Nowhere Else to Go Disowned and Disabled

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

In the 20th century, thousands of children found themselves rejected by society

They were often children who had been abandoned by their families,

or who had physical or learning disabilities.

Today, we recognise the need to integrate such children,

but in the past, attitudes were very different.

NEWSREEL: 'The boy might have been admitted to hospital many years ago,

'had Mr Harris had his way.

'I was inclined to agree with him.

'For whatever the cause, home has been destroyed.

'Sometimes it may be better to take the children away

'to an institution.'

For many of Britain's rejected children,

family life was replaced by a childhood behind high walls.

For years and years,

I was ashamed to say I'd been in an orphanage, I hated that word

But 60 years ago, a revolution began

to change peoples' attitudes towards these children.

Every child was important, they were no longer a number,

they were no longer a group. This was wonderful.

The journey hasn't been easy.

Along the way there has been trauma, scandal and even horror.

NEWSREEL: 'Up to five hours a day tied to a post

'when he's being particularly difficult.'

It was what I call

"the drug-them-up-and-shut-them up" routine.

I was so heavily sedated, I could not stay awake.

In this series, we follow Britain's progress

in dealing with disabled or unwanted children.

This programme looks at the disowned -

those children, often abandoned

who grew up without a family of their own.

CROWS SQUAWK

BELL TOLLS

Vast orphanages like the one at Newsham Park in Liverpool

once haunted Britain's cities.

They were built to house society's outcasts,

children who needed to be rescued

from the destitution of life on the streets.

They were founded on the 19th century Poor Law

and run like a barracks.

Oh, you had to salute them, just like in the forces. Oh, yes.

You had to salute the master.

Long way up, short way down, that's what we were taught.

Slow march, quick march, about turn, all those drills.

Very, very severe. Very severe

George Bennett was brought here in 1937 along with his two brothers.

There was nowhere else for them to go.

The biggest providers of residential care

were still the big voluntary societies

and the kind of children they took in

were those...

Basically their parents couldn't cope any longer.

Orphans.

A mother whose husband had died ..

More often, a father whose wife had died

and he'd got to continue working but he couldn't look after his kids

One of the prevailing attitudes there was,

"Your parents have failed, we want you to stay here,

"we'll try and break the link with your family.

George's life in the orphanage was one

that echoed over a century of Victorian tradition.

But hundreds of miles away,

the world of pre-war childcare was about to undergo a revolution.

The O'Neill brothers from Newport in South Wales

were living in slum conditions

What happened to them

would transform the system of care forever.

There was ten of us in the family.

And...I was the second youngest ..

This one social worker had been visiting us over 200 times...

and then we were taken away.

Terry O'Neill was five when he was taken into care.

During the war,

he and his brother Dennis were moved from one home to another

But it was their experience of foster care

which would ultimately lead to a fundamental change in the law

In 1944, the two of them were delivered to a new foster home

a remote farm just outside the village of Hope in Shropshire.

It belonged to a Mr Gough.

He was a big, brutish fella.

His idea was to have us

to be working on the farm, kind of cheap labour, I suppose

Mr Gough wasted no time.

Both boys had to be up by six in the morning to bring in the cows.

He had to have everything done his way.

If you didn't do what he wanted, he'd punish us.

Hittings or thrashings.

You'd get them in the evening.

50, 100, up to 200 strokes.

We knew whatever we did, we'd get punished.

Lots of people say, "Well, why didn't you run away?

Well, when you were put in these places by...

..the powers that be,

you couldn't ask questions or anything,

you were put there and you were there to stay.

If unsupervised foster homes were brutal, the other main option

orphanages - were little better

Discipline at the Newsham Park orphanage

was backed by the threat of the cane.

And at night transgressions were punished by the prefects,

who would make offenders

run the gauntlet of the big boys in the dormitory.

Some boys, they resorted to kicks,

using a belt, a knotted towel, or even boots thrown down.

And it was no good a boy trying to dash through

because somebody would trip him up

and he'd get twice as much punishment then.

After they had been put through the ranks,

everybody jumped into bed,

the only noise was coming from the boys who'd faced the ordeal

But the masters never stopped it, because they knew what it was.

The prefects were doing their job for them.

The residential care system in the UK

was intended that it should be a punitive experience.

Being taken away from home was not intended originally

to convey very much benefit.

So there weren't that many people who were

particularly concerned about what went on

behind the relatively closed doors of children's homes at the time

There was no tender loving care or very, very little.

You sort of rose above it.

The only way I can describe it I know it's an old cliche,

"like it and lump it."

But a change in attitudes to the care of children was on its way

And it came partly as an accident of war.

