These Our Children is a quietly devastating and ultimately tender memoir by Mavis Thornton, a woman who walked into childcare at seventeen and a half with nothing but warmth and instinct — and spent the rest of her life fighting for the children the system forgot. Beginning in the rigid, loveless residential nurseries of 1950s Britain, where toddlers rocked themselves to sleep for want of a single cuddle, Mavis charts her journey through decades of social work, fostering, and family-building. She remembers each child by name — Jean the stubborn rocker, Pamela who waited for parents who never came, little Malcolm who nearly had to be given back. Through it all, she never stopped believing that every child deserved to be truly seen. A story about the children who stayed in her heart, and the family she built one child at a time.