Caring Communities is a new research project, funded by UKRI, that aims to explore the history of care and care experience in modern Britain. The project team is collecting a wide range of evidence relating to the history of care provided by both state and voluntary organisations, as well as more informal practices of care that might have been arranged within the community. The project is interested in expanding knowledge about what it was like to be in one of the many residential children’s homes across the 19th and 20th centuries, what life was like for those children who experienced different foster care placements, those who were adopted, and those who might have been cared for by friends and extended family members. We are consulting a range of archival material to get at the historic experiences of care, to understand better the experiences of children and young people, of the family members who engaged with care agencies and carers, as well as those who performed the day to day labour of caring for a child or many children. We are also carrying out interviews to record the life histories of those who have experience of care/care system through our oral history work.
The blog posts here -written by all members of the project team – offer insight into the research and learning process as it progresses. We hope that you find these posts informative and are always keen to hear your questions or responses – please do get in touch!