Care and Protection:
Recognising Forgotten
Australians
Recognising the Forgotten
Australians
Kath McFarlane
Lecturer, Charles Sturt University /
UNSW PhD candidate
The ‘Forgotten Australians’ is the name given to
those adults who grew up in out of home care foster homes, orphanages and other institutions –
throughout Australia, from the 1920’s until the
1990’s.
Other common terms include:
- careleavers;
- fosterkids;
- wardies; and
- homies.
The term includes those people who were placed in
juvenile detention institutions - such as the
Parramatta Girls Home or Hay Gaol – for often
spurious reasons, including being deemed ‘exposed
to moral danger’ after being abused or neglected, or
‘uncontrollable’ for running away or being otherwise
defiant.
The official definition for Forgotten Australians is
itself contentious however, for there have been
repeated attempts by State Governments, Churches,
and not for profit agencies to artificially constrict the
period in question.
In NSW for eg, there are numerous official press
releases, Ministerial speeches and even the first
State Apology, which acknowledge only that the
welfare practices which gave rise to the Forgotten
Australians lasted until the 1970s. This is vigorously
contested by younger Forgotten Australians.
It has been estimated that approximately 500,000
Australians experienced out of home care in the last
century alone.
Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children were
affected.
In 2003 the Senate Community Affairs Committee
initiated a series of Inquiries into Australians who
experienced out of home care as children.
The first report (tabled in August 2004) and which
coined the term ‘Forgotten Australians’, reported on
the widespread emotional, physical and sexual abuse
of children in institutions in the 20th century.
A companion report, examining the situation and
experiences of children in care today, was released in
2005.
The Forgotten Australians Inquiry was the latest in the
trilogy of reports which constitutes official recognition
of the widespread systemic abuse of children
perpetrated in the name of the State.
This recognition began with HREOC’s Bringing Them
Home report into the Stolen Generations, followed by
the Senate Committee’s Lost Innocents report into the
experience of British child migrants.
Another chapter in this list of Australian human
rights abuses may soon be added – the
Commonwealth is currently negotiating the
parameters of a national inquiry into forced
adoptions.
This would examine the experiences of the women,
many of them Forgotten Australians, who, generally
young and unmarried, were made to surrender their
children for adoption.
The report found that many Forgotten Australians
experienced significant disadvantage as children in
out of home care.
This impacted on their adult lives, taking the form of:
- Drug & alcohol abuse;
- Poor education outcomes and limited employment
opportunities;
- Poverty;
- Homelessness;
- Long term mental health and physical problems;
- Difficulty in sustaining relationships;
- Poor parenting skills; and
- Contact with the criminal justice system.
These problems are often inter-linked and intergenerational, with the children of careleavers now
comprising a significant, although undefined,
proportion of the 20,000 children in out of home
care today.
In 2008, faced with an apathetic Government
response to its reports and prompted by the
Forgotten Australians’ unrelenting public and media
campaign, the Senate Committee took the highly
unusual step of re-visiting its Inquiry.
In June 2009 the Committee released its report into
the progress of the implementation of the
recommendations of its Lost Innocents and Forgotten
Australians reports.
The bi-partisan Committee’s pointed criticism of
State and Commonwealth inaction culminated in the
Federal Government’s historic apology just 6 months
later.
Echoing the apology to the Stolen Generations made
a year previously, the Government’s words
acknowledged the suffering, abuse and systemic
disadvantage experienced by many people at the
hands of the State, the Church and private agencies.
The Apology came with a pledge for a national oral
history collection, to be developed by and housed at
the National Library of Australia.
A collection of out of home care paraphernalia is also
being established, and the National Museum of
Australia is developing an exhibition about the
Forgotten Australians’ experience.
A national Find and Connect Service for careleavers
to assist in the location of personal and family history
files was also promised. This will culminate in the
creation of a national searchable database,
accessible to service providers and careleavers
themselves.
The Forgotten Australians were recognised as a
distinct group, with special needs and issues, in some
important areas: namely aged care and mental
health.
Accordingly, the Ministerial Conference on Ageing
and the Ageing Consultative Committee will
acknowledge them on their respective committee
agendas.
So too, the Personal Helpers and Mentors program which assists people with severe mental illness to
overcome social isolation – will recognise Forgotten
Australians, along with members of the Stolen
Generations and former child migrants, as a target
group.
Acknowledging the fear of many careleavers that
their old age will see them in institutions run by the
same agencies who ‘cared’ for them as children, the
Prime Minister swore to grant the Forgotten
Australians ‘special needs’ status for aged care
purposes.
Amending the 1997 Aged Care Principles to this
effect is, apparently, an iron-clad guarantee that the
special needs of careleavers will be considered in the
planning and allocation of aged care places.
