Beyond the home gates: life after growing up in Catholic institutions: a report to MacKillop Family Services

Over the twentieth century, it is estimated that at least half a million children were institutionalised across Australia, 100,000 of them in Victoria. This study was developed in the wake of the third of three Australian inquiries concerned with the institutionalisation of children, the Senate Community Affairs References Committee's inquiry into children in institutional care, published as the report, Forgotten Australians: A Report on Australians who Experienced Institutional or Out-of-Home Care as Children. The Forgotten Australians report identified oral history research with former residents as an area of critical need. At the same time, MacKillop Family Services' Heritage and Information Service was receiving more than 250 requests for access to information and records relating to people who were in care, meeting with many former residents, supporting them and listening to their individual stories about their experience of being in care and their 'life after care'. This study is based on oral history interviews undertaken with 40 people who left Catholic children's institutions in Victoria between 1945 and 1983. We asked them about their subsequent lives in order to examine the long term impact of growing up in Catholic institutions. Their life stories show how they have integrated their childhood experiences of growing up in institutions and the diverse ways their lives have subsequently unfolded.