Description:The working girls' hostel on Hyperion Road was opened in 1967 on the Bromford Bridge Estate.
Hyperion Road was not a purpose-built children's home. Instead, it was two houses which were made available to use as a working girls’ hostel to help meet the demand for places.
A former resident in the 1960s, remembers Hyperion Road looking like two houses from the outside with an internal layout like two houses but they were joined by doors inside.
The intention was that the buildings should be once more used as houses as soon as the two working girls’ hostels which were being developed were ready for the girls to move in. The new hostels were at Milton Grange in Handsworth Wood and Sheridan Walk in Castle Vale.
Hyperion Road was a hostel for eight young women who were still in care but no longer at school. The girls, generally aged between 16 and 18 would have jobs like any other young women and come back to the hostel in the evenings.
When the girls reached 18, they were independent adults no longer in the care of the Council and would leave the hostel.
In 1979 and 1980, Hyperion Road is described as accommodating eight children ‘plus five minimal care’. Thus, five young people who needed only minimum supervision had been added to the original eight hostel residents. It is assumed that the house next door had been leased to accommodate the new influx.
The building was still being used as a children’s home in 1982, but closed some time before 1986. By this time most of the working children’s hostels in Birmingham had been closed.
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Image: Publicity photograph taken for the Children's Committee, Birmingham City Council 1967. The Birmingham Children's Homes project has no photograph of Hyperion Road children's home at this stage.
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Source: This history was compiled by the Birmingham Children's Homes Project, an initiative to explore Birmingham City Council-run children’s homes between 1949 and 1990.