The First Fifty Years of the of the Child Poverty Action Group, 1965-2015

该项目的目的是写的第一个50年的儿童贫困行动小组（CPAG），成立于1965.CPAG想要一个坦率和客观的历史，以纪念他们的五十周年，但如果我们确定在过去的好或坏的做法，他们可以为未来学习的历史。其主要目的不是指导他们今后的活动，而是对他们的过去到现在进行客观的研究。我们将根据Brian Abel-Smith和Peter汤森的研究结果来调查CPAG成立的原因，该研究结果在1965年揭示了低收入大家庭的贫困水平惊人地高，而当时人们普遍认为，除了老年人之外，严重的贫困已经基本消除。发起者包括一些贵格会教徒，他们参与了现在被称为“问题家庭”的社会工作，还有阿贝尔-史密斯和汤森。他们的动机将被探究。设立儿童保护咨询小组是为了提醒政治家和公众注意这一新发现的问题，并与政府制定和谈判援助有关家庭的办法，最初主要是增加儿童福利。我们将探讨他们如何着手实现这些目标和成果，以及他们如何筹集资金。将结合1960年代出现的新一波激进的、了解媒体的非政府组织（包括1965年成立的残疾人收入小组、1966年成立的庇护所和1967年成立的危机组织）的活动，审查公共咨询小组与媒体和其他活动的关系。研究CPAG将揭示这一新浪潮及其与20世纪60年代激进主义的联系，与一些较老的非政府组织相比，他们的相对专业性沿着，雇用受过社会工作和社会政策培训的有偿工作人员，较少依赖志愿者。然后，我们将研究CPAG的支持来源，目标和战略如何随着时间的推移而变化，并评估结果。它的重要性将在于促进越来越多的工作，这些工作正在增加我们对近年来英国社会志愿行动的相当大的范围、作用和重要性的了解。方法将是i）那些历史文献研究，使用广泛的CPAG档案，在LSE举行，也相当大的彼得汤森档案在埃塞克斯大学。国家档案馆将被检查，以证明CPAG与政府和政策制定的关系，曼彻斯特的工党档案也将被检查，因为CPAG至少在早期，似乎与工党的关系比与其他政党更密切（尽管经常紧张）。将对报纸进行审查，以评估媒体的反应。ii）与CPAG历史上的主要参与者的访谈。一些创始人，包括汤森和阿贝尔-史密斯已经去世，但其他人没有，包括弗兰克菲尔德议员，CPAG的第一任董事，和托尼·莱恩斯谁与阿贝尔-史密斯和汤森密切合作，以及后来的董事，包括男爵夫人露丝李斯特。将对这些文件和访谈进行分析，并将其与儿童贫穷和志愿行动的更广泛历史联系起来。

The purpose of the project is to write a history of the first fifty years of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), founded 1965.CPAG want a frank and objective history, to mark their fiftieth anniversary, but if we identify good or bad practice in the past, they can learn for the future. The main objective is not to guide their future activities but to provide an objective study of their past up to the present. We will survey why CPAG was established, following the research findings of Brian Abel-Smith and Peter Townsend in which revealed in 1965 surprisingly high levels of poverty among large families on low incomes at time when it was widely believed that serious poverty had largely been eliminated except among older people. The initiators included a number of Quakers involved in social work with what are now called 'troubled families', as well as Abel-Smith and Townsend. Their motivation will be explored. CPAG was established to alert politicians and the public to this newly revealed problem and to devise and negotiate with government means to assist the families concerned, initially mainly increased child benefits. We will explore how they set about meeting these objectives and the outcomes, and how they raised funds. CPAG's relationship with the media and other activities will be examined in the context of the emergence in 1960s and activities of a new wave of radical, media-aware, NGOs (including Disablement Income Group, DIG, founded 1965, Shelter founded 1966, Crisis founded 1967). Studying CPAG will shed light on this new wave and its links with 1960s radicalism, along with their relative professionalism compared with some older NGOs, employing paid staff trained in social work and social policy, relying less on volunteers. We will then examine how CPAG's sources of support, objectives and strategies changed over time and evaluate the outcomes. Its significance will lie in contributing to the growing body of work which is increasing our understanding of the considerable extent, roles and importance of voluntary action in British society in the recent past. The methods will be i) those of historical documentary research, using the extensive CPAG archive, held at LSE , also the considerable Peter Townsend archive at the University of Essex. The National Archives will be examined for evidence of CPAG's relationship with government and policy-making, as will the Labour Party archive in Manchester, since CPAG, at least in its early days, seems to have had closer ( though often tense) relationships with Labour than with other parties. Newspapers will be examined to assess media responses. ii) interviews with key players in the history of CPAG. A number of the founders, including Townsend and Abel-Smith are dead, but others are not, including Frank Field MP, CPAG's first director, and Tony Lynes who worked closely with Abel-Smith and Townsend, and later Directors including Baroness Ruth Lister. The documents and interviews will be analysed and contextualized and related to the wider history of child poverty and voluntary action.