“If only they’d kept proper records”: Care Leavers speak back to history: A paper by Frank Golding at a seminar titled ‘Honouring stories of struggle: reassessing Australian records of disadvantage’, Canberra, 21 October 2022. The seminar was sponsored by the Steering Committee of the Documenting Australian Society of the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World […]
PhD Thesis: Care Leavers Recovering Voice and Agency Through Counter-Narratives
My PhD thesis from Federation University Australia is now available on line. This is a very brief summary: Australia has a long history of removing children from their families when they are deemed to be neglected or ‘in moral danger’. Placed in orphanages, children’s Homes and foster ‘care’ out of the public gaze, these children […]
Alliance for Care Experienced People in Higher Education
A group of Care Leavers (in Australia) and Care Experienced People (in the UK) have initiated the Alliance for Care Experienced People in Higher Education – a project currently being developed by care experienced people for care experienced people in Higher Education. There are care experienced people researching, working, and studying in Higher Education who […]
Cardinal Pell Can Be Taken Away, Please
Frank Golding, 13 March, 2019 at the Melbourne County Court Flanked by five hefty policemen, the Cardinal sits impassively at the rear of County Court Room 3.3, while from the front, Chief Judge Kidd reads his sentencing report, without relent. Not accustomed to listening to others for such a stretch, Pell will have to wait […]
Redress for All Forms of Abuse.
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 […]
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, […]
Lost & Found: State Children in Victoria (2)
THE LARGE INSTITUTIONS In 1849 the Mayor of Melbourne, approached a charitable organisation, the Dorcas Society, for urgent help with the children of a man who had murdered his wife. A stop-gap was found for these and other urgent cases of destitute and homeless children, the ‘uncriminal orphans and friendless children’. In 1850 the Dorcas […]
Employment of Women
I found this gem when I was trawling through the Report of the Victorian Royal Commission on the State Public Service (1917). The Commission was chaired by one Alexander Gooch, Esquire. I quote from the Report verbatim. Employment of women Until the war forced the position, the powers given by the Public Service Act […]
Loud Fences
Associate Professor Jacqueline Wilson and I have published this article in the latest issue of International Journal of Heritage Studies http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IVwwDQZhmM8saZwXSuJF/full