This past week, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has resumed its hearing for the Case Study into the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat. Cardinal George Pell’s testimony from Rome lasted four days and was a pivotal moment in the eyes of Ballarat survivors of child sexual abuse.
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It’s a sad fact that many people who were in care do not know what they looked like as children. When I was the Find & Connect Client Liaison Officer I received many emails from people desperately searching for photographs and video footage of themselves and their relatives.
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Some of our readers might be interested in a recent publication, commemorating the fifth anniversary of the unveiling of the memorial to Victorian Forgotten Australians.
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In December 2015, ABC Online had an article about a precious collection of photographs that a woman discovered while cleaning out her deceased aunt’s home. The home belonged to Annie Woods, who had been a mothercraft nurse in the 1960s, working in a number of children’s institutions in Victoria.
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The Department of Social Services (DSS) recently released a new publication: Access to Records by Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants: access principles for records holders, best practice guidelines in providing access to records. This document is a landmark step in the ongoing implementation of the recommendations made in the Senate’s 2004 ‘Forgotten Australians’ report.
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Christmas opening hours for the Find & Connect support services differ between states; the opening hours for the services in each state and territory are listed here.
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Provenance is the journal of Public Record Office Victoria, the archives of the State Government of Victoria. Hot off the (digital) presses, its 2015 issue features an article written by Find & Connect’s editor, Cate O’Neill. Cate writes about the tragic story of ‘Jill’, a state ward who was in ‘care’ from 1952 until her death in 1955.
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Six years ago today, the Australian Parliament issued an apology to Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants. Six years is a long time – in Canberra alone, so much has changed since that day in November, 2009.
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The Find & Connect web resource team gave a presentation this week as part of the University of Melbourne’s Researcher @ Library Week. One of the things that we like to do when we’re presenting is to start with the ‘consumer voice’ – that is, to open proceedings with a perspective from someone with lived experience of being in a children’s institution.
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Back in March 2014, when we used to publish a regular Find & Connect newsletter, our former Lead Archivist, Mike Jones, wrote a piece about the importance of ‘non-traditional’ records. Mike wrote: we must be aware that we have a collective responsibility to locate, preserve and provide access to more than just paper.
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