It's getting close to Christmas, and so a few of our pieces have a festive flavouring.

Keith White's In Residence column merits special attention. Regardless of your beliefs - or your feelings about Christmas - he raises some major issues about the marginalisation of children in society, which deserve close attention, and suggest the need for fundamental changes in society's attitudes to children.

Gus Greene and the Webmag Editorial look at giving and gifts, and what they mean.

Off the Christmas theme, there are two impassioned pieces. Professor Ewan Anderson takes the Government to task about the draft minimum standards for boarding schools, and Rowan Dickman despairs about getting the childcare profession on a sound footing. (For those interested in helping in this task, see Power to the Workers in Bits and Pieces.)

Ann Scorer's speech to the National Children's Bureau Annual General Meeting is worth reading. AGMs are usually dusty occasions, but the list of the Bureau's achievements is most impressive, and her speech provides a useful checklist of current issues and developments. At the meeting Paul Ennals followed this text with an inspiring discussion about the direction which the NCB is taking.

Bringing up the rear, Kathleen Lane is Footloose beside the Danube and Terry Hoon is carrying on about names.

In the International Section, there is a spread of pieces.

The Editorial looks at locking up children and its ineffectiveness.

Vibeke Lasson takes apart the importance of play for children, both in childcare services and in the family, and the way it affects their development.

Anton Tobe reports on the second of FICE's Balkan Camps. The first was called a Peace Camp, to signal the wish for peace after conflict in former Yugoslavia, but this time the young people decided to be more positive and emphasise the growing links made by these events by calling it a Friendship Camp.

Finally, there is an article to remind us of the problems that our predecessors had to face in the past, and the way they addressed them through the founding of FICE.

And of course, there are the advertisements - more job ads than ever before, to match the expanding readership - another 10% increase last month!