British child migration schemes to Australia, 1947-1970: historical perspectives and public memory today

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Between 1947 and 1970, around 3,200 children were sent from Britain to Australia, unaccompanied by their parents, through child migration schemes funded by Australian and British Governments and delivered by churches, religious orders and charities. Unlike earlier British child migration schemes (such as those which sent around 90,000 children to Canada between 1869-1924), the post-war migration schemes to Australia operated against the grain of current trends in the out-of-home care of children. Building on concern with standards of residential care for children, an awareness of the trauma of family separation through war-time evacuation and professional support for psychological theories emphasising the importance of the parent-child bond, the influential Care of Children Committee (Curtis) Report in 1946 established the principle that the out-of-home care of children should offer an environment resembling a 'normal' family home. The migration schemes to Australia, however, sent children almost entirely to residential institutions, many of which were remote, large and impersonal, and of the kind that the Curtis Report had criticised. Despite the efforts of the Home Office, child migration work to Australia undertaken by voluntary organisations remained largely unregulated.This project will undertake the first comprehensive historical study of these migration schemes, exploring the reasons for their post-war resumption, the interactions between the various governmental and voluntary organisations involved in them in both Britain and Australia, and their evolution and closure. In the context of public memories of these schemes that tend to represent them as a homogenous phenomenon, this project will provide a more differentiated account of varying cultures and working methods of organisations undertaking this work that had an important bearing on child migrants' experiences overseas. It will also undertake unprecedented work in examining the extent to which the schemes were anomalous in comparison to broader currents in the out-of-home care of children in the post-war period and consider the implications of this for understanding the mixed economy of the emergent post-war welfare state.These migration schemes remain a focus for public attention through recent and on-going investigations in the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, Northern Ireland, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Australia, and the Home Office's Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). Former British child migrants sent to the Fairbridge Farm School in Molong, New South Wales, have also recently received the largest proposed settlement ($24m AUD) for a class action concerning historic child abuse in Australian legal history. This project will provide essential historical understanding on which this continuing public re-evaluation of these schemes' work can draw. Building on the experiences of a range of experienced international practitioners (including the PI's experience of working with IICSA), the project will also examine the ways in which historical understanding is used in historic child abuse inquiries and consider the potential and challenges of different models for academic historians' engagement in these processes. In addition to producing an academic monograph that will be a key historical text on these schemes, the project will also extend and deepen public understanding of them through new permanent display material for the V&A Museum of Childhood and a national tour of the Ballads of Child Migration at major venues involving leading British folk-musicians which is also expected to receive further regional and national media coverage. In addition to the academic beneficiaries of this project, material produced through it will engage an expected public audience of between 4-5 million people over the next five years.