The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry was established by the Northern Ireland Executive on 19 January 2013. It was created to investigate abuse suffered by children under the age of 18 years in institutions in Northern Ireland. As part of its work, the Inquiry examined the treatment of children in institutions in Northern Ireland who were…
An Inquiry into the Welfare of Former British Child Migrants was undertaken by the Parliament of the United Kingdom’s House of Commons Health Committee in 1997-98. In relation to Australia, the Inquiry was most interested in the fate of children who were sent from Britain in the twentieth century. The inquiry and its report (known…
‘Bringing Them Home after the Apology oral history project [sound recording]’ is a collection of interviews undertaken by the National Library of Australia. These interviews follow an earlier project that included oral histories from Indigenous people, missionaries, police and administrators who were ‘involved in or affected by’ the removal of Indigenous children from their families….
Open adoption is when an adoption occurs with no secrecy, the child can know who their birth parents are and the birth parents have the right to keep in contact with the child. It can be compared to closed adoption practices of the twentieth century and the effects these had on many people involved in…
Absconding is a term used to describe the act of running away or escaping from an institution, foster home or other place of care. The report of the 2004 Senate “Forgotten Australians” inquiry stated that ‘absconding was a widely reported practice’ in children’s institutions around Australia. Various child welfare laws around Australia made absconding or…
The ‘Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants oral history project’ was established in 2009 after the National Apology to people who had been in out of home care as children, including people who lived in foster care as children. It is a collection of audio interviews. The project sought to embrace the complexity of the…
The Child Migrants Trust (CMT) was established in 1987 by English social worker Margaret Humphreys to address the issues surrounding the deportation of children from Britain, and to offer to former child migrants and their families services including counselling, support for family reunions, and family research. Since 2010, the CMT has administered the UK government-funded…
Frontier Services was formed in 1977 when the Uniting Church was established and the inland missions of the Presbyterian, Congregational and Methodist Churches were combined. Frontier Services was a name historically used by the founder of the AIM, John Flynn, and it was revived as the official name of the freshly constituted body within the…
The Sisters of Nazareth, a Catholic religious order of women, were founded in London in 1851 by Mother St Basil (Victoire Larmenier 1827-1878). The Sisters of Nazareth began work in Australia in 1888. They were part of the Catholic Migration Scheme which brought children to Australia from Britain and Malta after World War II. The…
The Australasian Province of the Christian Brothers operated in Australia from 1885 and was also known as St Mary’s Province of the Christian Brothers. It was a province of the Roman Catholic Congregation of Christian Brothers first established by Edmund Rice in Ireland in 1808. The Christian Brothers ran institutions for children in the states…