Within weeks of the outbreak of fighting,

nearly a million children were dispatched from their homes

to escape the expected bombing

NEWSREEL: 'The departure of the children in particular

'has been a triumph of orderly precision.

'From cities and towns,

'children in their thousands have left their parents behind

'and been drafted off to safety zones.'

The war, or rather the evacuations,

were a complete turning point in terms of childcare.

'It is indeed a strange experience

'for these thousands of children,

'as well as great responsibility for those who will be caring for them

'during these dark days.'

For the first time,

a lot of middle class people in the rural areas

and other big cities where the children went to,

for the first time they saw poor children.

There were a lot of complaints about children having fleas,

about being untrained in going to the toilet.

But they were seeing the children

and generally, a wave of sympathy...

came up.

This new warmth towards evacuees fed into a wider public support

for changes to the chaotic system of institutions and fostering.

Back at the Goughs' foster home in Shropshire,

the calls for reform went unheard.

The O'Neill boys were facing a life of unyielding cruelty and hunger.

We'd be starving.

A round of bread for breakfast

round of bread for dinner

and a round of bread for tea,

and that was our main meals.

How did the Goughs eat? Well, the Goughs ate well,

but we never saw any of it, you know.

The 12-year-old Dennis was so desperate

that he had taken to sucking the udders of the cows

As the weather deteriorated,

Mr Gough made him break the ice on the cattle trough

and strip down to wash himself in the freezing cold.

Dennis already had a chest infection,

and he was getting the worst of the beatings.

One January night, things came to a head.

He went out to try to get some wood, and he come back with a few twigs.

Mrs Gough, she lost her temper she pulled him by the hair,

and said, "Wait till Gough comes home tonight."

And that was the night that he used the pig bench.

Mr Gough forced Terry to tie Dennis down on the bench

designed to be used for butchering pigs.

Then he was sent upstairs.

The sticks that they used,

they were like rough and knotted and what have you.

I could hear Dennis having thrashings.

I could hear Dennis's screams.

Dennis eventually crept up to bed.

But he was still whimpering.

Mr Gough had had enough.

After a while he came up...

..held Dennis down...

and started beating him on the chest.

When he went back down again, Dennis was crying,

but as time went on, he stopped

And I could feel...

the pain in my back...

where he was...

..clawing me. You know...

In so much pain.

In the morning, he was cold, still, lifeless.

Mrs Gough said,

"Don't worry about him, he can stay in bed this morning "

Which was something that never happened.

The Goughs phoned for a doctor but Dennis was already dead.

The police arrived at the farm the same morning.

Mr and Mrs Gough were arrested

Details of the killing soon reached the newspapers.

The savagery of Dennis's death horrified the nation.

There was an outpouring of anger that the care system

could lead to such neglect.

Dennis O'Neill's death was the catalyst

behind a change of legislation and a new attitude towards care

The Children's Act of 1948

was a very significant point

in the history of institutional childcare.

The Poor Law is abolished and there's a whole new system

to supervise and implement

the housing of children in need

The reforms embraced the optimism of the post-war period.

Alongside the nascent welfare state,

they looked to banish the ills of the past.

Every child was important.

They were no longer a number.

They were no longer a group,

it was a duty of the children's department

to give personal care to every child.

This was wonderful.

As Britain moved into the 1950s

the new legislation was changing the structure of care

But the science of child development also began to evolve.

New thinkers were exploring

the emotions within a child's experience.

The British psychiatrist John Bowlby pioneered attachment theory

by looking at groups of difficult children.

What I noticed was that there were children who were being referred

for...persistent thieving...

..truancy, who were regarded as hard-boiled and incorrigible.

What I spotted was that they had had very, very disruptive childhoods.

John Bowlby was particularly well-known

for his theory of attachment disorder and maternal deprivation.

Through observing children in hospitals

and through observing delinquent children -

he did a study of 44 delinquent children -

and found that the one thing they all had in common

was that at some point their relationship with

mostly their mothers had been disrupted in some way

The 1952 film, A Two-Year-Old Goes To Hospital

documented the impact of eight days

in the life of a child taken away from her parents.

FILM FOOTAGE: 'This is Laura in her garden at home.

'Laura has never been away from her mother's care.

'But in two days' time, she will go to hospital to have a minor operation.'

The film was based on Bowlby's work.

It sought to demonstrate the impact on the child of removing,

even temporarily, the main emotional bond.

'When the nurse says, "Come and see the rocking horse

'Laura says, "You come too, Mummy."

'But goes quite cheerfully without her.

