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Community-generated digital content (CGDC) is one of the UK’s prime cultural assets. However, CGDC is currently “critically endangered” (Digital Preservation Coalition, 2021) due to technological and organisational barriers and has proven resistant to traditional methods of linking and integration. The challenge of integrating CGDC into larger archives has effectively silenced diverse community voices within our national collection. Our Heritage, Our Stories (OHOS), funded by the UK’s AHRC programme Towards a National Collection, responds to these urgent challenges by bringing together cutting-edge approaches from cultural heritage, humanities and computer science.

Existing solutions to CGDC integration, involving bespoke interventionist activities, are expensive, time-consuming and unsustainable at scale, while unsophisticated computational integration erases the meaning and purpose of both CGDC and its creators. Using innovative multidisciplinary methods, AI tools and a co-design process, previously unfindable and unlinkable CGDC will be made discoverable in our virtual national collection.

There currently exists a range of disconnected, fragile and under-represented community-generated heritage which is at increasing risk of loss. Therefore, OHOS will work to ensure the survival and preservation of these nationally important resources, for the future and for our shared national collection.

As we dissolve barriers to create meaningful new links across CGDC collections and develop new methods of engagement, OHOS will also make this content accessible to new and diverse audiences. This will facilitate a wealth of fresh research while also embedding new strategies for future management of CGDC into heritage practice and training and fostering newly enriching, robust connections between communities and archival institutions.

Using a mixed methodology comprising interviews, case file analysis and descriptive statistics, this study aims to examine the experiences of all 43 young people in Wales subject to secure accommodation orders between 1st April 2016 and 31st March 2018.

Children in the UK aged 10–17 years who are deemed to be at a significant level of risk to themselves or others may be subject to a secure accommodation order, leading to time spent in a secure children’s home (SCH) on welfare grounds. Following a rise in the number of children in Wales referred to SCHs for welfare reasons, this paper describes these young people’s journeys into, through and out of SCHs, giving insight into their experiences and highlighting areas for policy and practice improvements.

Findings indicate that improvements in mental health support and placement availability are key in improving the experiences of this particularly vulnerable group of young people throughout their childhood.

Other practical implications of the study’s findings, such as improvements in secure transport arrangements, are also discussed.

While the findings are limited by the reliance on self-report methods and the size of the study, namely, the small number of young people with experience of SCHs who were able to participate, the findings build on the existing knowledge base around children’s residential accommodation and provide new insights into how best to support these children.