residential children's home to open in our street

[steppemum]

Got home last night and there is a letter through our door from a neighbour.
Apparently there is a planning application in to change the use of a house to a residential childrens' home. The letter was asking for people to put in ojections to the planning application.

I walked past the house today.
We are a quiet road, dead end, the house in question is large with big garden and another house built at the end of the garden (they built it and sold it off) It is close to neighbours but detached. Has its own large drive for parking. The application is for both the main house and the house in the garden to together become a childrens home.

I can't see what the problem is! I am tempted to put in a comment to the planners to say this is a nice quiet, safe road for a kids home.
I am glad that there will be more facilities as our council has a great deal of trouble finding enough foster homes.
We are detached but very close to neighbours, and we never hear a thing.

Am I being naive?
Is there any reason why this house might cause problems?
Honestly I just think this is NIMBY ism. But is that me being naive?

We lived in a large victoria house that one half was flats and the other was a childrens home. In the three years I lived there, the only issues were 1. A young boy about age 10 had a meltdown in the front garden and had the police out. Screaming for his dad, which was so sad. 2. Some loudish music played by one of the teens for a week, we mentioned to the stafd and they stopped it. 3. A boy about 12 had a stand off shouting match with one of the carers in the garden. That was it. The carers seemed nice when we spoke to them. They worked on shifts so switch over at night so parking is quite busy. Otherwise didn't really notice anything else.

I lived next to an adult residential home - a former family home converted to offer a home from home approach so in a residential neighbourhood. The only negative experience was staff not knowing where to park and parking in the wrong drive and blocking cars. A high turnover of staff meant it did happen quite often but just a a very slight annoyance!

There’s one a few streets from me. It does always smell of weed, and the teenage occupants try to abscond. It’s near a park entrance so I pass it frequently when walking my DDog.

The strangest thing that happened is that one of the young boys living there broke into my garden and garage and stole my rabbit. We were frantically looking, and a sheepish manager contacted me to tell me they’d found a rabbit matching the description of mine in his bedroom!

That’s exactly what the foster carers said who initially had teenage girls staying with them .
( City)
Predatory men can tell a vulnerable needy teen with attachment disorder at 500 metres, and the men loiter .

It’s like a sixth sense.

They are not “Boyfriends” they are predators.
Police couldn’t do much ( this was a good 15 yrs ago though).

Who said I didn't want the home in my area? I stated the reasons it was objected to, but I didn't say if I objected or not. You have made that assumption.

I simply said that the area wasn't suitable. You asked why the area wasn't suitable. I answered.

Ok buy none of the reasons in your reply mentioned which areas would be suitable for police and ambulances and families turning up? And it disrupting people's enjoyment of their area? Whose area are we meant to disrupt with these things if not yours?

A close friend manages children's homes, I would 100% object. You might be fine and it will be well run with unproblematic children. Or it will be a never ending conveyor belt of care staff, police, ambulances, social workers, screaming, shouting, smashing. Unfortunately it is more likely to be the latter, the kids who couldn't stay in foster care. There's no way of knowing who the residents will be, and of course it can change so I would not want to risk it.

You do realise other people can have different experiences to you don’t you?

I work with many children that sadly mive on from us into these kind of homes, I think it's amazing you're opening them with open arms! A lot of these children have never really experienced a proper home and need as much normality as they can get! don't get me wrong there will be some shouting or police showing up (usually because a child has gone missing and/or being returned after going missing) it really does depend on how well the children get on in the homes to how they mostly behave! if a new child comes in and can and does take a while for them all to gel and accept the new child. But the staff will be second to none and be so devoted to looking after these children! the workers are normally the salt of the earth

Next to you as you don't mind.

Where do you live as we could put all the children homes in your street.

I was one of those children. I was removed from addict parents in an abusive household. Despite an ACE score of 10, I was a straight A grammar school pupil. That didn’t stop snobby bastards deciding I was the “worst of the worst” and looking down their noses at me.

I’d rather live on an entire street of children’s homes than next door to a snobbish, judgemental nimby.

Millions of children live in normal boring houses in normal boring neighbourhoods, and suffer no ill effects. Troubled kids don't need a private gym and an Olympic-sized swimming pool, they need stability and meaningful relationships.

