THE WELFARE OF FORMER BRITISH CHILD MIGRANTS
What Is Currently Being Done To Help
86. Help with the tracing and contacting of families
is a corollary of the provision of information. A number of organisations
including Barnardo's and the Salvation Army approach this with
some zeal. Unfortunately, however, backlogs often build up and
a worrying amount of time may elapse before inquiries are dealt
with. We recommend that all sending and receiving agencies
should either themselves offer or should contract out a service
designed to help former child migrants trace their family.
87. Appropriate counselling is an essential tool
in enabling former child migrants overcome the problems caused
by their past history. During our visit to New Zealand and Australia
we heard several accounts of the devastating impact on a family's
budget of having to finance costly counselling sessions for former
child migrants. Counselling is not always widely available. In
New Zealand, for example, we were told by the Department of Social
Welfare that counselling could be made available to former child
migrants, but only where abuse is proven. There seemed to be a
better understanding of what was required in Western Australia.
In our meeting with the Minister of Family and Children's Services,
Seniors and Women's Interests in Perth, we were told that the
Department had clinical psychologists throughout the State and
that counselling was available to former child migrants receiving
new information or attempting to come to terms with their past.
In Melbourne, an official in the Department of Human Services
told us of an Adoption Information Service which assists child
migrants and others who are searching for their biological parents.
The Service provides individual and family support and has a counselling
role.
88. A number of sending agencies offer access to
a counselling service, including Barnardo's,[102]
the Catholic Church Welfare Council[103]
and The Children's Society.[104]
The Christian Brothers Ex-Residents' Services in Western Australia
told us that they have a fund to enable individuals to receive
counselling. The Child Migrants' Trust provides counselling but
is limited in the help it can give by the funds at its disposal—as
is the Australian Child Migrant Foundation, whose principal aim
is to arrange and finance visits to the UK, but which also offers
counselling in advance of the visit and at its conclusion. We
recommend that all bodies responsible for the migration of children,
including governments and sending and receiving agencies, should
take steps to provide access to counselling for any former child
migrants who require it from them.
89. The expense of travelling to the UK from Canada,
New Zealand and Australia prevents many former child migrants
from visiting their place of origin to trace records, to be reunited
with surviving relatives, or simply to revisit scenes of their
childhood. In recent years the Christian Brothers Ex-Residents'
Services has provided funds for travel to the UK. The Australian
Child Migrant Foundation has also sought to help former child
migrants visit the UK, but currently claims to be in urgent need
of an injection of funds. We believe that all former British
child migrants should be enabled to pay at least one visit to
the UK. We will address this issue in our general recommendations.
90. Mr David Lovell, Social Work Director of the
Children's Society, told us that:
"there are some former
child migrants, as you may have heard and may see when you go
to Australia, who actually do want to come back to the sending
agencies ... because some of them will want to have it out with
us, quite rightly, as part of their healing and cathartic process.
There will be others who will not, and I understand that."[105]
We found no widespread evidence of a desire on the
part of former child migrants to take part in confrontations with
their sending agencies, cathartic or otherwise. One former child
migrant we met stated in written evidence:
"Can it be any wonder
then that so few former child migrants want anything to do with
the agencies that sent and received us? We simply do not trust
them. Many of us seeking to find our parents have approached these
agencies in the past for help. We were met with silence. Even
today we are being frustrated by their demand that help will only
come on their terms."[106]
The International Association of Former Child Migrants
and their Families told us that agencies were still trying to
"control" former child migrants. They described the
suggestion that former child migrants should return to the sending
agencies for help as "akin to asking the Jews to go back
to the Nazis for counselling and reconciliation—and no-one
would ever consider that".[107]
The British Child Migrants Society (UK) Inc of New Zealand, made
exactly the same point.[108]
Another interviewee believed that former child migrants needed
protection from the agencies that sent them. The fact that many
former child migrants wish, for entirely understandable reasons,
to have no further contact with their sending agencies does not
mean, of course, that agencies should fail to provide appropriate
assistance and facilities to those who are prepared to
make contact with them.
91. Successive British governments have not been
over-active in providing help for former child migrants. Mr Luce
of the DoH listed government responses to date:
"What I would say is
as soon as the position became clear to us, I think mainly stimulated
by the debate that [Mr Hinchliffe] had when John Bowis was Minister,
as I understand, we did do a good deal in advance of that debate
to liberalise the access to closed public records. That is one
point I would make. The second thing is that we have funded, though
not at levels which satisfy the recipient organisation, the Child
Migrants' Trust. We also took some initiatives to try to help
the sending agencies shape their response to these events when
it became clear that the events were upon them. I think that is
what we have done.".[109]
We deal with the funding of the Child Migrants' Trust
in the next section of this report. As a general point, we would
wish and expect to see more input from the British Government
into initiatives to improve the welfare of former child migrants.
