Senator Derryn Hinch was a member of the Senate Committee examining the Bill before the Parliament on a national redress scheme. The Senator demonstrated that not all politicians come to meetings like this one with a closed mind. A few days after the hearing, he posted the following part of his diary on Crikey.com. These […]
Another Apology
Formal Apologies: What do they mean? Do they matter? The Prime Minister has set up a committee to provide advice on a proposed national apology to Australians who were sexually abused as children. (See more here.) There are many things we’ve learned from past apologies. Care Leavers and survivors of child abuse have inspired […]
Loud Fences
The tacit semantics of ‘Loud Fences’: tracing the connections between activism, heritage and new histories This article written by Associate Professor Jacqueline Wilson and I was published in the International Journal of Heritage Studies on 11 May 2017 ABSTRACT In 2015, in response to harrowing accounts of child sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy in […]
Lost and found: counter-narratives of dis/located families
Lost and found: counter-narratives of dis/located families This is the Abstract for a paper presented at a symposium of the Dis/located Children’s Network in Adelaide on 16 December by Frank Golding in collaboration with Associate Professor Jacqueline Z Wilson of Federation University Australia Conventional histories of children in institutional care are dominated by the voices […]
Royal Commission in New Zealand
HUI ON THE ROYAL COMMISSION IN NEW ZEALAND Leonie Sheedy, CEO of CLAN, and I were invited to participate in a hui (gathering or workshop) in Wellington, New Zealand on 14-15 February. The purpose of the hui was to discuss the Terms of Reference (ToR) for the NZ Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse […]
Hope Street
Hope Street: From Voice to Agency for Care-Leavers in Higher Education This is a new article written by Dr Jacqueline Wilson, Dr Philip Mendes and myself just published in the latest issue of Life Writing In summary: In the early 1980s, one of the authors became an adolescent ward of the State of Victoria, Australia, […]
The Missing Dads of Spring Street
This is a piece I wrote for the Melbourne Herald-Sun nearly a decade ago. It was published on 4 September 2008 in time for Father’s Day. The editor cut it back a bit to fit the space he was allowing. It’s a bit dated in the detail, as you will see, but the sentiment still […]
Lost & Found: State Children in Victoria (6)
DOWNSIZING—DESIRABLE BUT NOT ALWAYS EASY One last example, because it shows that changes in welfare policy were not uniform or consistent: St Joseph’s Homes for Children in Flemington 1981-1997: the Family Group Homes era. It’s probably true to say that, broadly speaking, child-savers like Selina Sutherland and those involved in the boarding-out movement were […]
Lost & Found: State Children in Victoria (5)
THE CHILD SAVERS – CHILD RESCUERS Let’s return to the 1880s where we find a crusade for reforming dissolute urban working-class family life through Christian charity—middle-class morality and concern for social stability. The tropes of child as victim and child as threat intersected. The Scots Church Children’s Aid Society explained: children must be rescued from […]
Lost & Found: State Children in Victoria (4)
ROYAL PARK IN PARKVILLE – THE DEPOT AND MUCH MORE Against that back-story we come to Royal Park in Parkville. No site has had such a confusing history as Royal Park. You get a sense of this in its more than a dozen alternative names and functions over the years (matched by repeated changes of […]