My name is Emmanuel Akpan-Inwang and I am the Director at Lighthouse Pedagogy Trust.
During my time as a schoolteacher, I became increasingly concerned for children who had been living in children’s homes. In the UK, any child who has been in residential care is at significantly higher risk of imprisonment, homelessness, unemployment, and mental health difficulties.
I founded Lighthouse Pedagogy Trust in 2017 with a group of former teachers because we were concerned about these outcomes and felt that more could be done to change them. Our vision is that children in care have the same opportunities as everyone else – at home, at school and in their communities.
In our organisation, we are trying to do things differently in the residential care space. We recruit great people who have the ability to build strong relationships with young people, and provide them with the training necessary to support children from vulnerable backgrounds. We use social pedagogy as our main approach, which focuses on finding the strengths in each child and nurturing them as they grow up. We enjoy doing lots of activities together – camping, basketball, cycling and more! We have built our first home for six 12-17 year olds, which is based in south west London and has been newly refurbished based on design principles from best practice in the UK and abroad. Below is a picture of our home.
And here is the team that is making all this happen.
We intend to set up several of our own homes along the model that we have formulated and also support other children’s homes in adopting our ways of working.
Beyond this, we intend to work with schools and communities to help them understand how they can best support children in care and encourage the government to support measures which improve long-term stability for children.
To find out more, please visit us at www.lptrust.org.uk