Show Notes
Send us Fan Mail Some conversations burn slowly and then glow for days. Sitting down with Louise Allen, we trace a line from a childhood rewritten by others to a life spent restoring names, dignity, and futures. Louise grew up in care, became a long‑term foster carer, and now writes bestsellers that refuse to look away. She talks candidly about forced adoption, the quiet children who go unseen, and the neighbour who saved her by offering what the system couldn’t: warmth without conditions and...
More from The Secure Start® Podcast
Send us Fan Mail The word “love” can feel risky in child protection, but we keep coming back to it because the best care is never just a checklist. I'm joined by Kate Brown, an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist and supervisor, former therapeutic community practitioner, and editor-in-chief of the Attachment journal. Kate also completed a PhD on the Cotswold Community, asking a deceptively hard question: what was the “unspoken but unmistakable” presence of love that people wrote a...
Send us Fan Mail If you’ve ever watched a care team get dragged into chaos and wondered why “good practice” disappears under pressure, this conversation gives you a clearer answer than blame or burnout. We sit down with Simon Benjamin, founder of Blue Skies Independent Consulting, to unpack a hard truth from trauma informed therapeutic care: great outcomes for children are built on organisational health, not just individual skill or good intentions. We talk leadership from the inside out, in...
Send us Fan Mail A young person once told our guest, “You’re the first adult I’ve ever had a conversation with.” That single line sets the tone for a deep, practical look at what makes therapeutic residential care work and what quietly breaks it. I sit down with Doug, an evaluator and long-time practitioner in youth and community work, to talk about how trust is built through small, repeatable actions and why being heard can be a turning point for children and young people living with complex...
Send us Fan Mail If you think you can do therapeutic residential care and leave it all at the door, Marie Clutton has a gentle challenge for you. Young people notice what we carry, even when we do our best to hide it, and they can spot the difference between performance and authenticity in seconds. That single truth reshapes how we think about professional distance, boundaries, and what it means to be a safe adult around boys and young men who have experienced trauma and displayed harmful sex...
Send us Fan Mail A child disappears into the underside of a foam settee, furious when the adults cannot find her. Another child “loses” Super Ted again and again, and what looks like chaos turns into a quiet test: will you come looking, will you bring me back, will I still belong? I sit down for the second instalment of my recent conversation with Richard Rollinson, much-loved elder of the Mulberry Bush therapeutic community, to unpack what belonging really means in out-of-home care and ther...