Action for Children (formerly National Children’s Home) is a UK children’s charity committed to helping vulnerable and neglected children and young people, and their families, throughout the UK.
Through 650 projects and services based around the UK, the charity works with over 300,000 children, young people, and their families. It helps and supports people in areas as diverse as disability respite therapy, foster care, adoption and child neglect.
The website states: "We work to make sure every child and young person has the love, support and opportunity they need to reach their potential."
Its national headquarters is in Watford and it is a registered charity under English and Scottish law. In 2010/11 it had a gross income of £200 million, making it one of the 20 largest charities in the UK.
The first "Children's Home" was founded in 1869 by Methodist minister Thomas Bowman Stephenson who had been moved by the fate of street children in London. The first home was a renovated stable in Church Street, Waterloo. The first two boys were admitted on 9 July 1869. In 1871 the home was moved to Bonner Road, Lambeth, and girls were admitted. The home was approved by the Wesleyan Methodist Conference in the same year. A year later, in 1872, a second home was opened in Edgworth, Lancashire. An emigration scheme was set up in 1873 and a branch in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada opened.
The homes were divided into small family units run by a "house mother" and "house father" which was in marked contrast to the large institutions and workhouses common at the time. Training was also an important aspect. A childcare course was set up in 1878 and the graduates of this program were called "the Sisterhood" or "the Sisters of the children" went on to work in the Children's Home.
An Industrial School at Milton, Gravesend was taken over in 1875 and a children's refuge in Ramsey on the Isle of Man was taken over in 1882. With the opening of the Princess Alice Orphanage in Birmingham the Home was renamed to "Children's Home and Orphanage".
Further properties in Alverstoke, Hampshire, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, Frodsham in Cheshire, Bramhope, near Leeds were acquired and by 1908, the charity had grown to become the "National Children's Home and Orphanage".
In 1913 work began on a large site in Harpenden which would be home to over 200 children, with a print works for apprentices. It became the Head Office.
Many other new branches and schools were founded, including the first residential nursery branch in Sutton Coldfield in 1929 and the First Scottish branch in Glasgow in 1955.
It became an adoption agency in 1926 and expanded to work outside the UK in 1969, supporting children's social care development in southern Africa, the Caribbean and Central America.
The charity changed its name to "NCH Action for Children " in 1994 and to "Action for Children" in September 2008. The name changes reflected a shift away from providing children's homes (most of which have now closed) to a wider range of services.