Select Committee on Health Third Report


THE WELFARE OF FORMER BRITISH CHILD MIGRANTS

Conclusion

98. Child migration was a bad and, in human terms, costly mistake. Mr David Hill, a successful ex-Fairbridge Resident who is currently Chairman of Soccer Australia (the Australian equivalent of the Football Association), remarked to us during our visit to Australia that irreversible, irrevocable damage had been done by the schemes. We have met many former child migrants who continue to suffer from emotional and psychological problems arising directly from this misguided social policy. Mr Hill regarded the fundamental problem with the Australian schemes as being the absence of any support for a child's emotional development. Many child migrants were separated from siblings and lived in profound geographical and social isolation, which left them unable to prepare themselves effectively for integration into adult life and society at large. Blame must be distributed amongst all the governments and agencies who involved themselves with child migration. This imposes on them a responsibility to offer help to the surviving human casualties of the child migration schemes. As Mr John Willoughby of the Ellen Foundation remarked, "the past is the past, it is there, it is a reality and we have to live with it."[124]

99. Public and official understanding of former child migrants' problems has increased in recent years, and the prevailing mood is to move forwards positively. Nonetheless, we are persuaded that both governments and agencies could do more to improve the welfare of former child migrants. Such action will require additional British Government funding. Up until now the Government's financial contribution towards alleviating the plight of many former child migrants, in the form of its intermittent small grants to the Child Migrants' Trust, has been lamentably low.

100. It is important to learn the lessons of the past. Our recent inquiry into Children Looked After by Local Authorities revealed that even today some children in care are placed by local authorities long distances from their home environment. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the DoH, Mr Paul Boateng MP, expressed his concern over this when giving evidence in that inquiry:

    "I view with increasing concern a tendency to place children a long way from a local authority which is their home. It produces all sorts of problems ... in terms of effective management and supervision of the placement."[125]

The recent report by Sir William Utting on abuse in local authority care makes clear the extent to which lack of adequate supervision and safeguards can lead to children being abused with impunity. Mr Luce of the DoH, giving evidence to us on the welfare of former child migrants, commented that

    " What the Utting Report shows is that the level of awareness of risk to children living away from home was at the heart of the failures to police a child care system properly in the 1960s and the 1970s and even during the 1980s."[126]

101. Potential future difficulties related to inter-country adoptions which may mirror some of the current concerns of former child migrants about their identity and past were brought to our attention in both New Zealand and Australia. We note from a recent Written Answer that 1,066 inter-country adoption applications have been processed in the UK since 1992.[127] We urge extreme caution when considering these applications. Removing children from their country of birth should not be seen as an alternative to appropriate child care or occur because insufficient aid or assistance is available.


124   Q 78. Back

125   HC (1997-98) 319-vi, Q 897. Back

126   Q13. Back

127   Official Report, 2 July 1998, col 252. Back


 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries

© Parliamentary copyright 1998
Prepared 30 July 1998