Sofa Surfers (TV series)

Sofa Surfers is a British documentary series for the BBC by John Walsh of Walsh Bros Ltd. There are over 130,000 children living in the UK today without a permanent place they can call home. Sofa Surfers is a BBC documentary series which takes a look into the lives of four homeless children living in different types of temporary accommodation. This is thought to be the first children’s documentary dedicated to this subject. Using animation and rotoscoping techniques by the company White Balance, the series has been described by the Whittington Hospital, which features in the film, as a watershed moment in children’s documentaries in the UK. The series was part of the BBC's homeless season of programmes.

The film attempted to show the real lives of homelessness children through a week of observational documentaries aimed at an audience of 6–12 years old. Its approach was enabling the young and vulnerable contributors to speak candidly about their situation, and employed current animation techniques to bring those stories alive. Each episode featured testimony from children, as young as six, and showed their resilience, black humour and mature understanding of the incredibly difficult circumstances they were in. Walsh spoke on BBC News about challenges making the series.

Two episode we filmed at the Chester-based charity Save The Family. One episode here included an interview with Iain Duncan Smith MP, supporter of the charity.

Walsh made the acclaimed three part documentary series Headhunting The Homeless for BBC2 in 2003.