Dear all,

May I draw your attention to the fact that the award winning Hidden Lives Revealed website (www.hiddenlives.org.uk) which uses previously unseen archive material from The Children’s Society, has been updated with additional information on the children’s homes the Society used to run.

Hidden Lives Revealed was awarded the Phillimore Prize in 2005 for the ‘best educational website’, and highlights the work of The Children’s Society and its forerunner The Waifs and Strays Society.

The website originally explained the work of the Waifs and Strays Society across England and Wales between 1881 and 1918. The update means that almost 130 children’s homes histories have been added and the date range extended to 1981. Relevant images of photographs and documents have also been included.

Details of over 300 children’s homes are now available along with the full contents of around 150 case files of children from Victorian and Edwardian times. These files have been digitised and transcribed to give a snapshot of the children cared for by the Society. Photographs, learning materials activities and publications like supporter magazines and annual reports are also available, and website users have the ability to send e-cards.

We hope that this work of providing a more complete directory of homes will be an important source of information for people formerly in care, as well as for groups such as community historians, schools and colleges looking at the history of child care provision.

Future plans for the website include developing a section about the Society’s pioneering work in the Second World War and the many War Nurseries and emergency homes it set up between 1939 and 1945.

Although the website has been refreshed The Children’s Society Archive is always on the look out for photographs of its former children’s homes or any aspect of its work. For example there are no images for over 80 homes, so any extra details or images would be welcome. Anyone with further information that could be added to the Archive and the Hidden Lives Revealed website can email [log in to unmask], or telephone 020 7232 2966.

Hidden Lives Revealed is designed and hosted by the Institute of Learning Resource Technology (www.ilrt.ac.uk) at the University of Bristol.

Hidden Lives Revealed has a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hidden-Lives-Revealed/118877011472766.

There is also a link via The Children’s Society’s Facebook pages at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hidden-Lives-Revealed/118877011472766#!/childrenssociety?sk=info.

Regards,

Gary Collins

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