This bachelor project is dedicated to the history of child and youth welfare in St. Pölten. We will address the topic from a gender perspective and in two different ways. On the one hand, the focus is on a specific group of clients in child and youth welfare: single mothers. After all, their “parental authority” was restricted until the abolition of guardianship on the part of the official authorities (Amtsvormundschaft) in 1989. On the other hand, the students reconstruct hitherto invisible professional biographies of women on the basis of historical sources, such as the story of Luise Feldmann who headed the town’s youth welfare office in the 1920s.

By adopting this multi-perspective approach, the bachelor project makes a first contribution to a local professional history in the field of child and youth welfare. Mixed methods are used in this context: Qualitative interviews with women who still experienced the institution of official guardianship as single mothers are at the center, and historical source research is conducted in a complementary capacity.

Embedded in the first research network for interdisciplinary regional studies as well as a St. Pölten-based initiative for women’s history under the lead of Renate Gamsjäger, the course regards itself as an interdisciplinary research project that brings together social sciences (Social Work) and history.