Anne Marie Carrie: 'Sometimes we give too many parents too many chances'

Up until last year, Anne Marie Carrie still had a foothold in Easterhouse, the area in which she grew up and which she recalls as being, in many ways, the "desert with windows" Billy Connolly once described. That house in the desert was her mother's home and every now and again Carrie, who is now chief executive of Barnardo's UK and has worked for the Deputy Prime Minister's office, would find herself in the local shopping centre and come across someone she had grown up with, and wonder: "Why are we so different? I remember you at school, you were brighter than me." It's a question relevant to her current job, it sits at the heart of issues about what deprivation really is for a child, and what kind of interventions can alter a life trajectory.