'She resists entering the strange bathroom,

'and at this moment, just as her face is hidden,

'she bursts into tears and cries, "I want my mummy."

' "I want my mummy.

' "Where has my mummy gone?" '

The film charts eight days in the little girl's stay in hospital.

Each day without her mother, Laura becomes more withdrawn.

'Today it takes longer to make contact,

'and although the nurse tries hard to cheer her up with toys,

'Laura doesn't respond.

'During the morning, she wet her bed.

'This upset her and she smacked the hospital doll hard and repeatedly,

'saying, "Naughty dolly." '

Bowlby studied hundreds of children's early emotional attachments.

He deduced that they were a critical part

of their development as individuals.

His ideas were the building blocks for the care of disowned children.

'She doesn't respond at all to play.'

It was a hugely significant theory

and really is still shaping welfare policy even today.

"Children deprived of a normal family home,"

that was the fundamental phrase that was very important

in shaping institutional childcare in the later 20th century -

this focus on trying to replicate as much as possible normal family life.

'Her mother arrives first.

'Again, there is a period of reserved, unresponsive behaviour

'with no attempt to get close to her mother.'

This maternal deprivation was shown to cause serious problems

for a child's future mental health.

But the research pointed to an unexpected solution,

given the still simmering outrage at Dennis O'Neill's death.

NEWSREEL: 'These children need a home they can call their own

'They need a normal, boisterous family life.

'They need foster parents.

'The finding has to be done by the local authority.

'They're sending out a new kind of official.'

In 1950, the government's public information unit

produced a film encouraging people to take up fostering.

FILM: 'Now, these two I've been watching for some time.

'Their mother died recently of TB,

'their father's disappeared.

'Nobody but an old grandfather. .'

Fostering had always been there

but as a minority part of the care industry.

Under the new legislation, all this was to change dramatically.

The '48 act said that fostering was the ideal method.

They argued that children needed a family.

They may not have their own families

but they had more chance of getting a family

if they were moved into a foster home than into a children's home.

Bob Holman became one of the first generation of childcare officers,

a new army of professionals.

Here was the formation of a new occupation...childcare.

People just doing childcare.

NEWSREEL: 'Already 25,000 children are living with foster parents.

On top of finding new foster families,

they still had to deal with homes and orphanages.

Children's departments,

they had power over voluntary children's homes.

Power to inspect, power to strike off.

Within a year of the new legislation,

Newsham Park was closed,

and other big orphanages began to be humanised.

And in the wake of Bowlby's work,

the homes themselves were becoming smaller, more similar to families.

Care was softened.

And efforts were made to banish the institutional feel

of the old regimes forever.

WOMAN: 'We look after about 100 children.

'We have them in small groups, and each group is looked after

'by two or three of the staff.

In the 20 years after the war, the chances of an abandoned child

going into an institution dropped by nearly a third,

while the chances of finding a foster home

increased by the same amount.

The 1950s were a time of increasing affluence in Britain

But things were not easy for those caring for children

who had been disowned by their families.

The end of the war had brought levels of childbirth to a new peak.

The post-war baby boom put new stresses on the care system

There was a massive surge of children coming into care from 1 48.

This was partly because a lot more soldiers had come home,

got family, had children, there was a great rise in the birth rate

Also, there was a larger number of family break-ups.

So the departments were just struggling to get children in care.

The question was how to cope with this glut of unwanted children?

In post-war Britain,

giving birth out of wedlock was still a powerful taboo.

Unmarried mothers were stigmatised.

Stomach's turning over a bit.

Frightening.

When Lyn Rodden became pregnant in 1956,

she was brought here to Rosemundy House,

a mother and baby home in Cornwall.

Basically you were a slapper.

That is the only way I can describe it.

You were the worst in the world

And they treated you like that

They sort of said, "Oh, she's pregnant,

"she got what she deserves."

You know, that type of attitude and...

you were a social outcast basically.

Rosemundy was just one of a network of homes

where thousands of unmarried mothers gave birth in secret.

Six weeks after her baby was born, Lyn was told

she had to take him by train on her own to Bath,

to be handed over to new parents.

The worst day of my life.

I got to this office and I walked in.

There was a chair and I sat there, and she eventually came out.

And she said "Name", so I gave me name...

"Baby's name", gave the name.

"Right, bring him over here," took him over.

She said, "Just one moment, don't go away."

She went into another room, she came back out.

"Right, you better go now," she said.

"Get the taxi and get back to your train

"and get back as quick as you can.

"Thank you very much, goodbye.

It was just like handing a parcel over at the Post Office.

I walked out of that door and I wanted to run back,

but I knew that if I did, I wouldn't have got anywhere.

