A Home from Home? Children and Social Care in Victorian and Edwardian Britain

This talk shifts the narrative away from welfare institutions and organisations to tell the story of children who experienced the care system in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on her new book, Soares offers insights about the centrality of key ideas about home, family, and nurture that shaped welfare provision. Using first-hand accounts, the talk will locate the voices and subjectivities of institutionalised children and their families within the voluntary welfare system between 1870 and 1920 to explore how children gave meaning to their experiences of care and the impact it had on their everyday lives/ It highlights the parallels and continuities with children’s welfare and care now, many of which remain pressing issues today.