Historical considerations

Looked at historically the main reasons which determined the size of institutions were economic, although they could lead in different directions. On the one hand public, or semi-public, bodies with access to capital loans and a responsibility for general populations tended to see large buildings (often constructed on cheap land away from urban centres) as the least expensive option.

Furthermore, given high levels of 'demand' vacancy rates could be kept low, albeit that the availability of some vacancies in large institutions meant that the marginal cost of one further admission was negligible. Added to this the fact that mixed populations were liable to be housed together recommended large facilities.

By contrast, many voluntary initiatives provided smaller institutions because loan funds were limited or investments only possible as and when donations allowed. Moreover, many of the voluntary institutions were provided for special groups thus permitting the service to be 'rationed' and therefore kept small.

However, the arguments about appropriate size did not turn wholly on matters of finance, especially in relation to children. There was a growing concern, from about the 1870s onwards, that large institutions (often likened to 'barracks') failed to meet the developmental needs of children (especially girls) because they were unable to create a family-like environment.

These criticisms however did not pass unchallenged. Those in favour of retaining large institutions argued that they enabled certain services to be provided on the premises (particularly schools and chapels) that it would be impossible to provide in small Homes. They also maintained that large Homes gave the residents a sense of identity which they often lacked, and that they permitted a domestic economy to be sustained (such as laundry work or farming) which both reduced costs and gave the opportunity to train the residents for the jobs for which most were destined.

Of course, the contrary arguments pointed to the stigma which large visible institutions imposed and to the fact that, through their training regimes, they locked children into the lowest levels of the labour market.

Lessons of the grouped cottage system

However, the emergence of the 'grouped cottage' system rather obscured the sharp distinctions being drawn between 'large' and 'small' institutions. The advantages of a 'campus' of separate units was applauded because:

• it provided more personalised family settings;
• though semi-independent, each cottage could call upon the collective resources of the whole enterprise;
• a measure of specialisation could be created with, for example, separate cottages for delicate children or babies;
• given sufficient land the facility could be enlarged (or contracted) incrementally, not least in the case of the voluntary homes, because benefactors could donate a cottage (and have it named after them) without incurring the enormous costs of a single large building.

The drawbacks of the cottage system were mainly seen as cutting off children from the community - it was, in this sense, criticised for being too self-contained and too self-sufficient, although some cottage homes did eventually send children out to local schools.

Questions and answers

In many ways the grouped cottage homes raise questions about the most appropriate size of residential institutions which have to be asked today: namely,

• how is care to be personalised?
• how are general and specialist services best secured?
• what is most cost-effective?
• how is stigmatisation to be avoided?
• how much discretion is to be allowed in the policies and practices of a residential service and therefore how much central monitoring and control is possible or desirable?

The answers to such questions do not turn only upon the matter of size. Other factors have to be taken into account as well; for example,

• the calibre of the staff (including prevailing rates of turnover);
• the availability and quality of non-residential alternatives;
• community attitudes to residential accommodation, its symbolic significance and historical legacy;
• the degree of specialisation needed to meet the children's need, and where and how this is best obtained;
• the rate of turnover amongst the residents and the comparability of their needs;
• the relative costs and how these are to be calculated.

Further questions and what we know from research

There has been strong opposition to 'institutionalisation' over the last fifty years. Yet many of the most influential studies (from Bowlby and Goldfarb onwards) have not differentiated their results according to the size of institutions, although later research has looked at 'regimes' in this light. What remains unclear, however, is what, if any, influence size per se has upon regime. Are there critical sizes at which changes become necessary (as the study of the size of businesses suggests)?

Furthermore, is the effectiveness of monitoring affected by size (a crucial issue in the light of the various scandals)? Will large facilities inevitably be more 'closed' than those which are smaller? Is a 'large' establishment more likely to become isolated and 'hidden' from public scrutiny because it entails a large building and usually a comparably large surrounding area which can act as a cordon?

Size and policy

The appropriate size of a residential establishment cannot be settled independently of other considerations such as its internal structure and regime. However, nor can it be settled without reference to the policy objectives to which it is intended to contribute. It becomes important therefore to identify what those objectives are (and perhaps who is setting them).

In the nineteenth century the primary objective of some of the evangelical homes was the child's salvation and the protection of its faith. In certain twentieth century dictatorships the over-riding object has been political indoctrination. Elsewhere, the purpose of residential provision has been the deliberate separation of children from their families or associates who were considered to be degraded.

Nowadays the emphasis is variously upon care, treatment, education and training. Yet each of these objectives may imply different answers to the question of appropriate size, and especially when they are pursued in different combinations and with different categories of children.