Potentially extraordinarily troubled ones.
A friend of mine is a social worker. She once descrbed to me the variety of resources they use to support children that are no longer with their families.
One of the facilities was in a local town, it has four children placed in it and has a staff of 18 associated with it. It costs the local authority over £250,000 per child per year to keep them there. She is of the view that the children are so mentally disturbed that thy can never be fostered and will need life-long support.

I imagine the OP does not want that sort of facility on her street.

It is like a sixth sense, isn't it! It doesn't help that newspapers print stories about places needing planning permission—'A house on Bloom close is seeking planning permission for a six-bed children's home'...

Which annoys me greatly because the addresses are meant to be confidential!

where would you put them then? in flats above kebab shops on main roads ????

such a revealing thread. These kids live this existence because no one wants them , so they'd rather go to an old man's arms who offers at least a soothing lie ?????

An orphanage then.

We recently viewed a property which was a few doors down from a 'children's home'. They were predominately refugees, smoking and spitting outside and it immediately put us off. I guess they were around 18, as this is how long the LA looks after them. But a few did look older.
I suspect it was why the family were selling as the house was an absolute bargain.
I admire your take on it, but we weren't willing to risk it.

There was a residential children's home in the village next to ours when i was at school. The children had experienced very troubled backgrounds. Some were really sweet and others more problematic. Looking back the main issue was that the place was run by young inexperienced staff in their early twenties, who had very little control over them. It was such a shame as these poor kids needed some security and to feel safe, yet the behaviour of some was intimidating. It's likely that the behaviour of some of the children will be disruptive and loud at times. But then, a residential street does sound like the perfect place for a children's home. I think that it just depends upon how many children and staff.

Hmmm - I’d be very wary of ‘autism provision’.

The noise can be past belief - day and night shrieking. It doesn’t stop. Staff can’t do much.

These children have been put into care or respite because they can’t live in the community. Ask at the planning meeting why anyone thinks they can live in yours.

Staff are usually lovely.

Waiting to be called a Can’t. Our experience was awful and resulted in medical treatment long term for one poor resident.

i say it every time this type of thread crops up. The same people who say they weep over children like Baby Peter, or Sara Sharif are the same ones who label teens as “damaged” or “mentally disturbed”.

We weep for the poor, neglected, abused children but oddly enough no one wants to deal with the impact of that abuse, to give these young people safe places to live, to recognise that the disruption, drug taking, exploitation are all a consequence of children being neglected and abused and be prepared to give them a chance. Yes it can be disruptive and challenging, but my god the language used to describe kids who are very often removed from incredibly unsafe, traumatic homes is appalling.

If those children had lived, these are the young people they’d likely grow into. In need of care, empathy and a lot of support and healing.

Exactly this.

I seem to recall Blackpool having an influx of private children homes being opened considering Blackpool's social ills I wouldn't have thought it would be the best place for children with potential issues.
I suppose the attraction for the home owners is cheap property=max profit.
Not slating Blackpool it's well documented that it has deprivation, drug problems etc.

Unfortunately in a similar setting we had problems- we weren't all that bothered by the police calls and increased activity, but we did take issue with our house and garden being repeatedly egged, along with shoes, cucumbers and other assorted items thrown at us. We did have to call the police on occasion, as we were ultimately worried about the safety of our pets if they inadvertently threw anything that could hurt them, but we spoke to the resident staff on several occasions before we had to escalate. After about a year, they moved elsewhere and the house was rented as a regular property again, but I still wish they'd been able to stay.

That said, I wouldn't inherently object to a similar house being set up nearby. There's no guarantee that we'd have the same experience again, and I'd always be happier to give it a chance than object before anything even happened. These kids need places to live! Ultimately I like where I live, it's a nice calm neighbourhood with a local shop and good bus routes, and I think there's no reason to deny youngsters those privileges just because there's a chance they might misbehave.

We live next to a children's home for older teens and they're very little trouble. As a PP said the staff run a tight ship and other than some occasional noise and weed smoke you would never know. They're less trouble than the house full of people in their 20s who rented it before the children's home. And as many other people have said, where are these houses supposed to be? They have to be on someone's street.