children become separated in a crowd or associated with the death of parents before their children reach adulthood, an event which has become mercifully rare in the Western world in the 20th century. The Children Act 1989 uses the term ‘parent’ and makes no distinction between mothers and fathers with parental responsibility. The familial ideology against which birth parents, particularly mothers, are measured influences the provision of substitute family care. The histories of children in the study indicated that a key factor in the losing of parents lay in social workers’ overriding belief, or perhaps more accurately fear, that parental involvement would threaten placement stability. The law has also played a part in the loss of the parents of children in the public care.
