The Social Welfare Forum, 1968

The papers of Gladys Turner Finney fall into three main categories: documents concerning her career, papers relating to her personal interests, and materials associated with the career of her husband. The files cover the years between 1957 and 2014, and are arranged into seven series.

Series I, Personal, includes autobiographical articles, correspondence, newspaper clippings, and three resumes, as well as two children's books authored by Gladys Turner Finney and materials related to her membership in professional social work associations. Some clippings relating to Mrs. Finney's personal and professional interests (including her own letters to the editor) are also included in this series. This series also contains 20 of Mrs. Finney's unpublished personal journals and one address book. Some of the journals contained newspaper clippings which were photocopied and retained inside the journals or in the same box with the journals. Other documents folded within the journals were either retained there in that location or photocopies were made and retained with the journals with the originals moved to the correspondence files or discarded if they were not relevant or not appropriate to retain (e.g., sticky notes and empty addressed envelopes were discarded).

Series II, Employers, contains documents that relate to Gladys Turner Finney's career, including her employment at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the Franklin County Welfare Department and Barney's Children's Medical Center. Items such items as brochures, correspondence, meeting minutes, newspaper clippings and reports are part of this series.

Series III, Day-Mont West Community Mental Health Center, contains documents such as brochures, correspondence, meeting minutes, reports and surveys. Of particular interest are materials relating to a grievance that Gladys Turner Finney filed against her employer.

Series IV, Special Projects, is comprised of materials relating to special projects that Gladys Turner Finney organized and participated in, such as the Parents Association of Non-Ambulatory Children and Adults and Emotions Anonymous. This series includes contracts, correspondence, meeting minutes, newspaper clippings, progress notes, and reports.

Series V, Frederick Marshall Finney, contains documents relating to Gladys Turner Finney's husband. Frederick Marshall Finney was an economist and social scientist in Dayton, Ohio. Included in this series are his resume and a research paper he wrote at the University of Cincinnati. There are also materials related to educational studies completed at the United States Armed Forces Institute. This series also includes periodicals edited by Frederick and Gladys Finney and an article Finney wrote on Isaac Scott Hathaway, a famous coin designer. The 2014 addition also included two separate binders/scrapbooks of Mr. Finney's files. These were generally arranged chronologically or by topic. Topical files were kept together and much of the original order of the scrapbooks was retained, but occasionally, there were unrelated documents filed together that had to be refiled.

Series VI, Dayton Model Cities Program, contains materials related to this urban city movement, developed during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Designed to deal with social issues such as crime, inadequate housing and education, poverty, and unemployment; Frederick Finney was an Evaluation Director for the MCP in Dayton, Ohio. Included in this series are directories and periodicals, correspondence, meeting minutes, and numerous reports dealing with the MCP.

Series VII, Books, contain published books that were a part of Frederick M. Finney's personal collection. They were used as part of his research, and several of the books in this series contain some of Finney's notes within the text.