William C. Bell To Receive American Humane Association’s 2009 Vincent De Francis Award

The Vincent De Francis Award is named after the director emeritus of Children’s Services for American Humane, who published many works in the 1950s through 1970s that provide the foundation of child protection as it exists today. Considered one of the fathers of child protection services, De Francis was instrumental in defining child protection as a helping, non-punitive approach. He saw it as a preventive program that “keeps family and children together by aiding them to resolve the problems underlying child neglect.”