Our History

In 1990 my friend Phil Green and I had different personal reasons for wanting to leave the local authority, Ealing, where we were then working. We had been happy in our jobs but felt that we could do them better in an environment which was less bureaucratic and where we would be more directly accountable for our work. We chose the name Reconstruct because so much change was then happening in social care (and hasn't it continued?) and we thought that this is what we would help organisations do, to reconstruct themselves. I had been a training officer and Phil was a manager and, along with other people then in Ealing, Daksha, Smruti, Chris,& Marie we started to advertise Reconstruct all over England and Wales. Quite by chance really Ealing was planning the implementation of the Children Act 1989, 18 months before it was being implemented so, again quite by chance, we learnt it a lot earlier than many other people. Phil and I left our secure jobs in September 1990 thinking that we would have to get proper jobs again in the following twelve months but, so far, we haven't had to.

The company built up quite quickly over the following five years, though we had our hiccups whilst we tried to learn the difference between gross and net profit and break even points, and we were offering training on all aspects of social care by 1994.

We decided to set up a consultancy service because some problems we were asked to solve through training really weren't going to respond to training courses.

We always wanted to run our own services directly to the public. This became possible in 2000 when we won contracts to supply independent visitors and advocates to children who are looked after. This part of our service has grown quickly since.

We have been running conferences since 2001, usually two per year. Normally we have 6 speakers and no workshops.

In 2003 we set up our research service where we supply thirty précised papers on research and policy developments to people in an attempt to help them keep up with the changes that are happening in the jobs that we do.

Barry Raynes

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