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Australian Indigenous Ministries

Australian Indigenous Ministries is the modern name of the Aborigines Inland Mission. The name change occurred in 1998. In 2014 it is not directly involved in caring for children and it appears that its historical records and photographic collections were donated to the State Library of New South Wales between 2000 and 2010.

Aborigines Inland Mission

The Aborigines Inland Mission (AIM) was an Evangelical Baptist missionary organisation established by Retta Dixon in 1905. The AIM and its staff ran the St Clair Mission, the Singleton Home, the Native Workers’ Training College and the Singleton Bible Training Institute in New South Wales, as well as the Phillip Creek Mission and the Retta…

National Apology for Forced Adoptions, Parliament of Australia

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.

Australian Red Cross

The Australian Red Cross was formed on the outbreak of the first World War in 1914 as a branch of the British Red Cross Society. The Australian Junior Red Cross, a subsidiary organisation to the Australian Red Cross, was formally established in New South Wales in 1918. The Junior Red Cross carried out a range…

Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples, Parliament of Australia

On 13 February 2008, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd opened the Parliament of Australia by apologising to the Indigenous peoples of Australia. The Prime Minister said: We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologise especially for…

Affiliation

Affiliation is a word used to describe the process of identifying the father of a child born to a single mother. Single mothers were obliged to name the father of their child if they wished to access government payments. They were also forced to ask the father for maintenance or child support. If her request…

City Mission

City Mission refers to the missions run by various Christian denominations in urban and suburban settings. Many of the city missions established in nineteenth-century Australia continue to operate community services organisations in the 2010s. The London City Mission was founded in 1835, with a mandate to ‘extend the knowledge of the Gospel among the inhabitants…

Uncontrollable

Uncontrollable is a term used in child welfare legislation and in child welfare files. It was generally used by authorities to describe a child believed to be undisciplined. Being uncontrollable could be a reason for a child to be deemed neglected and made a ward of the state in court. Parents and guardians could declare…

In Moral Danger

In Moral Danger (sometimes abbreviated as IMD) was a term in common use in government departments and welfare agencies in the twentieth century. It referred to one of the categories of a ‘child in need of care and protection’ under the various child welfare acts in Australian states and territories. Being ‘exposed to moral danger’…

Child Guidance Clinic

Child guidance clinics were first established in Australia in the 1930s. Such clinics had been developed in the United States in the 1920s, for the diagnosis and treatment of mild behaviour and emotional problems in school-aged children (Wright, 2012). An important motive in the development of child guidance clinics was to counteract ‘juvenile delinquency’, but…