Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nr4z6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-20T22:25:01.501Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Derivative and indigenous in the history and historiography of child welfare in Australia: Part One

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 February 2016

Shurlee Swain
Shurlee Swain*
Affiliation:
Australian Catholic University, St Patrick’s Campus, and Department of History, University of Melbourne Email: S.Swain@aquinas.acu.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article traces the history of child welfare in Australia, showing the ways in which policies and practices, deriving primarily from Britain, were adopted and adapted in a nation in which jurisdiction was split between colonies/states and further divided, within states, on the basis of race. It argues that child welfare has always been part of the nation-building project, central to national objectives when children could be constructed as future citizens, marginal, and more punitive, when they were more easily understood as threats to social stability. In this first part it examines the history of welfare provision for non-indigenous children in Australia from 1788 to 1939. The second part, to be published in a subsequent issue, will discuss post-war developments in services for non-indigenous children, indigenous child welfare services and the historiography of child welfare in Australia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Children Australia , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , 2001 , pp. 4 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ackerman, J. (1913) Australia from a Woman’s Point of View, London: Cassell and Company.Google Scholar
Age, (1 August 1897) Melbourne.Google Scholar
Argus, (23 August 1927) Melbourne.Google Scholar
Behlmer, G. (1982) Child Abuse and Moral Reform in England, 1870–1908, Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Children’s Welfare Exhibition Handbook, (1913) Melbourne.Google Scholar
Children’s Protection Society of Western Australia (1910) Annual Report 1909–10, Perth.Google Scholar
Children’s Protection Society of Western Australia (1922) Annual Report, 1921–2, Perth.Google Scholar
Damousi, J. (1997) Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davey, C. (1956) Children and their Lawmakers: A social-historical survey of the growth and development from 1836–1950 of South Australian laws relating to children, Adelaide: Griffin Press.Google Scholar
Dickey, B. (1979) ‘The Evolution of Care for Destitute Children in New South Wales, 1875–1901’, Journal of Australian Studies, no 4.Google Scholar
Dickey, B. (1986) Rations, Residence, Resources: A History of Social Welfare in South Australia since 1836, Adelaide: Wakefield Press.Google Scholar
Donzelot, J. (1979) The Policing of Families, New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Finch, L. (1993) The Classing Gaze: Sexuality, Class and Surveillance, Sydney: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Hetherington, P. (1995) ‘Australian Colonial Law and the Construction of Childhood: The Example of Western Australia, 1829–1907’ in Kirkby, D. (ed), Sex Power and Justice: Historical Perspectives on Law in Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, R. & , F. (1875) What We Saw in Australia, London: Macmillan & Co.Google Scholar
Jaggs, D. (1986) Neglected and Criminal: Foundations of Child Welfare Legislation in Victoria, Melbourne: Centre for Youth and Community Studies, Phillip Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Kociumbas, J. (1997) Australian Childhood: A History, Sydney: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Mellor, E. (1990) Stepping Stones: The Development of Early Childhood Services in Australia Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
New South Wales Parliamentary Debates (Second Series) (NSWPD) (1905) vol XVIII, Sydney: Government Printer.Google Scholar
Ramsland, J. (1974) ‘The Development of Boarding-out Systems in Australia: A Series of Welfare Experiments in Child Care, 1860–1910’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Association, vol. 60.Google Scholar
Ramsland, J. (1986) Children of the Backlanes: Destitute and Neglected Children in Colonial New South Wales, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.Google Scholar
Reiger, K. (1985) The Disenchantment of the Home: Modernising the Australian Family 1880–1940, Melbourne: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, P. (1985) The Hatch and Brood of Time: A Study of the First Generation of Native-Born White Australians, 1788 to 1828, Melbourne: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, N. (1989) Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Swain, S. (1977) ‘The Victorian Charity Network in the 1890s’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Melbourne.Google Scholar
‘Theta’ (3 February 1859) Argus, Melbourne.Google Scholar
van Krieken, R. (1991) Children and the State: Social Control and the Formation of Australian Child Welfare, Sydney: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Victorian Parliamentary Debates (1890), Melbourne: Government Printer.Google Scholar
Victorian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (VSPCC) (1898) Annual Report 1897–8, Melbourne.Google Scholar
VSPCC (1900) Annual Report, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Windschuttle, E. (1982) ‘Women and the Origins of Colonial Philanthropy’ in Kennedy, R. (ed), Australian Welfare History: Critical Essays, Melbourne: Macmillan.Google Scholar