SUMMARY.The basic facts about access of parents to their children in care are simply stated: a significant number of children in care have parental access limited either deliberately or inadvertently, without professional or legal justification, and the result of this is that contact between parents and children withers, and may reduce to nothing. How much does this matter? How common is it? Why does it happen? These questions will be examined below. We shall see that access in care merits serious attention and highlights important issues concerning the role of the social services in the spectrum of professional support available to families with children. The article is based on a paper given in 1986 to a Family Rights Group study course on access to children in care