Every child deserves a home that believes in them.
So we build ours small, warm, and around the child.
With steady teams who stay, and standards we hold ourselves to.
That's how we're growing across East Anglia.
Every child in our care has adults who speak up for them: in reviews, at school, and anywhere their voice needs backing. Advocacy is not a service we offer. It is a posture we hold.
We plan for children to settle, stay and grow. When things get difficult, we hold steady: more support, more thought, more patience. Giving up on a child is the last resort, never the easy option.
Nobody here is ever finished: not our staff, whose training and development never stop, and not the organisation, which reviews itself honestly and acts on what it finds.
Every organisation chooses a symbol. We chose a small, bright bird from the woodlands of East Anglia because almost everything the nuthatch does, we recognise.
When a pair make their nest, they plaster mud around the entrance until the doorway fits exactly their own family, and no one else. Old Celtic folklore casts the nuthatch as a maker of safe and stable homes and a defender of the family within, and you can see why: it shapes the home around the family and builds the protection into the walls. That is the first thing we do for every child, and the reason the nuthatch is ours.
The nuthatch is the only British bird that climbs down trees head first. It sees the same woodland as every other bird and finds what all of them miss. We look at children the same way: from a different angle, past the behaviour, until we understand what others missed.
The nuthatch got its name from its way with a stubborn nut: wedge it, work at it, hack away until it opens. Some of the most important work in our homes looks exactly like that. Patient, repetitive, determined, and worth it.
Head first down the trunk, and standing its ground against birds twice its weight. Courage in our homes looks like hard conversations had honestly, and adults who hold steady on the difficult days.
For a small bird, the nuthatch is impossible to ignore, and it calls loudest around its home. So do we: in every review, every meeting and every room where a child's future is decided, we are the voice in their corner.
Rooted in East Anglia. Protective by design. Persistent, brave, and loud when it matters.
Every Able home is registered with and inspected by Ofsted, and independent visitors examine each home monthly, speaking to children in private and reporting to the regulator as well as to us. We audit ourselves between visits and act on what we find.
We will never claim to be perfect: we claim something better, which is that when something needs fixing, we find it, own it and fix it. That is what good looks like in this sector, and it is the standard we hold every home to.
It started with one home in Ipswich. Everything since has followed the same idea: we build the home around the child.
2008
Liberty Lodge opens in Ipswich: the first Able home.
2010
Liberty Lodge grows to seven beds, extending our care to more children.
2016
Liberty Lodge is refurbished around the children living there: the start of a habit we never lost.
2018
With demand growing across Suffolk, planning begins for a second home.
2020
Fern Lodge opens in Leiston: our second home, and the group takes shape.
2021
The central team grows: the people behind the homes, so nothing distracts the homes from the children.
2024
Work begins on our first home for children with learning disabilities and autism.
2025
Oak Tree House opens in Sudbury: specialist care for children with learning disabilities and autism.
2026
A new identity, a third strand of specialist care in development, and a group growing carefully across East Anglia.
2027
Three brand new homes launch: two across Suffolk and the first in Essex.
All our homes are rated Good or Outstanding by Ofsted
Members of
