Child safety is everybody’s concern, but much professional activity is misinformed or based on a misrepresentation of the facts, and preventative action is rarely adequately evaluated. Written by researchers with an active role in social policy, this text challenges our understanding of the problem of child safety and points to the impotence of educational approaches based on knowledge enhancement . The message is that improving children’s knowledge has little or no effect on their behaviour. From the physical abuse of young children to drug abuse in adolescence, this work presents a radical perspective on a key social issue.