Building a Life Story: Providing Records and Support to Former Residents of Children's Homes

Abstract

Approximately 500,000 children were institutionalised in Australian orphanages and other forms of children's Homes over the course of the 20th century. However, growing up in care is not just a part of childhood; it can have ongoing impact across a person's life. Access to records can be a very important way in which people who grew up in institutional care construct the story of their lives, contributing to their self-identity, and also find out practical information, such as their exact date of birth and medical history. The present article takes as its starting point a recommendation of the third of the Australian Government reports concerned with the institutionalisation of Australian children—Forgotten Australians—and draws on interviews with former residents of children's Homes aged between 42 and 76 years to examine their access to records in Australia. We discuss a case study, the unique Heritage Information Service at MacKillop Family Services, which supports former residents to access their records, and consider the implications for good practice of agencies working in this area.

Keywords:

• Care Leavers
• Childhood Institutionalisation
• Orphanages
• Records
• Support

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Australian Research Council's Linkage Projects funding scheme (project number LP0561704). In addition, MacKillop Family Services and the Buckland Foundation also contributed funding to the project and we thank them for their support.

Notes

¹Further analysis of these interviews will be published in a book, due to be released in 2009.