Presentations

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Presentations 2024

TBA

Presentations 2023

National Redress: Survivor engagement & conflict of interest presented at the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand (LSAANZ) conference in Sydney, December 2023. The conference theme was ‘Voice, resistance, and repair: Law and living together’ with the related topic ‘Redress, reparations and repair for past and ongoing injustice’.

In July 2023, I was commissioned by SBS as guest historian to do a segment of the program Who Do You Think You Are? with Kerry Armstrong, star of films and TV series. It turned out that we had a lot of direct family history in common.

That’s not my child: A family at war. A paper presented at the European Social Science History Conference of the International Institute of Social History, held at Gothenburg University, Sweden, 14 April 2023 

Presentations 2022

“If only they’d kept proper records”: Care Leavers speak back to history: A seminar titled ‘Honouring stories of struggle: reassessing Australian records of disadvantage’, Canberra, 21 October 2022.

With Dr Cate O’Neill (University of Melbourne), Geelong Care leavers talking back to the records Conference of the Australian History Association Wed 29 June 2022

Talking Back to Records: Presentation at RIMPA Seminar, Melbourne 14 July 2022

“More than a Story – Care leavers’ histories of childhood” – an online seminar with Dr Cate O’Neill. hosted by Dr Naomi Parry in the Family History 2022 at University of Tasmania

ASA Session on Charter of Rights in Records with Dr David McGinnis, Kat Avery, and Rhiannon, Director of Client Outcomes at Cafs, and Dr Barbara Reed, 19 October 2022

Presentations 2021

Presentations 2020

Note the impact of Covid-19 pandemic. Two conferences I was to present at have been postponed until 2021.

I was a lead presenter at a Webinar organised by the ASA (Australian Society of Archivists) on 27 July 2020 on the topic of Records in out-of-Home Care. Co-presenters were Nicola Laurent, Kirsten Wright and Simon Froude. The Webinar is available on YouTube

Presentations 2019

Papers delivered at Liverpool University and the University of London on Rights in Records and the Rights Charter. The latter was part of the MIRRA Project

Some Survivors are More Equal than Others: Unintended consequences of the Royal Commission, Society for the History of Childhood & Youth Conference, Sydney June 28.

Presentations in 2018

“Problems with records and recordkeeping practices are not confined to the past”: A challenge from the Royal Commission, at Community Informatics Research Networks, 25 October 2018, Prato, Italy

Abstract: This presentation will begin by describing and analysing the campaign by the Care Leaver community and other stakeholders to bring about a royal commission into child abuse in Australia. Care Leavers did not get the royal commission they wanted and expected—other more powerful forces were at play—but the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Royal Commission) was highly effective in exposing the complex nature and extent of the problem of child sexual abuse, “the core transgression of childhood innocence”. In doing so, the Royal Commission’s findings challenged church/state relations in Australia. This paper aims to show that, although the Royal Commission disappointed many Care Leavers with its narrow focus on sexual abuse, when it eventually reported on records and recordkeeping, the Commission surprised many by moving well beyond its narrow mandate. Issues relating to records and recordkeeping were not originally a prominent part of the Commission’s mandate, but they emerged as one of the crucial issues that influence the quality of the out-of-home Care experience and child protection. This finding has created a fresh context in which Care Leaver advocates, academics and other professionals can work together to further a new agenda for recordkeeping in out-of-home Care.

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“PLEASE SIR, Will you be kind to tell me if I have got brothers or sisters…” Belfast, Northern Ireland April 2018:

I prepared a paper with Associate Professor Jacqueline Wilson for the European Social Science History Conference held in Belfast in April 2018. The Conference was  organised by the International Institute of Social History (IISH), an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences.

The title: ‘PLEASE SIR, Will you be kind to tell me if I have got brothers or sisters…’ comes from a plaintive letter written by a child to the Head of the Victorian, Department of Industrial Schools  and Reformatories in about 1880.

Abstract

From the outset, child welfare systems in Australia undervalued the importance of making and keeping appropriate records about the children in their ‘care’. When they were made, records were often ‘defective’ and sometimes disinformative. Many records were lost, destroyed, or were archived so poorly that they were difficult to access. Repeated warnings from official inquiries that this state of affairs would create problems in the longer-term were largely ignored. Using the case of Victoria, the paper examines why personal records were not seen as core business by exploring welfare ideology and the problematizing of children and their families. In the emergent age of rights, survivor testimony and advocacy, welfare agencies have conceded the right of Care-leavers to access historic records about their childhood. However, given the nature of the narrative found in these files, Care-leavers are beginning to challenge the prevailing accounts by asserting a counter-narrative.

 

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Presentations in 2017:

September 2017: Presentation to ASA Reference, Access and Public Programs special interest group

July 2017: ‘Lost and Found: State Children in Australia’, Hotham History Project, North Melbourne Library (repeated at Adoption & Permanent Care Group on 4 September.

