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

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.

There are three key public beneficiaries of the activities set out in the attached Pathways to Impact document:

i) Former British child migrants. One of the major challenges faced by many former post-war British child migrants to Australia has been a loss of sense of identity. Their fragmented memories of life in Britain, together with the policies of some organisations of seeking to make a clean break with their past (for example, by not sending over detailed case notes of a child's background to receiving institutions), has meant that many former child migrants have struggled with a sense of a lack of belonging and personal history. Although this has been mitigated to an extent for some of those who have later been able to trace birth families, there is still a desire amongst many to try to make sense of the wider process by which they came to be sent to Australia. Public acts of memory, such as national apologies by the Prime Ministers of Australia and the United Kingdom in 2009 and 2010 respectively, have also been important for many former child migrants in reminding them that their experiences remain subjects of public recognition. The PI's previous work has been positively received by the Child Migrants Trust and the International Association of Former Child Migrants, and through these continuing links the museum, performance and media outputs from this project will be publicised to former child migrants, with funding also sought through this application to enable some former child migrants to attend the London performance of the Ballads.

ii) Wider public audiences. Evaluation of the 'On Their Own' exhibition previously curated by the PI at the V&A Museum of Childhood (see attached CV) showed that 85% of visitors reported little or no prior knowledge of the history of the British child migration schemes before visiting the exhibition. In audience feedback on both the exhibition and the premiere of the Ballads, people reported being moved and better informed about this history, as well as being prompted to reflect on its implications for welfare provision, child migration and the out-of-home care of children today. The new permanent content at the Museum of Childhood will ensure that it is possible to reach a larger audience than the original 'On Their Own' exhibition, with new audiences also reached by the national tour of the Ballads and associated media coverage. As noted in the Pathways to Impact document, the estimated total public audience for this material over the next five years is likely to be around 4-5 million people. Public interest in these post-war migration schemes is likely to be stimulated by the IICSA investigation of them in 2017 (one of only four investigations in which IICSA will conduct public hearings in the coming year) and this project will significantly add to public understanding of their history.

iii) National and international stakeholders involved in the design, operation and over-sight of inquiries into historic child abuse. As recent events around IICSA have demonstrated, there are active debates about the most appropriate ways of undertaking public inquiries into historic child abuse. As such inquiries become an increasingly common phenomenon internationally, there is a growing body of evidence about the potential value that academic historians can add to shaping the remits, methods and content of such investigations, as well as problems that have arisen when insufficient attention is paid historical dimensions of these issues. By collaborating with the leading public engagement network, History and Policy, in running a national panel event at Portcullis House and producing related online material, this project will develop greater awareness amongst policy-makers, commercial organisations offering secretariat services to inquiries and third sector advocacy groups about the potential value of such historical contributions.