So I got back up to the station got on the train

and I cried all the way back here.

And it stills hurts.

NEWSREEL: Babies are easy of course.

Always plenty of people who want young, cuddly ones.

The surge in numbers of illegitimate births fuelled a baby industry

as childless couples found a natural supply of takeaway babies to adopt.

NEWSREEL: 'The London offices of the National Adoption Society,

'a society which has one of the pleasantest jobs in the world

'to create happy families.

'It's a wrench to part from your baby

'but this mother had decided it would be better off with parents

'who could give it all the things she can't.'

This contemporary film portrays adoption

as a common sense solution for all involved.

'It may be fancy of course,

'but he seems to take to his new parents straight away.'

In the documentary's idealised vision of adoption,

babies come with no strings attached.

'There are one or two formalities -

'a child's ration book and identity card have to be handed over -

'and in three months' time, if everything goes well,

'the name on them will be changed to that of his new mother and father.'

At Rosemundy House,

mothers and adopters were kept strictly separate.

Visits from adopting couples were carefully choreographed.

When prospective parents were due to visit,

you were sent...upstairs to a room and you could look out the window

and watch them looking at the babies.

But you weren't allowed out while they were there.

It was a process sanitised for the adopters.

A showroom for disowned babies

But it left a trail of emotional turmoil.

You're wondering, all the time "Where did he go?"

And every little boy you see who should be his age,

you look and you think, "I wonder what he's doing now.

It's just heart-wrenching, it's just...

It's like somebody pulling pieces out of you.

The system kept mothers and adopters apart at every level.

There were persuasive reasons to preserve anonymity.

The need for secrecy arose

because having an adopted child could be a visible sign

that you had fertility problems

Which, obviously, in a period when people were much more private

about their medical issues, they didn't want to broadcast.

NEWSREEL: 'One more of the thousands of families

'which owe their happiness to the National Adoption Society.

'The demand for babies is far greater than the supply

'as you can see from these files of people

'waiting to adopt children.'

Finding babies new parents was seen as a way

of laundering the stigma of their birth.

But adoption was not the only route to a fresh start.

The majority of disowned children were still in the hands

of large care homes.

Many of the homes were also seeking new ways

to cope with the surge in numbers.

'Yes, they're feeling happy, their hopes are high, their future bright.'

Shipping children to Britain's former colonies -

particularly Australia and Canada -

was one way for the churches and charities

to remove some of the surplus youngsters.

One of the things I do remember is somebody

coming into the classroom one day

and saying, "Who wants to go to Australia?"

Well, we all hated where we were so we all put our hands up, I think.

NEWSREEL: 'At the Overseas League HQ, a number of young emigrants

'to Australia were recently entertained before their departure.'

This migration of children in care began in the 19th century,

but it was still going on in the 1960s.

It was felt that these children were tainted, their prospects poor.

'That, in the midst of all her troubles, she's able to...'

We have the attitude from the British end of...

Almost a fear of these children from the wrong side of the tracks,

setting down a path that will lead to crime and social problems,

and they need to be redeemed from that in some way.

And they were a problem for us here in the UK,

because they would be the kinds of children

who would create social problems, given their position in society

Patrick McGowan had been living in a Catholic orphanage

in Belfast for eight years.

An official came to his classroom

with an offer that was pure deception.

We were told, "You'll be riding to school on a horse,

"and you'll be picking bananas off the trees on the way to school."

Anybody would have gone for that,

even people with parents would have jumped at that one.

NEWSREEL: 'White sands and blue waters.

'When the kiddies get to the beaches, they become real diggers.'

But the reality of life in Australia proved very different.

When the boys got off the boat in Fremantle,

they were swiftly moved to Bindoon, a Catholic home,

where the 11-year-old Patrick

was given hard manual labour, along with the other children.

Bindoon was pretty tough.

When I got to Bindoon, I got a khaki shirt,

a khaki pair of pants and that was it.

No underwear, bare feet.

For the first couple of years that I was at Bindoon

we worked and worked and worked on the buildings.

But there wasn't any education and that was the big one.

One of the mottos of Bindoon was,

"If you can work with your hands, you don't need your brains."

Over the years, 150,000 children were transported

to Britain's former colonies.

Many of them faced harsh lives at best, and often abuse.

But for the councils and charities mainly responsible for childcare,

it was an ideal solution.

NEWSREEL: 'Across the continent in Perth, Western Australia,

'child migrants in the Fairbridge Farm School

'started their celebrations.'

Voluntary societies, such as Barnardo's,

thought they were doing work, not only for child rescue

but also something that was for the benefit of empire.

