A weekly programme which focuses on people and the situations which shape their lives
Reporters Jim Douglas Henry, Jeremy James, Jeanne La Chard, John Pitman, Gillian Strickland, Desmond Wilcox, Harold Williamson

This week: Children from Homes (2)
Few children survive, unscathed, the experience of being rejected by their own parents. Today 70,000 children are living in children's homes. Most of them return to their families as soon as possible, but there are still thousands who spend nearly all their childhood in a home. It is by what happens to these when they leave that we can judge the real success or failure of the institution as a mother substitute
Too many end up rootless and lonely, unable to hold on to either a job or a relationship. Too many, as adults, repeat the pattern of their childhood and end up by putting their own children into care
For those of us brought up in secure family backgrounds it is almost impossible to imagine what it can be like to be out in the world with not one person to whom you felt you belonged
Tonight Man Alive looks into the lives of some of the people who face just this situation - the Children from Homes

(Colour)