Overview

​This book draws on archival, oral history and public policy sources to tell a history of foster care in Australia from the nineteenth century to the present day. It is, primarily, a social history which places the voices of people directly touched by foster care at the centre of the story, but also within the wider social and political debates which have shaped foster care across more than a century. The book confronts foster care’s difficult past—death and abuse of foster children, family separation, and a general public apathy towards these issues—but it also acknowledges the resilience of people who have survived a childhood in foster care, and the challenges faced by those who have worked hard to provide good foster homes and to make child welfare systems better. These are themes which the book examines from an Australian perspective, but which often resonate with foster care globally.  

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9783030067403

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The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia covers the period from the advent of regulated foster care in the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. ... The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia should be required reading for everyone involved in the field of child welfare, for the salutary lessons it provides from both the past and, lamentably, the present. (Jacqueline Z. Wilson, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 50 (1), 2019)

 “The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia covers the period from the advent of regulated foster care in the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. … The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia should be required reading for everyone involved in the field of child welfare, for the salutary lessons it provides from both the past and, lamentably, the present.” (Jacqueline Z. Wilson, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 50 (1), 2019)

Author Information

Nell Musgrove is Senior Lecturer in History at the Australian Catholic University. Her research examines the history of child welfare in Australia, and her previous book, The Scars Remain (2013), examines the main alternative to foster care in Australian out of home care history: institutions. Deidre Michell is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Criminology & Gender Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She has previously published Against the Odds (2015), and her research explores the lived experience of the marginalised, such as Australian citizens who have been in state care and gone to university.  

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