So with that extra political spin,

they were able to convince governments

that this was something that the British state should finance.

And they did.

For five decades, Britain sponsored the migration of children

to the former colonies, paying as much as three quarters of the costs.

The practice came to an end in 1970,

but the advantages throughout were conspicuous.

The theory was to populate empty nations with "good white stock.

I think they saw an opportunity to get rid

of all these kids from England and they sent them to other colonies

where they could populate...

..and breed and work.

Far from the fun and fresh air they had been promised,

many of these children had nothing to look forward to but brutality.

Worst of all, attempts to trace their families

were often met with lies.

My records are just nothing, there's nothing there.

You know, medical history, you name it.

I can't find anything about myself.

I don't think I'll ever find out who my forbears are.

In my darkest moments I think, "Why the secrecy?"

I mean, I'm a human being,

I'm worth something.

I need to be identified, I need to identify where I come from.

"Dear Mr and Mrs Steinson...

"we can now offer you a baby boy.

"Baby Burrows was born on the 17th of the 9th, 1956..."

'Lyn's son Mark was luckier than Patrick.

'He could at least trace his birth mother.

'The documents he has found seem mainly concerned

'with reassuring the new parents about Lyn's moral fitness.'

"Her medical is good and the doctor says she is a healthy girl

"and comes from a decent type of family.

"She was jilted by the punitive father shortly before the wedding.

"If you would like to have this baby,

"will you please come to this office

"at 2:30PM on Friday the 7th of November, 1956.

"Please confirm this appointment.

"Yours sincerely..."

There you go.

I was treated like a parcel,

it was very matter of fact.

They weren't married...

they had an accident...

and I'm the product of it.

Like many adopted children, and indeed those fostered,

Mark found loving parents and a happy home.

But he still felt a need to trace his origins.

It's nice to know where you came from.

It was, sort of, like a big relief...

that I found...

you know, my...

you know, my...

place.

KLAXON SOUNDS

By the early 1960s, mass immigration was well established.

As well as West Indian and Asian migrants,

there was a boost in arrivals from Britain's former African colonies.

These new families would have a dramatic impact on the care system,

as they did on many parts of British society.

# Happy birthday to you... #

In 1968, the BBC made a ground-breaking film

about the experience of black children in a care home.

WOMAN: There you are, that's for the other table.

Sometimes I wonder if we are overprotecting our children

because I have 14 in my care..

..and I do feel the responsibility quite a lot.

But things have changed in the past two or three years in childcare

and this is very much a family home.

The impact of immigration on homes like this was immediately visible.

A disproportionate number of black and mixed race children

were taken into care,

partly as a result of high levels of family breakdown.

One former resident of a similar children's home

was the athlete Kriss Akabusi.

Akabusi won fame as a sprinter in the 1984 Olympics,

and became one of our best-known athletes.

When he arrived in Britain in the early '60s, aged four,

he and his brother were handed over to private carers,

while his parents returned to newly-independent Nigeria.

I remember...

jumping on a plane during the day...

..and landing in the UK at night.

And I remember the change in the atmosphere

and I remember standing outside the home in Brighton looking up at it

and my mother was telling me

this was going to be my new home...

..and then turning round and my mum was gone.

After four years, the money to pay the unregistered carers dried up,

and the two Akabusi boys were abandoned.

They ended up wandering the streets

until they were picked up by a local authority

children's home in Enfield.

At that time, most of the carers -

they were all white and most of the incumbents,

the young people there, were black children.

Anywhere you go, you knew you were very different.

People would stop and stare at you.

Kids would say stuff... Adults would say stuff.

I mean gosh, all the jokes that you would be getting

about your lips and your nose.

WOMAN: Do you mind if I drive, Raymond?

Once lodged in a children's home,

black or mixed race kids often found it hard to leave.

The most likely exit - into fostering - was often blocked

because foster parents were almost exclusively white.

My bedroom was over...

Over the gravel drive...

and two or three times in a year, there would be a day

where adults would come to have a look at the children.

After a while, you begin to understand what's going on -

it's an interview process going on.

And of course the younger children would get fostered or adopted,

and my brother and I always got overlooked, every time, overlooked.

As you get to 8, 10, 12, no-one wants two black kids...

..and you knew really that this was your life.

MUSIC: "Silence Is Golden" by The Tremeloes

# Don't it hurt deep inside

# To see someone

# Do something

# To her... #

The BBC's film presented the care system

in the midst of a cultural transformation,

as the country embraced the permissive society.

# Silence is golden

# But my eyes still see

# But my eyes still see. #

This was a decade of radical change.

Social and sexual attitudes became more relaxed.