92. We regard the circumstances now faced by many
former child migrants as the collective responsibility of all
the governments and agencies involved in the schemes. However
we think it incumbent on the British Government to accept additional
moral responsibility for what happened since it passed the enabling
legislation. This legislation allowed financial provision to be
made to receiving institutions. The memorandum from the DoH quotes
Section 1(1) of the Empire Settlement Acts 1922, which states:
" It shall be lawful
for the Secretary of State, in association with the government
of any part of His Majesty's Dominions, or with public authorities
or public or private organisations either in the United Kingdom
or in any part of such Dominions, to formulate and co-operate
in carrying out agreed schemes for affording joint assistance
to suitable persons in the United Kingdom who intend to settle
in any part of His Majesty's Overseas Dominions."[110]
Commenting on this provision, the DoH told us:
" The Act was basically
a finance measure and did not specifically empower voluntary organisations
(or anyone else) to send children in their care abroad. However
if the Secretary of State agreed that a child migration scheme
fell within the terms of the Act, whether set up by a voluntary
organisation or any other body, public funding may have been provided
to subsidise the cost of the scheme."[111]
The lawyer Frances Swaine of Leigh, Day and Co has
noted in written evidence to us that:
"Formal British Government
approval for the migration of children without their families
was given a fillip by the Empire Settlement Acts of 1922 and 1937
in which a per capita sum of 10/- per week was promised to the
institution responsible for caring for the child until they reached
16. Such remuneration was to follow the signing of a contract
between the Government and the institution, by which contract
it could be argued that the Government impliedly accepted the
institution as one 'fit' to be part of the scheme."[112]
We received a copy of such a contract.[113]
It sets out in great detail the respective responsibilities of
the British Government and the institution. This clearly shows
that the British Government had not only a moral responsibility
but also a contractual responsibility for the welfare of these
children.
93. In a letter to the Clerk of the Committee dated
17 July 1998, the Parliamentary Clerk at the DoH corrected a mistake
made by an official who told us during the oral evidence taken
from the Secretary of State on 16 July:
" I am not aware of any direct subsidy from
the British Government to children once they got to Australia.".[114]
The letter tells us that "there was such financial
assistance".[115]
It continues:
"The former Home Office
files that we have looked at contain only a few references to
such payments. We guess that there must be some other files that
contain details of such expenditure but do not know where they
are. ... The Ross Report notes that in 1956 'the expenditure of
the UK Government on the maintenance of children in Australia
runs now to just over £40,000 a year'."[116]
£40,000 a year at today's prices would amount
to £570,000.[117]
This contrasts with the current British Government provision of
only £20,000 a year for the Child Migrants' Trust. Whilst
the figures we have quoted are not massive, they are significant
and this financial provision would undoubtedly have acted as an
encouragement for organisations, particularly when there was a
connection with the sending agency, to receive child migrants.
In this regard we draw attention to our comments in paragraph17
above.
94. We consider that the present British Government
should accept responsibility for its predecessors' past involvement,
in collaboration with other parties, in child migration. Given
this involvement, we believe that the Government is under a moral
and legal duty to display concern for the welfare of former child
migrants and to offer them meaningful practical assistance. This
will lead the way to a just conclusion to a sorry episode in British
history.
95. We were encouraged by the comment of the Secretary
of State for Health that "I do think we have certain obligations
at this end of the process and we ought to try to discharge those
obligations". The Secretary of State also said, "I think
we should do what we can to sustain the organisations that represent
the child migrants here", although he added that this, of
course, was subject to the availability of funds.[118]
He promised "a prompt and sympathetic response to the report".[119]
102 CM 110. Back
103
CM 107A. Back
104
CM 121. Back
105
Q 226. Back
106
CM 224. Back
107
CM 166. Back
108
CM 5A. Back
109
Q 32. Back
110
CM 129. Back
111
Ibid. Back
112
CM 143. Back
113
CM 152C Back
114
Q321. Back
115
CM 129B. Back
116
Ibid. Back
117
Information supplied by the House of Commons Library. Back
118
Q308. Back
119
Q340. Back
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