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

该项目的目的是撰写1965年成立的儿童贫困行动小组（CPAG）的前五十年的历史。CPAG想要一个坦率和客观的历史，以纪念其成立五十周年，但如果我们确定过去的好或坏的做法，他们可以为未来学习。主要目的不是指导他们未来的活动，而是对他们的过去和现在进行客观的研究。根据Brian Abel-Smith和Peter Townsend的研究结果，我们将调查CPAG成立的原因，他们在1965年揭示了低收入大家庭中令人惊讶的高贫困水平，而当时人们普遍认为，除了老年人之外，严重贫困已经基本消除。发起者包括一些参与社会工作的贵格会教徒，这些人现在被称为“问题家庭”，还有阿贝尔-史密斯和汤森。我们将探讨他们的动机。该委员会的成立是为了提醒政治家和公众注意这个新发现的问题，并与政府制定和谈判帮助有关家庭的办法，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。CPAG与媒体的关系和其他活动将在20世纪60年代出现的新一波激进的、意识到媒体的非政府组织（包括1965年成立的残疾收入小组，DIG， 1966年成立的庇护所，1967年成立的危机）的活动背景下进行考察。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，以及与一些较老的非政府组织相比，CPAG相对专业的程度，这些组织雇佣的是受过社会工作和社会政策培训的有偿员工，对志愿者的依赖较少。然后，我们将研究CPAG的支持来源、目标和策略如何随着时间的推移而变化，并评估结果。它的意义在于为越来越多的工作做出贡献，这些工作增加了我们对近年来英国社会自愿行动的相当程度、作用和重要性的理解。方法将是i)历史文献研究的方法，使用广泛的CPAG档案，在伦敦政治经济学院，以及相当多的彼得·汤森档案在埃塞克斯大学。国家档案馆将被检查CPAG与政府和政策制定关系的证据，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的关系更密切（尽管经常紧张）。报纸将被审查，以评估媒体的反应。ii)采访CPAG历史上的关键人物。包括汤森和阿贝尔-史密斯在内的一些创始人已经去世，但其他人却没有，包括国会议员弗兰克·菲尔德（Frank Field）， CPAG的第一任董事，以及与阿贝尔-史密斯和汤森密切合作的托尼·莱恩斯（Tony Lynes），以及后来的董事，包括Baroness Ruth Lister。将对这些文件和访谈进行分析，并将其与儿童贫困和自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.