Becoming the chief executive of the UK’s oldest children’s charity nearly two decades ago was probably not on 15-year-old Carol Homden’s bingo card.
If anyone had asked her at the time what she wanted to do when she would be older, she would have said: “I’m going to do a degree and PhD and then I’m going to work for the BBC.”
Unfortunately, the BBC did not agree, as it rejected her application for one of its graduate entry programmes. She did, however, obtain a BA in English literature and DA in contemporary British drama.
Homden started her career as an arts journalist before becoming director of marketing and development at the University of Westminster in the late 1980s.
After 13 years there, she joined the British Museum as its first director of marketing and public affairs, and in 2003 moved to young people’s charity the Prince’s Trust (now known as the King’s Trust) as commercial director.
Her time at the Prince’s Trust made her appreciate that if such organisations did not exist, there would be many young people “whose life chances would be blighted and whose life potential wouldn’t be realised”, she says.
As she became a mother, with her eldest son being autistic and having learning difficulties, Homden recognised that intervening early in children’s lives was critical for their long-term wellbeing and developmental stability.
That is why in 2007, she left the Prince’s Trust to head Coram, a charity “focused on ensuring that children get the best start and chance in life”.
“I have the joy to lead an organisation which is eternally hopeful because it’s never too late,” she says. “You can always tip the dial and if you tip the dial by 1%, then over a lifetime that’s a different place. The earlier you’re able to help, the bigger that difference.”
Coram’s growth
When Homden joined Coram in 2007, it operated as a standalone operation, with total income of £6.5m against total expenditure of £7.5m.
Since then, the charity has increased its income nearly five-fold, reporting £32.2m in 2025-26 in its management accounts.
Established as the Foundling Hospital in 1739 by campaigner Thomas Coram, it has grown to be a group of specialist charities and organisations, supporting hundreds of thousands of children, young people and families every year.
Over the past year alone, five charities including the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years, Leap Confronting Conflict, Kidscape, Family Lives and Potential Plus UK, have transferred to the Coram group.
Homden says the group now has 14 “entities”, rather than “organisations”, as some of them are programmes and services.
“We’re unusual in Coram being the first and longest continuing children’s charity and now parent body of a set of specialist organisations that are within the Coram group,” she says.
“They’re ultimately consolidated but retain their independent registration and focus on their specific purpose. They share central infrastructure, fundraising expertise, audit, finance and so on.”
The group has two guiding principles at its heart: no duplication and no disbenefit.
The first means that any organisation joining the group must not replicate what another of its entities does.
Homden says: “We aren’t interested in having people arguing in the organisation over whose form is the best, for example. Why would we duplicate any forms of governance or infrastructure?”
The second principle means that if an organisation joins the group, it is carefully considered.
“We’re not going to be cannibalising income streams and competing against ourselves or having to charge more for central infrastructure than the organisation would have been able to afford or bear before it came,” Homden adds.
“We’re all of us together united in pursuit of the same strategic goal, which is that every child should have the best possible chance in life.”
Inspired by the university model
Homden says the group has several strategic goals and every part of the group is primary in one of those goals and contributory to others.
For instance, the Shakespeare Schools Festival (run by Coram Shakespeare Schools), the world’s largest youth drama festival, will not fight legal cases to ensure that children have access to justice.
“That’s the job of the Coram Children’s Legal Centre,” Homden says.
“It’s inspired by a university model: you might go on a course at a university that has modules that would combine into your degree.
“You might do business and design management and have modules in business and design management and those would be combined into a degree.
“Coram combines its specialist expertise and brings that expertise together with people delivering what they’re specialists in to contribute solutions to new and old challenges for children.
“We occupy the Coram campus, which is home not only to the Coram organisations but also a number of other children’s organisations that rent space from us and contribute to our vision as the national centre of excellence for children.”
Focus on ‘bigger purpose’
When other organisations join its group, Coram remains the parent body, a process which Homden describes as “amalgamation” rather than “merger”, a word which she says “sets up all the wrong kinds of tonal values”.
She says developing the group has involved focusing on a clear vision and values, not just on management and logistics.
It is important that joining organisations feel they can “bring their expertise to inform the outcomes of the whole and make us the best we can be”, Homden says.
“The Coram group has developed by virtue of courageous, often well-led organisations that see that their duty is to purpose, not just to the organisation they happen to have been part of, but to the bigger purpose they exist to serve.
“Many organisations should be giving this more consideration: how is our purpose best realised? Is joining forces in a different way a better way of realising our purpose than continuing as we are, particularly if continuing as we are involves a hand-to-mouth struggle or duplication of unnecessary audit fees?”
She acknowledges that each organisation that might join the Coram group have particularities, and it usually takes up to three years to ensure all of the benefits are realised and all of the processes are aligned.
One might have, for example, experienced specific infrastructure or leadership challenges. Another might have a need for scaling and greater support in terms of their fundraising.
She says the group operates an “adaptive model”. “We’re all different as a result of a new joiner, but we have a clear model and experience in doing this.
“It’s not up for negotiation. You join or don’t join. We don’t do a federal structure. This is an integrated corporate group and the purpose for a joining organisation is to be able to bring its expertise, differentiation and distinctiveness to contribute to the whole.”
‘We’re the backbone of the children’s sector’
Homden sees Coram as the “backbone of the children’s sector” and an organisation that will continue to change lives, laws and systems to support children.
“We’re very clear about our values. I feel particularly proud to lead an organisation that’s the longest continuing, and yet one of our core values is dynamic.”
She believes that children’s core needs have not changed much since 1739, with all children – beyond food and shelter – needing love, nurture, safety, belonging and access to education.
The difference is that in the modern era, “that’s never been more evident” than for the digital-first generation experiencing many consequences of Covid-19 among other things.
She says: “We have the most connected generation in history and the loneliest. We need to do something about that together. But it’s the same needs a child has always had.
“The peril and risks children face are different, except that all too many children around the world are still being starved, bombed or the victims of adult violence, often fuelled by drug and alcohol misuse.”
Coram was around before the country’s industrial revolution, and Homden thinks there is no doubt it will be affected by technological advances including AI.
“The capabilities and characteristics that organisations need to have are both grounded in old truths like the importance of place, people and belonging, but they also need to be able to be adaptive and generative and reinvent themselves.
“Those are skills we’ve focused on developing to ensure that we can continue to play our part for the children and families that we serve, not just now but forever.”
