The author of this site

This site was started by Gudrun Limbrick in 2011.

Through my work as a social researcher, I interviewed hundreds of children about their time living in children's homes. While their experiences were all very different, there was a common thread which ran through all those interviews - there was simply not enough infomation about their time in care. Their own care records often did not exist, could not be released because they also talke about siblings or other familiy members or they were redacted to the point of being useless. To make matters worse, it was virtually impossible to find out even the most basic information about children's homes including where they were or how many children lived in there. One interview, frustrated about how little she could find out about her childhood said 'it is like my childhood never existed!'

This felt to me to be something I could help with. I got a grant of £2,000 to put together a history of Erdington Cottage Homes in Birmingham and I used some of the grant to set up a website to share what I was finding out about the Homes and invite contributors to the book. Interest in the website grew hugely in tyhe first days and weeks and it became clear that people wanted to know about children;s homes far beyond Bitmingham. I immediately switched the focus of the website from Erdington Cottage Homes to share information about homes through England.

People sent in memories and information and I trawled eBay for photographs and other bits and pieces. I added adverts onto the site to pay towards the costs of this.