May 2017: Capturing the Record – Building a storehouse of hope, Presentation at the Records Management Network Meeting, Melbourne.

May 2017: Panel Presenter at the National Summit: Setting the Record Straight, Federation Square, Melbourne

April 2017: Sexual Abuse – The core transgression of childhood innocence, Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and La Trobe University, Workshop on the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Institutional Cultures, Policy Frameworks and Social Change.

April 2017: Prof Sue McKemmish’s class Monash University: Why personal records matter.

March 2017: Appearance at the Royal Commission Public Hearing in Sydney, giving evidence on Vicarious Abuse.

February 2017: Research that Connects: A tribute to Shurlee Swain, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne.

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Presentations in 2016:

Mismanaging Expectations: The dominance of sexual abuse in official inquiries

In Valencia, Spain, in April 2016, I presented my analysis of how and why sexual abuse has come to dominate media and the Australian Royal Commission. And the impact of  other forms of abuse and neglect being pushed off the agenda.

The abstract: 

Over the past decades in Australia, older Care Leavers and their advocacy groups have contributed to public and private pressure to establish a succession of formal inquiries about widespread and diverse forms of historical abuse and neglect in out-of-home-care. Care Leavers have been prominent in helping shape the public narrative that emerged from those inquiries and in developing policy directions for dealing with responses to the needs that have been identified. A culture of expectation has been created through formal apologies, history projects, memorialisations and a muddled and incomplete series of redress schemes. Current iterations of inquiries have, however, so filtered the public discussion that the focus has narrowed almost exclusively to sexual abuse. The wider forms of abuse and neglect have all but dropped off the public agenda. The questions that arise include: what are the processes, political and other, that lead to this residualisation of sexual abuse in Australia; and what are the consequences for survivors and more broadly for policy makers of downplaying physical and emotional abuse and other forms of abuse and neglect?

See the version as presented in Valencia, Spain  here.

‘Lost and found: reconstructing a family at war’

December, 2016: Australasian Society for the History of Children and Youth Symposium, (Re)Examining Historical Childhoods: Literary, Cultural, Social, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne

Abstract

Conventional histories of children’s institutions are dominated by the voices of officials, administrators, and agencies seemingly fixated on funding and facilities. With the demise of such institutions, their heritage was often reduced to bricks and mortar. In the process, the resident children separated from their families and community have been all but invisible. However, in Australia, as elsewhere, an outpouring of survivor testimony stimulated, and in turn was stimulated by, a chain of formal inquiries and a national sentiment of remorse ushering in an age of apologies. In this new age, the voices of survivors are now being heard with a force not heard in previous eras. The exposure of atrocious child abuse has rightly focussed attention on apologies and redress, but many survivors of institutional ‘care’ are equally intent on understanding why they were in ‘care’ and, where possible, reconnecting with lost or fragmented families. Many pinned their hopes on official records but discovered what was recorded is painful to read not only because of inaccuracies but also the negativity towards them and disparaging slander of their parents. In other cases the narrative is woefully inadequate with long gaps in time when nothing was recorded and an overall lack of crucial information. This paper presents a case study in which the author goes beyond such sources and uncovers a startling story of multi-generational custody in welfare facilities. In doing so, he illustrates the historic ideology underpinning child welfare in Victoria.

 

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‘Saving the Remnant Fabric: Contesting assessments of an orphanage heritage site’ 

July 2016: Australian Historical Association (AHA) Conference From Boom to Bust, at Federation University, Ballarat.

Abstract

Some 150 years ago the Ballarat Orphan Asylum was built on unwanted crown land to accommodate orphans and neglected or deserted children—the casualties of the gold rush. One hundred years and thousands of children later, the central building was demolished to make way for smaller-scale accommodation. The site was then sold off to private interests and in 2016 the majority of the remnant fabric was demolished prior to rezoning and development.

A long campaign led by former residents succeeded in preserving elements of the facility against the wishes of powerful commercial interests by, among other things, producing an alternative history that demonstrated the relevance of how and why they remember, understand, and feel about the social values of the place—in contrast to ‘institutional’ histories which privileged significant adults, administration and architectural form over children.

Furthermore, having won community support the residents were also able to achieve the reconstruction of a lost avenue of honour memorialising former residents who enlisted in the Great War.

This case study illustrates the way history can be used for contested purposes.

Also at the AHA conference at Ballarat, I was a member of a panel discussing  “Ballarat: Democratic Paradox – An exemplar of civic participation concealing its outcasts”.  Other members of the panel, chaired by Prof. Keir Reeves, were Cate O’Neill and Jacqueline Wilson. This session was a public event held at the new CAFS Legacy & Research Centre.

