Book review: Sköld, J., & Swain, S. (Eds.), (2015). Apology and the legacy of abuse of children in 'Care'. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

I firstly have to acknowledge some interest in this book as I co-authored two chapters. In saying that, I have also found it very helpful in my own work in this field. While there has been recognition over the years that some children have been unsafe in residential care (Kendrick and Hawthorn, 2012), until the late 1980s, there was little public awareness of the abuse of children in public care. Since then there has been a myriad of inquiry reports, media articles and academic writing on the subject, both within the UK and internationally. This compilation is however a useful addition to the literature in that it locates historical institutional abuse within the field of transitional justice and examines investigation, apology and redress in respect of historical abuse of children in care across Western countries in the last 20 years.