The article argues that the local authority attendance officers responsible for the enforcement of compulsory attendance changed their approach to truancy under the influence of child welfare legislation and changing views of the child in the first decade of the twentieth century. Some of the changes in their work emerged as a direct response to implementing the law in relation to child welfare, but at the same time, attendance officers themselves increasingly aspired to a new welfare role which emphasized support and help for the needy family in place of the punitive role they had previously undertaken. However, it was far from easy for them to transform their image from the familiar one of the "kid-catcher." (Contains 58 footnotes.)