Couple spend life savings on home for vulnerable kids

Kevin and Daniel Oversby say there is often a "stigma" around children who have gone into residential care

A couple have spent their life savings on setting up a residential home to help vulnerable children "get a purpose in life".

Experienced foster carers Kevin and Daniel Oversby said they hope the home will offer children the space to eventually transition to loving families.

Adamas House, in Littledean, Gloucestershire, has been granted approval to open by Ofsted.

Kevin said: "Children in care don't always get the best opportunities in life. Our job, as a home, is to advocate for them, be their voice and demand the best for them."

Adamas House in Littledean was approved by Ofsted in July

"We've been fostering for quite a few years now," explained Mr Oversby.

"Throughout that journey of watching our most vulnerable children, we've seen stigmas being applied across certain areas.

"I think they [foster children] all deserve the same opportunity that every child gets," he added.

Mr Oversby said he and his husband had found many children placed in residential homes "feel that it's almost a punishment to be there" because they had already come through social care and foster care.

"Everyone one of these children, no matter what their background has been, the journey they have been on and the assumptions people make about what they'll end up being like - it does not have to be that way."

The residential care home is ready to accept the first two children

A small team of staff will provide round-the-clock care, every day of the year.

The couple are motivated by a desire to remove the stigma attached to children in care.

"We are training them in our ethos, giving them the freedom which will empower them, and this will then be injected into the children as well," he said.

Staff said they were excited to start working with the children in a "refreshing environment with new approaches to residential care," and with a "child-centred ethos at the heart of the home".

"Another massive part of why we are driven to do this is because inclusivity is so important for our most vulnerable children.

"But more often than not, exclusion is the way forward within bigger schools, especially when you get to high school," he said.

"These children are being pushed to one side."

Mr Oversby said the home would offer children the space to enable them eventually to transition to a loving family

Adamas House will be run as a not-for-profit organisation, with any money made reinvested into the home, or into a charitable arm, The Adamas Trust, set up in 2022.

The home is ready to take in its first two children and the team is awaiting profiles from local authorities, with Gloucestershire County Council being the preferred provider.

The council was approached for comment.