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 Australian Inland Mission (AIM) was established in 1912 by the Rev John Flynn (later founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service) of the Presbyterian Church. The initial focus of AIM was to provide medical services to those living in remote Outback areas. The AIM’s work was primarily in the Northern Territory, but also was…
Correspondence files, Class 5 (British Migrants) contains records created by the Department of Immigration and the Department of the Interior, dating from 1920 to 1957. It is held by the National Archives of Australia. This series contains correspondence files relating to the migration of British subjects to Australia, including the migration of children through Child…
The Correspondence files, class 1 (general, passports) is a series of records dating from 1892 to 1970 held by the National Archives of Australia. It contains records concerning the activities of the Commonwealth Department of the Interior from 1939 to 1945 and the Commonwealth Department of Immigration from 1946 to 1950. Some of the records…
Maternity Homes were institutions that provided residential accommodation to pregnant women, usually single women, and they often functioned (officially or not) as adoption agencies. Women gave birth in maternity homes attended by a midwife. Many maternity homes were also ‘rescue homes’ which tried to reform the young mothers. These institutions were sometimes known as lying-in…
The Inquiry into the Implementation of the Recommendations of the Lost Innocents and Forgotten Australians Reports, which began in 2008, was conducted by the Senate’s Community Affairs References Committee. Its report Lost Innocents and Forgotten Australians Revisited, was released in June 2009. In September 2008, the Senate referred the following matter to the Community Affairs…
Dec 17, 2025
Dec 18, 2024
Nov 15, 2024