Since its founding in 1979, the mission of California Social Welfare Archives (CSWA) is to collect and preserve documents and personal histories that illuminate the development of social issues and problems in the field of health, social work and social welfare in California, as well as the answers that have emerged to cope with such problems.

Childrens Hospital Society of Los Angeles was established in 1901 by a small group of women who recognized the need for a hospital that could serve ill, crippled, and under-privileged children. The original hospital, opened in 1902, was a modest two-story, canary-yellow, clapboard house. It had nine beds, was served by one volunteer doctor and treated fourteen patients its first year. By 1905, the…