Description:Tile Cross Road children's home was a purpose-built children's home with eight beds. When it was built in the early 1960s, it was designed to be a family group home on the new Tile Cross housing estate.
The home was part of a programme of new children’s homes in Birmingham, each built on newly developing housing estates. As small family homes, they were a move away from the larger children's homes which were in vogue in the first half of the twentieth century.
These homes were designed to be a small ‘family’ unit in a house that looked very much like any other on the estate. The first of these homes was completed in 1951, and a further 11, one of which was Tile Cross in 1962, were built over the following eleven years. A second children’s home was built on the same estate at the same time.
As a children's home, Tile Cross Road accommodated both boys and girls.
The family group homes each had live-in houseparents - generally a married couple. The housefather usually had a full-time job outside the home while the housemother worked in the children's home with very little time off at all.
In common with most other City Council children’s homes, the practice of having live-in staff stopped at Tile Cross Road in the early 1980s.
Tile Cross Road closed as a children's home in 1986.
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Image: The building of Tile Cross Road children's Home taken in 2010 before being sold by the Council.
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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.