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About Find & Connect

The Find & Connect web resource brings together historical resources relating to institutional ‘care’ in Australia. You can use it to

  • read information about and view images of children’s Homes
  • get help to find records about your childhood in ‘care’
  • connect with support groups and services in your state/territory

You will not find personal information or private records on Find & Connect. This website contains only information that is already published and/or in the public domain, or information that stakeholders have agreed to place in the public domain to help those who experienced out-of-home ‘care’ access records.

However, this website can help you locate and get access to your own personal records which may be kept by government departments or past providers of ‘care’.

The Find & Connect web resource has been developed by a team of historians, archivists and social workers from the University of Melbourne and Australian Catholic University, with funding from the Australian Government.

The first version of the web resource was released in November 2011 and a redesigned site was launched in 2013. It is a ‘work in progress’, and the web resource will continue to be enriched and expanded. We welcome any information, feedback or questions that you may have.

This website is one component of the Australian government’s Find & Connect services and projects.

As part of Find & Connect, staff from the web team have also been involved in developing training material for record holding organisations with the aim to improve access to the records of Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants, as part of the Records Access Documentation Project. For more information see Resources for Record Holders.

Purpose

This website was developed to help Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants understand more about their past and about the historical context of child welfare. For many people who grew up in ‘care’, the search for records and information – so vital to identity and to the process of reconnecting with family – can be frustrating, complicated, time-consuming, expensive and traumatic. Three Senate reports have highlighted that the history of child welfare in Australia is little-known and little-understood. Read more about the background to this web resource.

We hope that the information in Find & Connect will be helpful to Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants and to members of their families who are in the process of finding and telling their stories and coming to terms with the past. Furthermore, we hope that the resources made available through Find & Connect will help raise awareness about this area of Australia’s history, and play a role in acknowledging past wrongs.

This website contains information that is relevant to anyone who experienced out-of-home ‘care’ in Australia, not only the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants, but also members of the Stolen Generations, foster children, wards of the state and adopted children. These people might choose to identify themselves with another group or label, such as ‘care’ leavers, ‘Homies’ or ‘Remembered Australians’.

Everyone affected by the history of institutional care will have their own story to tell – we hope that you can use this website to find your own pathways to information and resources that will help you make sense of your past and to see where your own story fits in to the broader context.