The Welfare Planning Council, Los Angeles Region, records, consists of correspondence, brochures, minutes, and reports, dated 1939-1974 (bulk 1950s-1960s), that document the activities of the Council in the areas of social welfare planning, research, and development, and the coordination of health, welfare and recreational programs in the Los Angeles area. Material dating before the establishment of the Welfare Planning Council in 1953 covers the Metropolitan Welfare Council's studies regarding its separation from the Los Angeles Welfare Federation, with the correlative creation of the Welfare Planning Council.

The Welfare Planning Council was created in 1953 when the Welfare Council of Metropolitan Los Angeles was reorganized at the recommendation of the Citizen's Study Committee of the Welfare Federation of Los Angeles. To create a division responsible solely for programs and agencies, the committee had judged that the Welfare Council should be separated from fund-raising functions of the Los Angeles Welfare Federation, then known as the Los Angeles Community Chest. This establishment of the Welfare Planning Council continued the historical evolution of social welfare supervisory councils in Los Angeles. The first such council had been the Charity Conference Committee, organized in 1908; the next, the successor Los Angles Council of Social Agencies (1914), which then changed its name to the Welfare Council of Metropolitan Los Angeles, in 1944. Thus, the WPC dated its origins to 1914. The Council's purpose, as outlined in a 1961 brochure, was to conduct research and development in the area of social welfare, plan social welfare programs, and coordinate health, welfare, and recreational programs in the Los Angeles area. In short, the WPC was to provide an overall vision and coordination for social welfare in the Los Angeles region, as well as to take an active part in the Community Chest's hearings on budgets of member agencies. These Council activities are well documented in this collection, especially in the area of research, where a large number of research reports have been preserved.

4.2 linear ft. 10 boxes

The use of archival materials for on-site research does not constitute permission from the California Social Welfare Archives to publish them. Copyright has not been assigned to the California Social Welfare Archives, and the researcher is instructed to obtain permission to quote from or publish manuscripts in the CSWA's collections from the copyright holder.

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