Much of the stigma of illegitimacy began to disappear

with the arrival of the birth control pill and legalised abortion.

'But more liberal ideas had also begun to affect

'how society approached juvenile delinquency and youth crime.'

Young offenders had always been treated separately

from most of those in care.

Delinquents were often held in approved schools.

One piece of landmark legislation changed all this.

It brought to an end the network of approved schools

and brought their inmates into the care system.

The 1969 Children and Young Person's Act

introduced a whole range of new powers

and measures that enabled local authorities

to bring and take children into care.

That included children who were committing crime.

Under the 1969 Act, the whole nature of residential care changed.

It was briefly described

as bringing together the depraved and the deprived.

Up until that point,

the care system had been characterised by very much a focus

on the welfare of children from the early '70s onward,

what I think we saw was the steady criminalisation of the care system.

So what you actually create is a broad and wide perspective

that the care system

and children's homes in particular are for children

who must be there because they've done something wrong,

they've done something bad, they've done something naughty

'With younger children increasingly being fostered,

'many of the difficult adolescents now arriving in children's homes

'tended to confirm society's prejudices.'

There was really a dramatic change in that time

and it did cause problems and these older children,

some of them were, their behaviour deteriorated quite considerably

in the community and people

did not like having children's homes as their neighbours.

While some children were becoming hard to control,

they were all about

to face a massive reorganisation of the system.

From the start of the 1970s, a new breed of social worker

replaced the old childcare officers.

Many of them lacked training and childcare experience.

Kids like Kriss Akabusi felt the personal touch was missing

No-one's going to turn up for your prize day, no-one's going to turn up

for your sports day, no-one's going to...

speak to the teachers on your behalf.

You just got accustomed to it, you realised that you...

I tell you what, I think you realise

that you are on your own in this world.

What the structure, form and order in the children's home

provides is the safety but it doesn't provide intimacy

You've got the regularity

but you've got nobody that is interested in YOU,

you're not a person,

you're just one of number of kids that come through the system.

A children's home could provide

close, caring relationships, and security.

But not love.

The BBC film featured Raymond, wondering about his prospects.

RAYMOND: I'm 15 and I'm leaving school. .

and I'm glad I'm leaving school

I mean, I'm not learning anything

and it doesn't seem to be about much.

For Raymond, the future meant another form of regimentation.

I think being in the army's a man's job,

if there isn't a war, that is,

because I don't want to kill anybody like.

Kriss Akabusi did the same thing.

He joined the army in 1975.

When I made that transition, I had to join the army

because when I was 16? and I started looking at jobs

mechanical engineer, lathing, Eastern Gas,

all that sort of stuff, the thing that petrified me

was that I was going to have to go to bedsit land,

I am going to have to go out of the children's home,

into a bedsit, cook for myself

wash my clothes, secure my room

It was frightening.

KIDS LAUGH

MAN: Come on.

I don't worry about the future

I don't worry too much about the present either.

All I want is for things to keep changing,

so that you don't have to get bored.

Kriss Akabusi's later career

showed that care could be a pathway to success,

even if it left its mark.

But throughout that time,

belief was growing among children's workers

that it was almost always better

to send those in care back to their birth parents.

John Bowlby's work on attachment was sometimes used

to justify this approach.

As a childcare officer, I was amongst those

who began to put children back in touch with their natural parents.

This sometimes caused conflict some foster parents didn't like it,

but, by and large, it worked out.

Re-uniting children in care with their birth parents -

rehabilitating them - became the guiding principle of the profession.

But 30 years after the O'Neill case,

a new tragedy was about to challenge this thinking.

The Colwell case occurs at a really interesting time

in the history of childcare in the UK.

We've always, seemed to me, to be oscillating

somewhere between a rescue model,

whereby the answer to familial problems

is to remove children, to break the cycle that way.

The other approach, the rehabilitation approach

is to do everything we can

to work with the child and family in situ.

And the Colwell case occurs

just at the point where that pendulum was swinging.

Maria Colwell was a seven-year-old girl

from the Whitehawk council estate in Brighton,

who had been in care for most of her life.

She had been fostered by her aunt for several years.

She appeared to be a happy, normal little girl.

But in accordance with the now-standard policy,

in 1971 she was returned to her birth mother.

Two years later, she was introduced to a new teacher at school.

I can remember now...

..the secretary bringing her in

in the middle of one morning and saying, "Oh, this is Maria.

And she said something about, she'd been fostered.

I got the impression that she'd been in and out of foster care

I was immediately struck...

by how withdrawn she was.

It wasn't that she was just a quiet child and sat there...

..and didn't cause any problems

She was withdrawn.

