Editorial Foreword

Child care policy and practice within the four countries that comprise the United Kingdom can be seen to be in a process of ongoing and rapid transition. As Fawcett, Featherstone, and Goddard (2004) point out, the Labour Government has embarked on a clear interventionist agenda based on the principle of the social investment state. As can be seen by the title to the influential Green Paper ‘‘Every Child Matters’’, this approach supports strategies that invest in all children and that move away from the segregationary and more traditionally orientated concept of ‘‘children in need’’ (Frost, 2005). As such there are obvious benefits. However, as the authors of articles featured in this edition of Child Care in Practice variously indicate, a highly interventionist outcome-orientated framework can result in regulatory processes where targeting slides into a form of intensive scrutiny, which adds to the pressures being faced by those already experiencing the sting in the tail of welfare to work reforms.