Licensed to Hug: How Child Protection Policies are Poisoning the Relationship Between the Generations and Damaging the Voluntary Sector

"Since the establishment of the Criminal Records Bureau in 2002, millions of adults have had to be vetted to say they are safe to be near children. When Licensed to Hug was first published in June 2008, this system of vetting was barely a public policy issue. The predominant response to the licensing of adults was a pragmatic acceptance that this was an attempt, however imperfect, to protect children from abuse, and as such it was better than nothing. How that has changed! The vetting system has faced a severe backlash and is now firmly on the political agenda. In this fully updated and extended edition of Licensed to Hug, Frank Furedi and Jennie Bristow identify recent developments in child protection policies, providing examples of absurdities caused by the vetting scheme to demonstrate why these issues must continue to be debated in the public domain"--Publisher's website.