Child Welfare: An Historical Overview

Children have begun to occupy an important place not only in academic discourse but also in policy formulation. This is because of the realization that investment in children ensures a brighter tomorrow. This enlightenment on the attention of children is not of recent origin but an offshoot of child protection in traditional societies. Though, children had little place in the past, there are evidences of mechanisms for child welfare across societies. It would not be wrong to say that traditional institutions and policies that catered to children’s’ needs created history in child rights. There was gradual improvement in the area of child welfare and after centuries of change, attention to children became a priority in all international and national conventions and agreements. This paper attempts to chronologically highlight the historical and empirical events on how societies perceived children and catered to their needs to create an atmosphere conducive for children .The object of this paper is to create an understanding on how child welfare developed in time and space paving way for a child rights perspective to develop across societies