With 50 per cent of the UK's 677,000 mixed race people under the age of 16, it may not be large, but is certainly a fast-growing sector of our population. With this in mind, it is going to become increasingly likely that practitioners experience caring for a mixed race child, and not just those who work in multicultural cities. Contrary to assumptions, there are also significant numbers of mixed families in more prosperous suburbs and small towns, with further groups in traditional manufacturing and industrial areas.
It was only in the last census in 2001 that a 'mixed' category was introduced. Before then, mixed race people were not counted. Charlie Owen, senior research officer at the Thomas Coram Research Centre, Institute of Education, who conducted research into the census data, says, 'In the pre-school age, nought to four years old, about 4 per cent in England and Wales are coded as mixed, which is quite significant - about the whole of the minority ethnic population in 1991.
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