The more vexing issue of Forgotten Australians
simply not wanting to be dependent on those
agencies that provided for them in the past, remains
unresolved.
Apart from these much-needed initiatives, the
Federal Apology, and the responses of successive
State and Territory Governments, have been
somewhat circumspect in their commitment to the
Forgotten Australians.
Continuing the echoes of the Government’s
commitment to the Stolen Generations, there was
no significant money attached to the Apology.
The establishment of a national reparations scheme
has been rejected, and there has been silence in the
face of calls for past service providers and Churches
to contribute financially to assist careleavers into the
future.
The Senate Committee’s reports identified that many
Forgotten Australians will have difficulty in accessing
and in fitting into, existing services, many of which
have no understanding of the ongoing issues
confronting careleavers.
Significantly, the reports established that careleavers
are a distinct group in themselves, whose needs and
history demand the provision of specialist services
across a wide range of social and legal areas. The
need for specialist counselling, support and advocacy
services is paramount.
With the exception of the aged care and mental
health commitments previously noted however, this
vital recommendation has been ignored.
Although the Forgotten Australians are represented
at every marker of society’s ‘most vulnerable’ or
‘most disadvantaged’, it seems they are again
destined to fall between the cracks of ‘universal
services’ which have previously ignored their
existence.
This is a disaster, and one which follows an all too
familiar pattern.
Burdekin’s 1986 Our Homeless Children report found
that state wards were vastly over-represented in the
homeless population. Yet there are no services
specifically catering for homeless careleavers.
The 1996 Wood Royal Commission reported that
wards were over-represented in criminal activity and
as victims of pedophilia and prostitution.
Yet there are no Government policies specifically
addressing this over-representation.
Careleavers remain invisible in the reports of suicide
and self harm programs, although within a few years
of leaving care approximately 50% attempt suicide.
And although the UK, Canada and many US State
Governments require the publication of school
truancy and suspension records of children in care,
and their poor educational attainment and lack of
participation are the subject of specific Government
intervention, no such initiative exists here.
Report after report has identified the pathways from
care to disadvantage, and yet, children in care and
their adult counterparts – the Forgotten Australians have repeatedly been missed by service providers,
Governments and bureaucrats, in favour of universal
service provision.
This omission is particularly striking when one
considers access to justice and specifically, the
provision of legal services.
The NSW Government’s recent announcement of
funding for a Forgotten Australians Support Service,
explicitly rules out the provision of advocacy or legal
services for careleavers.
According to the tender document, legal information
and support for careleavers seeking to obtain advice
will have to be accessed through Law Access, the
NSW Attorney Generals’ Department.
The successful tenderer will be required only to
provide general information on the claims process
for NGO’s and Church agencies, the subject of
potential litigation. Claims against the Government
are initially to go through NSW DOCS, who will assess
them on a case by case basis.
Putting aside the conflict of interest inherent in the
Attorney Generals’ Department providing even basic
advice when that same Department advises on the
State’s defence of such actions, this is no solution to
the myriad of legal problems careleavers may
experience.
And there are other legal services which are desperately
needed also – advice on how to deal with welfare
Departments so as to keep their children; negotiating
with social security; or resolving the plethora of
accommodation, health, criminal and everyday legal
problems with which careleavers are beset.
Many legal services are already catering for Forgotten
Australians. But having failed to recognise them as
comprising a significant proportion of their clients, a
valuable opportunity to achieve systemic change has
been missed.
For example, although they comprise 1 in 4 of the adult
prison population and approximately 1/3 of those in
juvenile detention centres, careleaver overrepresentation does not commonly feature in reports
calling for reform of the criminal justice system.
Forgotten Australians have suffered too long at
the hands of those dispensing inadequate or
biased legal advice.
Careleavers have detailed their abuse in
submissions to various Inquiries, only to discover
that this could not then be used in court. Others
have negotiated with former service providers
and the States in the hope of securing an apology,
to be met with demands for confidential terms
and non-disclosure requirements.
Numerous class actions have been initiated by
private lawyers – these have gone nowhere other
than to guarantee the statute of limitations
extinguishes their client’s future claim.
I contend that a specialist legal service for the
Forgotten Australians is long overdue.
The precedent for a specialist legal service exists the Aboriginal Legal Service, Childrens’ Legal Service
and Prisoners Legal Service are some examples.
Precedent for a special purpose service is also
evident – the Welfare Rights Centre, and the Arts
Law Centre are just two examples.
The Church and the State are traditionally viewed as
the protectors and pathways to justice. Yet both
State and Church have failed the Forgotten
Australians in the past.
In the face of this failure, we as a profession have a
responsibility to ensure access to justice for those
effectively denied it.
The provision of a specialist legal service for the
Forgotten Australians would be a small yet significant
first step.