‘Uprooted from Everything that Attaches You’: Long-Term Outcomes of Former Child Migrants in Care in the Twentieth Century in Australia

Abstract

This article reports the in-care and post-care experience of people who lived in Australian child-welfare systems as children from 1930 to 1989. The research utilised a mixed-methods design including surveys, interviews and focus groups, and the sample comprised over 700 care-leavers across Australia. This manuscript reports specifically on the experience of the British Child Migrant cohort within the study. Their experience was often characterised by oppressive child-rearing practices that paved the way for serious abuse of all types and gross neglect. The findings reveal that emotional, physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by predatory adults and by peers occurred frequently and concurren..