Transforming Lives: cataloguing the history of social welfare and health at Barnardo's (1867–1980)

Since 1867, Barnardo’s archive collections have continuously captured the role the charity has played in supporting hundreds of thousands of children and families through vital services, projects, research and campaigns. They illustrate the influence the charity has had on the progress of social welfare policy and practice for children in the UK.

Until now, the archive service has only had the facilities and resources to support a small number of key research projects and we want to raise awareness of the value of these collections, increase levels of access and more widely engage with health-related humanities and social science researchers. We will appoint a project archivist and archive assistant to increase access by arranging, describing and cataloguing two of Barnardo’s collections; the childcare records and the corporate collection. They will also develop a plan to increase engagement and raise awareness of the collections in the academic research community. We will also ensure the conservation of 126 of Barnardo's most frequently accessed bound volumes.