can some one tell me about the child migrants

[2shoes]

why were they sent to australia, did they not have families over here.....

i think they were orphans

Much like forced adoption today. One case I saw had a play therapist advising the LA that adoption was best for the child.

They were children in care, not all orphans -- typically their birth families weren't even told they'd been sent to Australia.

They weren't all orphans. In many cases the parents were simply deemed unfit.

Remember, these babies pre-dated the comprehensive welfare system. In many, many cases the parents' or mothers' alternatives were to give the child up or literally let it starve.

But the philosophy behind it was to fill the colonies with white British breeding stock. Basically the same as sending convicts.

I read a book by the social worker who helped expose the plight of these people and tried to provide support to them. It is a dreadful story of abuse of children, some of whom did have families available to them, bet were said to have died in some cases.

It DOES NOT have any parallel today and WTF has a play therapist got to do with this?? I know a play therapist who is also a qualified social worker (quite complementary qualifications) who undertakes independent assessments for the court as she is very skilled at representing children's wishes and feelings and making sense of their communications-far more child centred than others I have come across. I don't understand your point, JHemming...

Sadly it does have parallels today in England. The abuse of human rights in sectioning a 17 year old in care in an attempt to stop him rejoining his family is another egregious example.

I believe it went on until the early 1960's.
They weren't adopted as such were they? I thought older children were forced to work on farms, and lots lived in homes run by the RC churh.

She lives near me and I work at local newspaper to her en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Humphreys They are making a film of it all too.

All done to save money!. No attempt was being made to give DC a better life then!
about the race thing too.

Didn't The Leaving of Livepool film (TV) cover the subject.

Margaret's book Empty Cradles is a good read - see if your library has a copy.

Child Migrants Trust contains a brief history.

What 17 year old is this, it's passed me by. Are you talking about detention under the mental health act or the use of secure accommodation? I can't see the relevance to this discussion yet, but Id like to take a look.

THey were sold the idea that Australia was like a wonderland and many of them sat on the boat looking forward to a wonderful life. It's bloody disgraceful.....now where's the petition for UK to apologise....?

PP - yes the migration of children to Australia was truly horrendous. These children were (as was the custom in the 40s, 50s and 60s) placed in childrens homes for one reason or another. They were often told that their parents were dead which was often completely untrue. God knows what the homes who were "caring" for the children told the parents. In those days birth parents did not have the rights that they have these days and were presumably cowed by the "Authorities" and would be willing to accept what they were told.

The truth is that these children were STOLEN from their parents and sent to Australia supposedly for a "new life" but in fact were horrendously physically and sexually abused. It is an absolute scandal. Others on here have given links to the issue and details of Margaret Humphreys who has worked tirelessly to right some of the wrongs. Her book "Empty Cradles" tells the story but if you read it, have some tissue handy.

I have just read a book by Martin Sixsmith called "The Lost Child of Philomena Lee" which tells the story of a young Irish girl who had what was then called an "illegitimate" child and lived in a nun's home for 3 years with her little boy. When the child was aged 3 he ws "sold" by the nuns to an American family and this was commonplace in Ireland in those days. The nuns forced the young mothers to give up their babies and they had no choice as they hd nowhere to go and no means of supporting their children. The nuns have a lot to answer for............the book is very interesting but very very sad.

At least we have now moved on from those terrible times.

plus ça change

That's a bit of a low blow, John. Sadly i had begun to expect a bit better of you.

You only need to look at the abuse of children in Islington in the care homes. I think that was in the 1980s.

Generally what Tim Yeo was referring to on Wednesday night he said: " In particular, I wish to expose the policy of Suffolk county council in cases where the birth parents do not wish to give up newly born babies for adoption. The council actively seeks opportunities to remove babies from their mothers. Its social work staff do so in a manner that in my view is sometimes tantamount to child kidnapping."

Tim Yeo may have been selectively quoted, but he sounds unhinged.

I don't think it is misleadingly selective. Tim is not AFAIK as critical as Charles Hendry. However, the debate is in hansard
here
I don't think I have misleadingly selectively quoted him.

He also said this: "I have suspected for some time that an explicit if unpublished aim of the staff of Suffolk county council is to remove very young children from the care of their parents wherever possible. My anxiety results from a growing number of families in my constituency who come to me for help when Suffolk county council staff threaten to take away their children. I shall illustrate my concern by describing just one family, whom I have got to know well in the past 18 months. I wish I could believe that their case was exceptional but, alas, I fear that it may be typical of the practices followed by social workers throughout Suffolk, and possibly elsewhere in the country."

I don't know what's going on in Suffolk, but I do think it's important that we learn the terrible lessons from the history of forced adoption and are very careful to check today's policies against them. We should ask, in 20 years time, will people turn round and wonder what on earth were we up to?

Many of the people who removed the stolen generation of aborigine children in Australia, or the Maori children in New Zealand, or the illegitimate children in the UK who were sent as child migrants thought they were doing it 'for the best'. (And I bet the nuns and Catholic hierarchy who sold children told themselves that too.)

btw, my mother was born just after WW2 and adopted at three months old. She considers herself bloody lucky not to have been a child migrant. Her life could very easily have been completely different.

I have come to believe that JH is most definitely unhinged and probably Tim Yeo too. Hemmings is talking of abuse in Islington Children's Homes in the 80s and no one would deny that institutional abuse was rife in this county in the 50s, 60s 70s and probably 80s too. However on another thread he is advocating that children are better cared for in children's homes than in foster care. He is a mass of contradictions, inaccurate information and total distortion of the facts.

John, apologies, I wasn't suggesting you were selectively misquoting him -I just looked at the DM. However, he still sounds unhinged.

nananina "However on another thread he is advocating that children are better cared for in children's homes than in foster care."

Just because some children were abused in a childrens home does not mean that a residential instutition is inherently such a bad concept that it should not be used.

Drawing generalisations from specific examples is a fallacy.

this happened to my grandad when he was about 9 I think. he was sent to canada to work on a farm but he was almost killed and was too injured to work on the farm anymore so they sent him back . He had a pretty crap childhood - life was tough then. luckily he had a wonderful family himself when an adult and was able to watch his children and grandchildren grow up in better times.

Very glad your poor Grandad was able to give his own children a better start than he'd had, poor man.