Church of England Homes was an agency of the Sydney Anglican Diocese that ran children’s homes in Sydney and the Blue Mountains. It was created around 1884 by Reverend TB Tress and Reverend Dr Manning, in Woolloomooloo, and grew to take in several committees that had operated in the Sydney area. Church of England Homes…
On 18 June 1997 then New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr issued an unreserved apology to the Aboriginal people of the state of New South Wales for the policies and practices that led to the removal of generations of Aboriginal children from their families. This was the first response by an Australian state government to…
On Thursday 20 September 2012 both Houses of the New South Wales Parliament apologised for forced adoption practices. The motion read as follows: “This House acknowledges the traumatic effects of the forced adoption practices of the past that have echoed through the lives of tens of thousands of mothers, fathers, people adopted as children and…
An Inquiry into Adoption Practices in NSW was completed by the Social Issues Committee of the New South Wales Legislative Council in 2000. The Committee considered adoption practices from 1950 to 1998. However, the primary emphasis of the Inquiry was on the practices occurring before the introduction of the Adoption Information Act 1990.
On 19 September 2009 then New South Wales Premier, Nathan Rees, held a special ceremony in the Botanic Gardens to formally apologise to the state’s Forgotten Australians and child migrants. Mr Rees and then Community Services Minister Linda Burney unveiled a memorial as ‘a lasting tribute to the children who suffered in care in NSW’….
The New South Wales Health Commission was a government department that was responsible for running hospitals and mental health institutions from 1973 until 1982. It replaced the Department of Public Health and was abolished when the Department of Health was created. In 2013, Health Commission records are controlled by the Department of Health.
The Health Department is the New South Wales Government department that is responsible for hospitals, community health and a range of health-related institutions, including mental health. It was created in 1982 as the Department of Health and since 2009 has been known as the Health Department. The Health Department controls some records relating to children…
The office of the Director of State Psychiatric Services was the New South Wales government agency that supervised psychiatric institutions from 1958 until 1973. Its powers were transferred to the Health Commission in 1972 (later the Health Department).
On 21 March 2013, the Prime Minister Julia Gillard apologised on behalf of the Australian Government to people affected by forced adoption or removal policies and practices. The national apology was delivered in the Great Hall of Parliament House, Canberra.
The Now-Remembered Australians is a peer-support organisation for ‘state care’ system leavers that is based in Lismore, in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. The Now-Remembered Australians formed in 2009 after members travelled to Canberra to hear the Parliamentary Apology to Forgotten Australians and Child Migrants. The group meets regularly in Lismore for mutual support…