Former Barnardo’s boy Phil Frampton puts case for children’s homes on Channel 4’s The Insider

Writer Phil Frampton, who was raised in a Barnardo’s children’s home, will make the case for residential child care over foster care in a Channel 4 programme The Insider: Orphanages this evening.

The former chair of the Care Leavers’ Association will claim that his upbringing in a home gave him a better start than that given to many children in foster care today.

Frampton, who wrote a memoir about his care experience, will argue the shortage of foster carers triggers frequent and damaging moves for children in care, making residential care a better bet.

However, the programme has been criticised by residential provider Shaftesbury Homes and Arethusa .

Chief executive Hilton Dawson said: “Phil Frampton is an excellent chap and his work on the care system is required reading. However, his argument setting residential care against foster care is quite misplaced and would serve children badly.”

Dawson, a former MP and social worker, said children needed a range of high-quality options and warned against a return to the institutions of the past.

The Insider is screened at 7.30pm this evening.

Have your say
Foster or residential care: what should the government prioritise to improve the lives of children in care?

Join the debate on Community Care’s discussion forum

Related articles
Review of The Insider: Orphanages

Phil Frampton’s interview with Jilly Cooper about her novel Wicked and its hero Paris, a teenage boy in a children’s home

Information on adoption and fostering