About - The Caldecott Foundation

Helping Children Build A Future
“Each child’s individuality is embraced and enjoyed. Excellent understanding of their vulnerabilities & abilities means they receive high quality bespoke care.” – Ofsted, December 2019

Who Are The Caldecott Foundation?

The Caldecott Foundation provides specialist residential care, fostering families and education for disadvantaged, vulnerable and traumatised young people in the UK.

All of our services work to the Caldecott Foundation’s Relational Model, providing young people with a secure base from which they can feel safe enough to develop strong relationships with adults and other children.

Our children’s homes are all rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted, The Caldecott Foundation is one of the country’s leading providers of therapeutic care, with services based in Kent and Nottinghamshire caring for young people from across the UK.

From an initial assessment completed by our own Clinical Psychologists through to our leaving care support service, The Caldecott Foundation provides individually tailored interventions that achieve outstanding long term outcomes.

With our therapeutic approach we support young people with a complex range of behaviours and challenges including specialising in self-harm, sexually harmful behaviours, attachment disorders and those at risk of child sexual exploitation.

Our services are flexible and include:

Emergency and planned residential placements
Assessment of Needs completed by our Clinical Psychologist
Individual therapy sessions with our in-house therapy team
Education at our onsite school or within our homes
Access to vocational training courses
Fostering placement through Caldecott Fostering
Ongoing support into independence after leaving care

“Staff have really invested in the young people and this is shown in the strength of relationships. The young people have made significant progress all attending mainstream schools and achieving their full potential.” – Ofsted, November 2019

Trustees

Our Board Members are widely experienced and generously volunteer their time and expertise to the Caldecott Foundation.

Charles Lister OBE Chairman

Charles Lister OBE

During his career as a civil servant, Charles helped shaped many areas of government health policy, including blood safety and regulation of the fertility sector. He is currently an associate trainer with Dods Training specialising in policy development and working with government ministers.

His voluntary sector experience includes 4 years as deputy chair of a charity supporting people infected with hepatitis C through contaminated blood and three years on the board of Age UK Sutton where he chaired the risk and audit committee. He is currently chair of the Sperm, Egg and Embryo Donation Trust and Warlingham Parish Council. Charles received an OBE in 2003 for his work on ensuring a safe, secure supply of blood for the NHS.
Sue Appleby

Sue Appleby

Sue is a senior communications professional with more than thirty five years’ experience of developing and implementing strategic communication and change programmes. She has led teams in large, complex local authorities; an NHS hospital trust; a leading global research company and the government regulator of pharmacy practice. Prior to that, Sue was Head of Communications for an inner London borough where she had to deal with several difficult high-profile crises. Sue also spent thirteen years as a senior manager at BT PLC, where she led on several key aspects of corporate communications and on regional strategic development. Most recently, Sue has worked as an interim communications lead in both the public and private sectors. She is a Fellow of both the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). Sue is also a Governor of Canterbury Christ Church University.
Jerry Flechais

Jerry Flechais

Jerry is a safety and risk management professional with experience of working at senior level in the commercial and third sector. He specialises in practical and sensible risk management, governance and operational delivery. Currently the director of safety for a global hospitality group, he was a consultant for over ten years, and spent the last four years directing the safety and safeguarding function of a national youth charity.
Colin Green

Colin Green

Colin is a former director of children’s services with a special interest in safeguarding and children’s social care. He retired in 2013. He has held senior positions in a number of County and Metropolitan authorities. He is a qualified social worker.

Since retirement Colin has worked on a range of projects including safeguarding reviews of local authorities, evaluation of services for a voluntary organisation, research on residential child care markets and briefings on children’s services topics. Colin chaired the ADCS Children, Communities and Young People policy committee for four years and was a senior policy civil servant in the Department for Education.
Simon Wakeman

Simon Wakeman

Simon is Managing Director at London-based digital agency Deeson. He is an entrepreneurial business leader with more than twenty one years' experience in the private and public sectors, spanning major transformational change projects in areas including marketing; e-commerce; business systems; publishing; customer service and internal communications. He holds professional qualifications in PR, marketing and change management; is a CIM Chartered Marketer; a CIPR Accredited Practitioner and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.
Maree Thorn

Maree Thorn

Maree has extensive career experience in both mainstream and special schools, including as a Special Educational Needs Coordinator. Coaching teachers and support staff, she has worked with other senior leaders to improve whole school SEN procedures and policies. She has teamed with SENCos, specialist teachers and the Local Authority SEN team to enhance local knowledge and resourcing.

Supporting school governors to understand requirements and responsibilities, she has led focus groups to research school improvement; also working with school trustees to inform them of practices, planned developments and the resulting impact. Maree co-founded South East SENCo Support, a consultancy agency that supports schools to develop their practices in order to offer the best possible provision for children with special educational needs.
Caroline Whillans

Caroline Whillans

Caroline is a solicitor with more than 35 years' experience, specialising in Family Law. She was a partner and Head of department for a large regional firm of solicitors.
Since her recent retirement, Caroline sits as a JP in the family court. Pursuing her interest in young people, Caroline volunteers with Hampshire Youth Offending team and a Social Care Project - Wessex Dance Academy

Our History

It began with Leila Rendel: a woman who wanted to help people less fortunate than herself.

“Miss Leila”, whose family lived comfortably in London in the late nineteenth century, was inspired to look after children whose parents couldn’t care for them – either through poverty or neglect. She decided to start a day nursery. In 1911 the Caldecott Nursery was founded, named after Randolph Caldecott – a famous Victorian illustrator of children’s books, whose pictures decorated the walls of Leila’s nursery.

When London was bombed during the First World War, the nursery moved from London to Maidstone in Kent. It became known as the Caldecott Community. In 1924 the Community relocated to Hertfordshire and by 1930, it was caring for fifty children as well as providing them with primary education.

The Community moved back to Maidstone in 1932, but the bombing of Kent in the Second World War led to another move, this time to Dorset. During this period a hundred boys and girls were being cared for, including fifteen Jewish refugees.

After more than fifty years dedicated to caring for vulnerable children, Leila stepped down from her post in 1967. By now the Community had moved to the Ashford area, where it would later take on a new name: the Caldecott Foundation. This part of Kent has been the Caldecott Foundation’s home for more than seventy years. We now have sites in rural Nottinghamshire as well.

To mark a hundred years since its inception, a Centenary Fundraising Appeal for the Foundation was launched in 2011. The campaign was highly successful. Totalling £750,000, outcomes of the appeal included a dedicated House for victims of CSE; a Life Skills course for our care leavers; a Vocational Learning Centre at the Caldecott School and much more.

We are proud of our heritage at the Caldecott Foundation. We acknowledge that the world is a different place now from 1911, but throughout our history, we have remained committed to helping every child build a positive future.

The Caldecott Association

The Caldecott Association is independent of the Caldecott Foundation and exists for ex Caldecott residents and pupils to stay in touch, share memories and attend reunions with their friends and colleagues.

The Association has established a fund, the Diana Dee Fund, to assist ex-Caldecotts who are experiencing financial difficulties, or who need help to further themselves through education and training in their chosen field.

If you would like to find out more about the association or make an application for support or a donation then please write to:

The Chair, The Diana Dee Fund
c/o The Caldecott Foundation, Caldecott House
Smeeth, Ashford, Kent TN25 6SP

Helping Children Build A Future

Who Are The Caldecott Foundation?

Trustees

Charles Lister OBE

Sue Appleby

Jerry Flechais

Colin Green

Simon Wakeman

Maree Thorn

Caroline Whillans

Our History

The Caldecott Association