Claire Cameron has been a researcher at Thomas Coram Research Unit since 1992. Before this she worked at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College. She read sociology and politics at Durham University and then trained as a social worker at Goldsmiths? College. She was employed as social worker in several local authorities before turning to research. She gained her PhD in 1999. Her main research interests are the childcare and the social care workforces, including gender issues, care work over the life course and comparative work, including pedagogy and residential care.

Pat Petrie is Professor of Education at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London. She has spent many years researching and writing about provision for children of all ages in the UK and abroad. Her major international research has been in school-age childcare, services for children in public care, the 'social pedagogy' approach to children's services, and the developing role of the school, in USA, Sweden.

Valerie Wigfall has been a researcher at the Institute of Education since 1996. She has a degree in sociology from Sussex University, a professional social work qualification and Diploma in Social and Administrative Studies from the University of Oxford, and a PhD from University College London. At the Thomas Coram Research Unit, her work has focused largely on studies of the family, children and young people, with special reference to children in and leaving care.