The Child Care History Network and Child Migrants Trust are holding a one-day Conference "Child Migration : Lessons for Today at the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool on Monday, 15 October, 2012.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, about 130,000 children were sent from the UK to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Zimbabwe to give them a fresh start and to boost the population of developing nations. The last ones went as recently as 1970. Some did well, but many were exploited and deceived by those who should have safeguarded them. It is only in recent years that public apologies have led to serious attempts by the British and Australian governments to help those who were mistreated. The conference will be addressed by leading figures in this field. Its aim is not only to share information and thinking about child migration but also to ask questions about what can be learnt. What were the aims of the people who arranged child migration? How did it go wrong? Why did those in authority lie to the children and their families? Why was child migration covered up? Are there practices today of which we shall be ashamed tomorrow? How can agencies be helped to be more open about things that go wrong?
The conference will be of interest to many people - people working in child care agencies, people whose relatives were child migrants, child care historians and archivists, and those concerned about the welfare of children, for example.
Speakers to the conference include, Professor Roy Parker, the author of Uprooted: The Shipment of Poor Children to Canada Child Migration - Cause and Effect, Margaret Humphries CBE, Founder and Director of the Child Migrants Trust, Jim Hyland , a former care services manager, and David Hinchliffe, former MP and Chair of the Health Select Committee which investigated child migration.
For travel to the Merseyside Maritime Museum: go to http:// www.cchn.org.uk/map-to-museum.pdf
To book places and for more information: go to http://www.cchn.org.uk
This article first appeared on the home page of the goodenoughcaring website at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com on September 18th, 2012
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