Ann Turner had just started working

as a teacher at Whitehawk Primary School.

Maria was often hungry,

and one day, came to her after class with a confession.

She came up and said, "I'm sorry, Mrs Turner,

"I took the sweets..."

And she started crying...

..and I got hold of her, I gave her a hug,

I put her on my lap

and I gave her a cuddle and I could FEEL her bones.

I realised she was just bones.

Ann Turner had started to ask questions

about Maria's home life with her mother and stepfather

Reports of the family's cruelty were everywhere on the estate.

Several times, Maria was sent to buy coal,

and seen pushing the heavy bags up the hill to her house in a pram

She must have been a tough little thing in a way...

..but I can't comprehend how anybody...

could ask a child to do that.

Despite repeated visits by social workers,

and reports from neighbours, nothing was done.

At the start of the spring term, 1973,

Maria failed to turn up to school.

When break time came,

I started to cross the playground,

I was going to the headmaster to say,

"I'm staying in your office until you find out where she is "

As I crossed the playground, a child from another class came up to me

and said, "Mrs Turner, Maria won't be in school today.

"Oh", I said, "She's poorly?"

"No, Mrs Turner, she's dead."

Maria had been starved

and ferociously beaten by her stepfather.

Despite all the suspicions, nobody was prepared

to challenge the basic principle that birth mother is best.

Maria's death was a turning point.

It showed shockingly that a child's natural mother

was not always the best protector

and that taking children from their parents

could be in their best interest

In our changing society,

child abuse within the family was emerging as a horrific possibility

from which vulnerable children had to be protected.

You've got to remember that child abuse and child harm

were still relatively new concepts at the time.

One of the important legacies of the Colwell case was the fact that

based on the recommendations, the government issued

guidance and guidelines for local authorities to follow

in cases where child abuse, child harm was being suspected

and that formed the basis for guidance

that survived almost intact from then until now.

In the 1970s, the new guidelines drew more troubled

and vulnerable youngsters into homes

and foster care for their own protection.

As a result, many care homes were dealing almost exclusively

with unruly teenagers and the system was close to breakdown.

For some, the critical priority was controlling the residents

at any cost, sometimes with brutal consequences.

Well, it brings back a lot of memories,

bad ones, to be honest with you

When I was first in here I was like a teenager.

Some of the things that happened in here...

were just horrible.

I mean, no kid should go through that.

Jason Carroll from Stoke had been repeatedly in care

from the age of five.

His father was a single parent whose frequent stays in hospital

meant his children were removed to local homes.

When he arrived at the Hartshill Road home,

he was given what was regarded as a form of treatment

The first time I ever went there, me dad was actually with me.

Then the next thing I know, my dad had left

and I'm being escorted up the stairs, so to speak...

..and chucked in a room...

removed of all me clothes, just left with me pants.

There was nothing in the room, just a bed, no covers or nothing.

And I was given a sleeping bag and that was it.

So, yeah, I was locked up.

This was Pindown - a method of control by isolation

devised by a social worker to deal with unruly teenagers.

At weekends, while I wasn't able to go to school,

they just used to give me the phonebook.

That was my entertainment.

For six years, Pindown would be common practice

across four of the main Staffordshire homes.

But in another part of the country, another authority

was experimenting with even more radical forms of restraint

I knew that place was bad once I was inside it.

I sat on the stairs crying and one of the girls said to me -

it was actually one of the girls that told me -

that if I didn't stop crying that I will find myself being drugged.

She was right because I got there at four o'clock

and I was being drugged by the next morning.

Teresa Cooper had been in care all her life.

In 1981, aged 14, she was moved from a Wandsworth children's home

and taken to a girls' secure unit in Kent.

Although troubled, she was not a particularly difficult teenager,

but while there she was subjected to massive doses of psychotropic drugs,

intended for the mentally ill.

It was what I call

the "drug-them-up-and-shut-them up routine".

I was so heavily sedated, I could not stay awake.

Nobody, adults could not stay awake on those levels of drugs

and they punished me for that quite a lot.

Teresa was given a number of very powerful drugs,

including the psychiatric drug Largactil

and large amounts of Valium.

Her records show she was administered 11 separate drugs

in quantities far above the recommended levels.

Such experimental methods were by now a part of childcare

as social workers tried to cope with a system in crisis.

As far as I was concerned, I didn't really know what they were doing.

But...

Every time I knocked on the door or asked for something

or asked to go to the toilet..

you wouldn't get a response sometimes for hours.

Or probably the next day.

And if you kept on banging, they'd come in and give you a good hiding.

Pindown was brutal in its simplicity.

