Complex issues underlie our youth crime statistics. High-profile cases of child abuse and violent crime highlight the way in which we have traditionally handled - some would argue mishandled - children born into families trapped in a spiral of crime, poverty and abuse. By looking calmly and critically at what isnt working, Celia Lashlie brings her powerful insight and proven ability to tell it like it is about our disastrously high imprisonment rates. Her message for the comfortable middle-classes is that the children entering prison are our children, children born pure and full of magic, but who are let down over and over again by the system that should protect them. We are all responsible. The appalling waste of young lives must stop.

Celia follows the journeys taken recently by Maka Renata and BJ Kurariki and links them to the journeys of two small children, victims of what she sees as institutional neglect. She exposes the environment in which they live, where she believes the negative attitudes of many within our bureaucracy work against the efforts of the childrens mother to be the best mother she can. The Power of Mothers is a wake-up call to voter and politician, parent and grandparent, social agency and lobby group alike. We must do more than build prisons to hold the children we fail - and we must start now.

Paperback, 2010, 223pages, new with sale strip on edge