Description:In the early 1970s, six purpose-built children’s homes were built each of which could accommodate 18 children. A further three such homes were built in the mid-1970s. This home in Selly Oak was one of these, opening in 1974.
The idea for the 18 bed units came from the Williams Committee recommendations for larger units. Each home was two storey and had, on the ground floor, a dining room and kitchen, a quiet room and a play room, and staff sitting and dining rooms. On the first floor was staff accommodation, with bathrooms and children’s bedrooms – two 4-bed rooms, two 3-bed rooms and four single rooms.
After the first of the six new homes were being built, the Residential Service Sub-committee expressed their ‘general dissatisfaction with the design of the present 18 bed homes’. Problems arose from the size of the dining room, the height of the corridors and other amendments to the original specifications introduced largely because of the need to cut costs.
Both boys and girls lived in the home.
While most of the other 18-bed homes were reduced to 16 beds in 1974, the Selly Oak home maintained its 18-bed capacity until 1982. Only then were numbers reduced to 16. By 1998, the home only housed 8 children- all of them boys aged between 13 and 16.
An edited extract from an oral history interview with a former member of staff who worked at the home in the 1980s:
"In the home there were nine boys and nine girls coming from all sorts of backgrounds. We had a catchment area and predominantly the young people that we received were from Nechells, Handsworth, Lozells - that side of the city. Awful lot of deprivation over there, you know a lot of hardship and I think we were still in the aftermath of, albeit the ‘80s, of the war.
"When you walked down the drive on the left hand side on the ground floor, that was where the playroom, the TV room and we called it the reading room because that’s where the kids would go in and meet their teacher and that type of thing. On the right hand side of the building, that was where the officer in charge lived. And then you’d got the kitchens at the back. Then on the upper floor you’d got that split into two and on the left hand side you’d have the nine boys and on the right hand side you’d have nine girls. You only had two bathrooms.
"There were five children in one bedroom, three in another and there were two single bedrooms that would be on one side, and then on the other side, which was the girls’ side, you had five girls in one bedroom, four in another and we had one single bedroom for the next person who was going to work, college etc.
"It was a very much a purpose built building. It was a very clinical building, it was all polished floors. They were like a very tough vinyl and all the councillors would make lovely comments about how shiny the floors were and there was great emphasis put on that. All the young people had to wear slippers inside.
"The staff team was predominantly female. I think I was one of two males that actually worked in the children’s home and we had a staff group of about seventeen.
"In about 1986 we went from 18 children to 16. There was also at that time a big influx of boys coming into the system and we ended up by default as an all boys unit in around 1986 or 1987.
"And I think in ’92 just after I’d left they reduced it to thirteen. And then of course it just tumbled down ever since."
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Image: A promotional shot used by Birmingham Children's Department in 1967. At this stage, the Birmingham Children's Homes project does not have any photographs of this children's home.
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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.