A medium-sized, red, hardback book produced in the 125th year following the start of Barnardo's work for children in East London, with a preface letter from Diana, Princess of Wales, President of Barnardo's at that time. It has 207 pages, and 15 chapters each given to an aspect of Barnardo's work current at the time, and a small collection of snaphot illustrations.

The author, a previous journalist and writer of a number of fiction books, plus one on woman priests, writes from within each situation, with a journalist's immediacy, blended with the views of the people involved - both subjects and the Barnardo workers. Her concise but comprehensive foreword of her intentions is well fulfilled.

The topics include family centres where children affected by diverse sorts of family disruption are given space, counselling, and care designed to keep the family together, a concept not unknown in Barnardo's days although dominated by institutional care; conciliation services provided at critical levels of breakdown; adoption, or fostering, using publicity of quite dramatic sort to achieve the ends; and the tracing of parents - an element encouraged by legal entitlements to freedom of information.

Many other aspects of Barnardo's work in the latter part of the 20th century, including that in relation to Northern Ireland, addiction, AIDS, and prison, are presented with equal vividness, emphasising the departure from the well-known Barnardo's institutions, but the continued need and funding for the care not only of children, but also youth and adults in relationship to parents, families and the state. The deprivation, distortion, and disruption surrounding the children is matched by the disinterested devotion of skilled Barnardo staff working with them to produce an effect of a difficult world with a few glimmers of light and success.

Comment: A penetrating account of modern Barnardo's.

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