Filling in the blanks…

Red Cross Poster Finding information about a childhood spent in institutional ‘care’ is not easy. Even when records are found and released, decisions affecting individual lives may not be clearly explained in case files.
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Victorian Redress Scheme – Have Your Say

Cover of the Betrayal of Trust report The Victorian Government has released a public consultation paper on the subject of redress for victims of institutional child abuse that occurred in government and non-government organisations within Victoria.
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Responding to the film ‘Once my mother’

tn_sophia Once My Mother is a film by Sophia Turkiewicz from 2014. In the film, Sophia explores her troubled relationship with her mother, Helen. Sophia spent ‘two bewildering years’ at an orphanage in Adelaide until Helen was able to bring Sophie to a new home, with her new husband. In this film, Sophia looks back on her childhood and tries to learn more about Helen’s life, while her mother battles dementia.
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Reflecting on the past through memorials

tn_creative-geelong A memorial dedicated to children who were in institutional ‘care’ has recently been installed on the Geelong foreshore in Victoria. The hand-carved limestone couch (by local artist Jacinta Leitch) was officially launched in July 2015.
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A historian can get lazy …

tn_bayswater Recently I’ve been working on an article about children’s institutions in Victoria in the early 1950s. This work saw me actually get up from my desk and leave the office to do some research – at Public Record Office Victoria, the State Library of Victoria and at the National Library of Australia in Canberra. These days, there is so much digitised historical material to access via desk-based research that a historian can get lazy …
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