As a guest blogger, I posted this on the Find & Connect website today. Other Care Leavers share with me their shock at some of what we find in our records. The language hits us between the eyes. Our counterparts in the nineteenth century were tagged by a battalion of adjectives: criminal or neglected, destitute, […]
Care Leavers Absent from Higher Education
This a revised item first posted in June 2015. It draws attention to an important article found in the Australian Journal of Education, May 14, 2015: A forgotten cohort? Including people from out-of-home care in Australian higher education policy, by Andrew Harvey, Lisa Andrewartha and Patricia McNamara. The Abstract reads: People from out-of-home care backgrounds are largely absent from Australian […]
Learning from Abbott’s Downfall
Tony Abbott never got it. The day he was toppled as Prime Minister, Tony Abbott looked confused and crushed. And in shock. His leadership had been suddenly snatched from him—and he did not understand why. He could not see that creating a macho government of socially-conservative white men and governing in the interests of a […]
Please Don’t Call Me a Forgotten Australian
I lost my childhood to orphanages and foster mothers. As a former ward of the State of Victoria, I knock around with many who grew up like me separated from our families. I have been a long-term advocate for greater awareness of the damaging long-term effects of abusive institutionalisation, and the need for redress and […]