Abstract:

Ballarat has long been a regional city defined by its history and heritage variously characterised as boomtown built by gold, or birthplace of Australian democracy. The city also has a significant record in child and family welfare stemming from the social upheavals of the goldfields era. However, in recent years, the city has become alerted to its dark history of abuse of children in closed institutions and schools as well as clerical abuse. Hosted by Child and Family Services Ballarat (a community service organisation dating back in various iterations to 1865), this panel will bring together academic and community historians with advocates, heritage practitioners and members of the public, to explore how Ballarat’s ‘difficult heritage’ is being remembered, commemorated and contested. This session will look at diverse cultural heritage representations in and of Ballarat including loud fences, avenues of honour, public records, websites, oral histories, testimony, protest, and memorials, and the ways in which the narratives of Ballarat’s history are being transformed by the shameful and painful stories coming to light.

 

December 2016: ‘Lost and found: reconstructing a family at war’, Australasian Society for the History of Children and Youth symposium, at Deakin University.

November 2016: Was it all a waste of time? The failure of the proposal for financial redress by the Australian Royal Commission into the Handling of Child Sexual Abuse. A paper by Ass Prof Jacqueline Wilson & Frank Golding at the International Network on Studies of Inquiries into Child Abuse, Politics of Apology and Historical Representations of Children in Out-of home Care, Norrkoping, Sweden.

October 2016: Annual National Conference of the Australian Society of Archivists, Forging links: people, systems, archives, Parramatta, NSW: ‘Towards a national summit setting the records straight for the rights of the child’, Sue McKemmish, Barbara Reed, Bonney Djuric and Frank Golding, Moderator: Joanne Evans

Abstract

It is estimated that throughout the twentieth century around half a million Australian children were caught up in child welfare and protection systems, with a mountain of inquiries, research and government reports documenting the reverberations these experiences have on lives. Despite significant reforms in the sector over the past few decades, the latest statistics show a steady increase in the number of children receiving child protection services, with 40-50,000 children annually experiencing some form of out-of-home ‘care’.

Children in ‘care’ today need recordkeeping systems in government, private sector and community organisations that underpin governance and accountability. Those systems must also support preventative strategies for abuse that aid detection, reporting, investigation and remedial action. Reliable records and information systems, are also critical to those people who have experienced ‘care’ in the past. These can support the search for identity and memory, facilitate family reconnections, provide evidence for accountability and redress purposes, and help to assert rights and pursue justice.

Yet people who have experienced ‘care’ – past and present – continue to be disadvantaged and, in some cases, traumatised by the failures of Australian recordkeeping and archival frameworks, systems, policies and practices. A proposed National Summit, ‘Setting the Record Straight: For the Rights of the Child’, in March 2017 is an important step in reforming the way we capture, manage, access and archive records of children in ‘care’ to meet current and future needs.

In this panel session we aim to give an update of the Summit planning and discuss the ways in which members of the ASA community may get involved. It will feature short presentations from panelists. This will be followed by a facilitated discussion on the need for activism and advocacy within the archival community to address the challenges.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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PODCASTS

On 29 June 2014, I joined Roads to Recovery host Greg McHenry on Radio 94.7 FM The Pulse, with Father Kevin Dillon of St Mary’s Geelong and Vlad Selakovic President of CLAN to discuss the Royal Commission, how people recover from shattered childhoods, and other matters.  You can hear the program by clicking on the button below.

 

 

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Presentations in 2015:

Legacy & Research Centre

Ballarat Child & Family Services (CAFS) has officially opened it new Legacy & Research Centre in 2015.  See news of the Centre here. 

I presented a lecture at the Centre. You can listen to my speech and to speeches by others during the Heritage Weekend here.

 

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Presentations 2014:

What More Can we Do?

My address at the International Network on Studies of Inquiries into Child Abuse, Politics of Apology and Historical Representations of Children in Out-of home Care, 4^th Annual Conference, University of Lund, Sweden, 3 December 2014

You can read it or download it here. An abstract follows:

This paper acknowledges that a great deal has been achieved in addressing child abuse in institutions, but there is much more to be done.

A host of national inquiries across the western world have listened to the testimony of victims and survivors and the cat is well and truly out of the bag. Yet, it is argued that the almost exclusive emphasis on sexual abuse (which we have known about for many years but have done little but wring our hands) has deflected attention away from the many other forms of criminal abuse and neglect of children taken into ‘care’.

Despite its focus on sexual abuse, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse provides a useful framework and methodology for much-needed research.

However, a critical question is why, with so many inquiries and so much research, so little has changed in the treatment of children in institutions.

I propose a fresh approach to such research involving a partnership between historians and others with survivors who are capable of bringing a different perspective to the task. An emerging literature of this type already suggests that these more reflexive narratives can successfully combine research skills, analytical powers and lived experience.

 

“The Child Welfare Treadmill: generations of institutionalisation”

Presented at the Australasian Welfare History Workshop, Hobart, February 2014. Online here.

 

• Also presented at the Genealogical Society of Victoria  (podcast available to GSV members)

• And a session for Social Work Students at Monash University  in May

• And two sessions at the University of the Third Age, Deepdene in June.