It was supposed to head off potential aggression

but it mainly appeared to inflict it.

Kicking, punching, stamping on. .

..hitting you with stuff.

The staff there didn't deal with you,

they just gave you a good hiding and locked you up.

And that was it. Basically it was prison, it was lock up.

This ruthless approach seemed to be based on solid research

and consequently gained acceptance in some quarters.

The one thing that is impossible to say about the Pindown experience

is that it wasn't very widely known because it was.

What becomes a scandal, what becomes headline news,

to most people who were involved at the time,

seems very much business as usual.

It seems very routine, very ordinary.

Three, four, five, six members of staff

just appear from nowhere.

They would inject me in my back in my arms, in my legs, in my buttocks.

My neck, they got me once, they got me in my neck once.

The famous words they used every time they done it

was "Just think of England" and that was their famous words

"Just think of England."

The Kendall House regime was not a secret either.

Only a year before Teresa arrived, an ITV film crew had come here

to report on the notorious drug policies emerging in care

They used archive footage of disturbed children

to make a key point.

ITV PROGRAMME: It's children like these,

severely disturbed and often violent,

who are most likely to be subjected to treatment with drugs,

although few of them have been diagnosed

as having specific mental disorders.

These are all used primarily in the treatment of schizophrenia.

They CAN certainly be used for calming,

but you need very high doses

and you tend to get very unpleasant side effects at that sort of dose.

Teresa remained at Kendall House for three years

and was administered drugs on 1,248 separate occasions.

She has campaigned for many years for the government

to recognise its role in the abuse

that was carried out on hundreds of children in care.

They were trying to find, I believe, some miracle...

..answer, some unique method to control children.

They were experimenting.

They wanted to find a cure for delinquency,

I think that's what it was.

Such radical approaches for controlling wayward children

were eventually rejected, but the authorities were slow to act.

It took six years for Pindown to be recognised for what it was.

The inquiry, when it came, was damning.

I think it was totally unacceptable.

It was, in our view, unlawful

and it's something that ought never, ever again, to recur.

The use of drugs was investigated by social services

and Kendall House closed in 198 .

Drugs were being used in care

as a means, primarily as a means of controlling children's behaviour.

So we do know it went on but it's very difficult to say

how prevalent it was.

Certainly by comparison to the other types of abuse

that we know were pretty much pervasive throughout...

not just England but throughout the United Kingdom.

By the 1990s, the abuse of children in care

was becoming more public, as brutal stories began to filter out.

Enough harrowing evidence has emerged to make Terry O'Neill

sceptical about whether any real progress

has been made since his brother's death.

Somebody said to me, "Your case brought it out into the open."

It hasn't brought it anywhere.

NEWS REPORTER: A judge says he used his considerable talent

in pursuit of "evil and lustful desires."

The incidents, both sexual and physical,

are said to have occurred at children's homes

in North Wales over more than 20 years.

But Anna died because she was tortured with boiling water...

'60 years on, the abuse of children has become a familiar reality.

Child deaths, paedophile rings, and abuse inquiries seem commonplace.

What was once invisible has become a background

to the same barbaric story.

MAN: "I want my mummy."

But progress had been made.

John Bowlby's lasting influence is clear.

Its fundamental truth goes to the heart of the care experience.

People who have a first impression on me,

see a very gregarious...

..enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky person and that is me.

But if you speak to my...

family, they know...

that I am actually quite an introvert, and quite withdrawn

I'm quite cold, quite distant.

My survival technique...

was to withdraw into a private world.

I've been able to cut off...

those emotional and psychological receptors...

..you know, and have that wall around me...

that means you are impregnable, in that respect.

NEWSREEL: But when her mother says, "Are you coming home?"

Laura replies, "Oh, yes, yes."

She is still cautious, however

and only the sight of her outdoor shoes seems to convince her.

She cries happily to the observer, "I'm going home with my mummy.

The plan to empty Britain of its soulless institutions

has been realised, though it has taken over half a century.

By the turn of the millennium,

two thirds of all children in care were being fostered.

We have learned to put the child at the centre of our thinking.

But for many of those involved

the journey has been one of pain and loss.

For years and years,

I was ashamed to say I'd been in an orphanage or an institution.

I hated that word.

It's that guilty feeling.

You've got it all your life, when you see other boys running around

and you think, "I gave mine away "

I don't quite know what else I could have done but...

..I do feel I let her down.

MAN SIGHS

I don't know, maybe it's fate but I did end up in prison.

This might sound strange but..

it did feel like home.

Next time, the story of how disabled children growing up

after the war challenged the old order of institutions,

poor education and patronising care.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd