(Cunningham 2005) said that until the 19th century policies had been drawn up with a concern either for the child’s soul or for the future manpower needs of the state. This is when the responsibility of the welfare of children began to move from the family towards the state. (Heywood 1988) stated that the government took responsibility over from the parents of children and started to develop other policies and services to decrease death rates and improve basic health needs. The year of 1833 the government put in place the first policy to protect children from child labour. The Factories act was first introduced latter following by the Mines act in 1842. This was the first laws in place to start improving children’s welfare. When this law was in place it meant that children were not to go into work in the factories less than 8 years old and young children could only work a certain number of hours per day. This was because many children were dying at an early age form working in the coal mines and walls caving in on then and rubble falling on top of them and as children not being strong enough to get out and people not remembering they were there and the fumes they inhaled from cleaning chimneys. With these two acts in place the government managed to abolish child labour and introduce in 1870 compulsory education for all children.
