Adams Hill Children's Home, Bartley Green

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Date:1963 - 1986 (c.)

Description:190 Adams Hill was a purpose-built children's home with 8 beds. It opened in 1963. It was designed to be a small family home (also known as a scattered home) on the newly-built Bartley Green Estate.

The home was part of a programme of new children’s homes in the 1950s and 1960s, each built on newly developing housing estates in Birmingham. As small homes they were a move away from the large children’s homes which were in vogue in the first half of the 20th century.

These new homes were built on the principle of creating a small family unit in a house that looked like any other. The home was run by live-in foster parents or houseparents - usually a married couple.

The first of these homes was completed in 1951, and a further 11, one of which was Adams Hill, were built over the following decade. A second children’s home was built on the same estate at the same time as Adams Hill – on nearby Ludford Road.

The two homes – at Adams Hill and Ludford Road - appear to have been built as mirror images of each other.

The children's home was built for eight children, both boys and girls, and was designed so that houseparents would live in the children’s home with, if they had any, their own children as well as the children in care.

The home was closed in 1986.

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Image: Adams Hill children's home c.1967. Reproduced from the Children's Committee 1967.
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Source: This history was compiled by the Birmingham Children's Homes Project, an initiative to explore Birmingham City Council-run childrens homes between 1949 and 1990.

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Donor ref:Birmingham Archives and Heritage (95/1544)

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