I was very pleased to contribute a chapter to The Perfect Little Children’s Home?, a forthcoming book from Dialogue, which will be launched at the Children’s Commissioners’ Conference in June 2026.
The book brings together a range of thoughtful voices from across residential childcare, commissioning, leadership, research and specialist practice. Its purpose, as I understand it, is not to offer a single or simple answer to the question of children’s homes becoming smaller, but to invite a more careful conversation about what children’s homes are for, what children need from them, and how the sector might think more clearly about scale, safety, relationship and belonging.
John’s vision was both simple and timely: to bring together a range of voices and create space for a more careful conversation about children’s homes. I was grateful to be invited to contribute and found it especially rewarding to be involved in some of the early shaping of the book’s direction and proofing. The work of my co-authors gives the book its breadth and depth, and I am looking forward to seeing those different contributions gathered in one place.
My own chapter considers the history of children’s homes, chiefly in England: their legacy, reform and continuing purpose. It begins, quite personally, with family memory. In writing it, I found myself returning to my own ancestry: to movement, hardship, precarious shelter, child labour and the disciplined expectations of other people’s systems. That connection mattered to me. It reminded me that history is not simply something behind us. Some assumptions about poverty, childhood, family, difference and state intervention still echo, sometimes faintly and sometimes very loudly, in the present.
For that reason, the chapter is not only about the past. It is about how the past continues to ask questions of the present. Children’s homes have changed profoundly, and rightly so. They are smaller, more regulated, more specialist and more clearly framed around children’s rights, welfare and voice. But the ethical question remains familiar: how do we ensure that children who cannot live safely with their families are not merely placed, but properly seen, known and cared for?
I hope the book contributes something useful to that conversation. It has been a privilege to play a small part in it.
The Perfect Little Children’s Home? can be ordered from Dialogue:
