Care Leaver Activism & Advocacy: From Deficit Models To Survivor Narratives. This project aims to create the first history of survivor-activism that challenged and exposed failings in Australian child welfare systems. It intends to reveal how Care Leavers (people institutionalised as children—500,000+ Australians in the 20th century alone) advocated for government inquiries and reforms, and how stigma ascribed to them impacted their disparate experiences of citizenship. Expected outcomes include ....Care Leaver Activism & Advocacy: From Deficit Models To Survivor Narratives. This project aims to create the first history of survivor-activism that challenged and exposed failings in Australian child welfare systems. It intends to reveal how Care Leavers (people institutionalised as children—500,000+ Australians in the 20th century alone) advocated for government inquiries and reforms, and how stigma ascribed to them impacted their disparate experiences of citizenship. Expected outcomes include an innovative survivor-led participatory research model for ethical research with marginalised groups, and an interactive website presenting new narratives of out-of-home care. The project seeks to benefit Care Leavers by highlighting their resilience, and in the process inform service provisions to support their wellbeing.Read moreRead less
A long history of foster care in Australia: hidden stories of growing up in foster care in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Foster care has been the most widely used means to provide for vulnerable children in Australia and yet little is known about the practice. This project will make a significant contribution toward shaping the future of out-of-home care in Australia by making available the first national history of foster care.
Bold Experiment: an historical evaluation of the Australian Assistance Plan. Australia and similar western democracies continue to wrestle with growing citizen disengagement with political processes and declining levels of active participation in society. This project is expected to provide the first historical examination of the Australian Assistance Plan (AAP), an innovative yet forgotten program from the 1970s. The AAP sought to reframe participation at a local level, stimulate voluntary orga ....Bold Experiment: an historical evaluation of the Australian Assistance Plan. Australia and similar western democracies continue to wrestle with growing citizen disengagement with political processes and declining levels of active participation in society. This project is expected to provide the first historical examination of the Australian Assistance Plan (AAP), an innovative yet forgotten program from the 1970s. The AAP sought to reframe participation at a local level, stimulate voluntary organisations and provide a framework that engaged with all levels of governments. Using archival sources and oral history methods, the project seeks to offer a new interpretation of an important initiative in Australian history and demonstrate how historical analysis can inform policy and shape debates in government and non-profit sectors in the future.Read moreRead less
Return, reconcile, renew: understanding the history, effects and opportunities of repatriation and building an evidence base for the future. The repatriation of ancestral remains is an extraordinary Indigenous achievement and inter-cultural development of the past 40 years. This international project will provide critical new knowledge to understand repatriation, its history and effects and will provide scholarly and public outcomes that empower community-based research and practice.