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Ancestry UK

Todwick Grange Children's Centre, Todwick, near Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire

Todwick Grange Children's Centre, Sheffield Road, Aston, was opened by Sheffield City Council Children's Department in 1968. The premises, a former Victorian mansion, had previously been occupied by the National Coal Board. The Warden of the Centre was Kenneth Hodgson, former head of Redhill Classifying School, with Joyce Parrott, former Homes Advisor for Lancashire County Council, as Deputy Warden.

The centre was planned to take 30 children from aged from 5 to 15 years, and included facilities for on-site education. A small number of children were accommodated in 1968 until the conversion was completed the following year. The centre was organised into three floors, a first-floor group of fourteen children mostly with temporary problems, a ground-floor group of seven, mostly younger, children with similar problems, and a top-floor group of nine children needing longer term accommodation for which no other provision was suitable. Admissions might come from anywhere but parents were encouraged to accompany children on their arrival and to visit frequently or to have the children home for days or weekends wherever that was possible throughout their stay.

A full scale assessment of each child was completed within its first month of residence, but Kenneth Hodgson took the view that you cannot separate treatment and assessment and that it was important to begin addressing the issues raised by the admission on day one. Consequently, the majority of children returned to their former homes, whether parental, foster or adoptive within around six months with a small number going to other placements.

Unusually for the time, accommodation for staff was provided in newly built houses on the site, or by renting houses in Todwick village.

In 1992, a residential social worker named Malcolm Thompson was sentenced to six years' imprisonment for sexually abusing boys at the home over a seven-year period during the 1980s.

Records

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  • None identfied at present — any information welcome.

Bibliography

  • None identified at present.

Acknowledgment

  • Thanks to John Hudson for information on this home.

Except where indicated, this page () © Peter Higginbotham. Contents may not be reproduced without permission.