Description:In the Worcestershire countryside to the south-west of Birmingham, the Uplands was acquired for use as a reception centre in 1967.
The building, dating from the end of the 19th century, had previously been used as a children’s convalescent home by the Birmingham Hospital Saturday Fund. When it opened as a reception centre, it could accommodate 24 children.
After the 1969 Children and Young Person's Act, the Uplands became an observation and assessment centre for 24 boys and girls aged between 5 and 17. Most children would be placed in Tennal or one of the other remand homes after around six weeks at the Uplands.
At this time, the home was regimented but children were encouraged to take part in activities both on-site and outside the Uplands. A staff member at the time remembers: “we did do an awful lot of activities with them and you know, whilst it was within a structure you were always offered three or four things to do after school. Do you want to go to the cinema? Do you want to go up the Lickeys? Do you want to go trekking or do you want to stay around the building, relax and chill out and so forth? They were given options. But in those days they had to take one of them, there was no ‘I want to stay in my own room’, it just wasn’t an option in those days. You needed to know where they were, it was very structured, they would be with a group of staff and they would be supervised at all times.”
In 1981, the Uplands became a community home with education – one of the units that had on-site schooling and replaced the remand homes. The children stayed in the community home with education for a matter of years. Children also had less freedom and fewer opportunities for outside activities although they were still encouraged to maintain links with, and visit, their families.
At the time there were two other community homes with education in Birmingham – St John’s and Tennal – The Uplands was the smallest of the three.
Shortly after becoming a community home with education, the decision was taken to change it into three small groups for nine children rather than one large home. Each unit had its own facilities and staff. Havencroft was the group for the youngest children, Arrow was for the oldest young people, and Malvern was for the children in the middle. It would not have been unusual for children to have moved through all three units during their time at the Uplands.
In 2007, Brian Gillam, manager of the Uplands between 1973 and 1985 was convicted of child abuse that had taken place during his time in the Uplands.
Ossie O’Malley took over as principal of the Uplands in 1985 and remained there until shortly before it closed. Ossie remembers that the Uplands represented the end of the residential care road for many children: “When it was a CHE we had children up to four years because basically you didn’t achieve many young people going back to a children’s home. They’d been through the system, probably done two or three foster homes, a couple of children’s homes so really it was the end. You knew that you’d be caring for them until they left care. We always prided ourselves on the fact that we got a lot of young people rehabilitated back to the family in some area you know. We only had something like eight percent that went into custody or a secure setting of any kind.”
The Uplands closed as a children’s home in June 2010.
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Image: The main building less than a month after The Uplands closed in 2010.
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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.