For a balanced life, everyone needs a place where they can be happy in their own skin. However, modern pressures often get in the way of having a home that serves as a stable haven for all who live there. Based on two years of research and interviews, Angela Neustatter looks at ways people in very different circumstances are improving the balance of their lives through their homes. Her search for answers ranges widely, from her own family life to council estates in Manchester and London, to the Australian home of Elisabeth Murdoch; from a lesbian houseshare in small-town Texas to an eco-village in Wales. A Home for the Heart provides eleven ways in which people are balancing the demands of the modern world with the demands of their homes, showing how a nurturing home can once again become of root of happiness.

We lock up more young people than any other country in Europe but do we know what happens when they are put into custody? What is the impact on them of a prison regime? Can it be a constructive, rehabilitative experience or does the culture of prison make this possible? Is being removed from home and community inevitably destructive of can it give some youngsters a chance to sort out chaotic lives? Can prison be the place to address the severe problems of physical and sexual abuse, violence, disadvantage, failure, and self-loathing that so many who end up inside suffer? Or is locking them up the ultimate failure of a society that cannot find a better way to deal with its problem young? Angela Neustatter visits young offenders, governors, staff, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, the Probation Service,Youth Offending Teams, voluntary agencies and campaigning organisations to find some answers to these important questions, and puts forward recommendations for improving the way society deals with children who break the law.