During Gordon Barritt’s 16 years as head of National Children’s Home (now Action for Children) there was a radical change in the way children in need of care were looked after. His tenure, an unusually long one for the head of any big charity, proved to be one of the most critical in his organisation’s history.
Appointed principal in 1969, Barritt, who has died aged 95, recognised the social changes that were having an impact on the work of the charity, such as changing family patterns and a rise in the divorce rate. The organisation still concentrated on running residential homes at a time when these were becoming regarded as outdated by most social services departments, which were reluctant to pay the fees. The losses had to be met from the charity’s reserves.
Barritt reformed the organisation, devolving much of the decision-making to the regions. The amount of residential care was also reduced, as efforts were increased to keep children in their own homes, while providing community-based forms of care. However, with a well-established adoption and fostering service, too, the charity did not immediately respond to the trend for greater provision of care within the community.
No organisation could continue to ignore the changing times, and towards the end of Barritt’s tenure there was a dramatic rethink. In a streamlining reorganisation, the old board of management was abolished, with more power accruing to the principal, and a director of social work was appointed in 1985 – Tom White, the director of Coventry’s social services.
The next year, Barritt retired and Michael Newman, the last Methodist minister to hold the top job, took over for four years, after which White succeeded him with the title of chief executive, the two men transforming NCH and laying the foundations for its rapid future growth.
A dapper, slight figure whose mien perhaps belied the strengths he obviously possessed, Barritt was ordained into the Methodist ministry in 1947 and joined the charity in 1957 as head of aftercare, pioneering family centres, which have since become central to children’s services.
When, in the organisation’s centenary year, he was appointed principal, the position was still available only to ordained Methodists, and Barritt helped to keep the charity very much within the Methodist church, which ensured a firm fundraising and support base. At the same time, the charity reached out to the wider world, and while its link with the Methodist church has since been loosened, it has not broken entirely. His standing ensured his election in 1984 to the year-long presidency of the Methodist Conference, the most senior position in the church, in which role he followed two predecessors who were also NCH principals.
Gordon was born in Manchester, the son of Norman and Doris. His father was a bank manager, but his grandfather had been a Methodist clergyman, and from the age of 14 Gordon hoped to become a Methodist minister, partly to help alleviate poverty. He attended William Hulme’s grammar school and then went to Manchester University to read psychology and philosophy. His studies were interrupted by the second world war and he declared himself a conscientious objector. The death of six friends, however, made him see, he said, that he had no right to sit back. He joined the RAF in 1942 as a medical auxiliary and was mentioned in dispatches after U-boat action in the Azores. Nevertheless he continued to regard himself as a pacifist.
What he had witnessed during the war determined his pursuit of ordination, and he studied at Wesley House and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. After ordination, he became minister of Kempston Methodist church, Bedford, in 1947, and five years later moved to Westlands Methodist church, Newcastle-under-Lyme, where he doubled as chaplain of the University College of North Staffordshire (now Keele University), until he joined NCH.
During his time as principal, his other posts included chair of the National Council of Voluntary Child Care Organisations (now Children England), and he sat on the Home Office advisory council on child care. On leaving NCH, he ran Enfield Counselling Service for three years.
He was appointed OBE in 1979 and awarded an honorary degree by Keele University in 1985. In 1947 he married Joan Mary Alway, who died in 1984, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. His marriage to Karen Lesley Windle in 1993 was dissolved in 1999. He is survived by his three children and his third wife, Eileen Mary Smith, whom he married in 2003.
•Gordon Emerson Barritt, clergyman and charity executive, born 30 September 1920; died 11 November 2015
