INTRODUCTION

We have already seen that the preference in Scotland (sometimes legal, always factual) has long been for children who have had to be removed from their parents to be accommodated in domestic settings – in other words, boarded-out in a family environment with foster carers. Nevertheless, there have always been some cases in which it is necessary to accommodate children and young people in an institutional setting. But just as foster care offers individual children different experiences depending on the circumstances and character of the foster carer, so institutional care was and is composed of a wide variety of environments. Some set out to mimic as far as possible a family setting: the best known in Scotland was probably Quarrier's Homes, in rural Renfrewshire, which consisted of a number of detached houses each accommodating around 15 children and each house being

Other institutions, typically housing large numbers of children, were “cold and forbidding abodes”.

The nature of these institutions, their aims and philosophies, and the extent to which the state has been involved in their running, control or supervision, changed over time and the relationship between institutional care and the state today is very different from what it was 150 years ago. This chapter will look at the development of residential schools, before moving on to children's homes, and will end with an examination of how secure (locked) accommodation for children and young people evolved in Scotland.

REFORMATORY AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

THE GROWTH OF REFORMATORY AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

The “reformatory movement” grew out of a number of disparate attempts across Europe to provide education and skills-training instead of punishment to children whose life circumstances had thrown them into criminality. In both France and Germany philanthropic societies and individuals had established institutions to accommodate such children from the early nineteenth century.