Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

Source: Appendices to this report.Failure to provide care to contemporary standardsMany witnesses to the Inquiry spoke of the appalling standards of care ininstitutions. Former residents told of being cold and hungry, worked too hard buteducated too little. They told of brutal punishments, fear of sexual abuse and of thestifling of affectionate relationships. They reported emotional abuse by the denigration ofAboriginality and the denial of family contact.In a submission to the Inquiry the Baptist Churches of Western Australiaacknowledged that the standards of care were inadequate.In retrospect, however, the Baptist Churches of Western Australia acknowledges that theinstitutionalised nature of the arrangements in the earlier years, the transfer of children betweenhouseparents, the limited number of trained staff, and the paucity of resources available, did notprovide the optimum family-replacement support for already deprived children.... the care provided fell far short of standards being developed in WA at the time. This wasinevitable, and in this respect Marribank was no different to similar organisations such asRoelands, Parkerville etc. Deficiencies were due to recurrent problems of recruiting andmaintaining suitable staff, including relief and support staff, unsuitable buildings, the isolation ofMarribank, and the formidable costs involved in running a child care institution (submission 674pages 2 and 12).The mainstream child welfare system was also seriously flawed but children in themainstream did benefit from advances in knowledge about child development and theeffects of institutionalisation many decades before Indigenous children were accorded thesame standards of care.In 1874 in New South Wales the Second Report of the State’s Public CharitiesCommission roundly rejected institutionalisation and recommended ‘boarding out’ orfostering for destitute and orphaned children. This had already occurred in Victoria andTasmania; South Australia had adopted a similar policy but failed to put it fully intoeffect. The Commission reported that,Those who founded the barrack system for the management of children thought less,it is to be feared, of its probable effects on the children than of the ease with whichofficers could manage them … Fatal experience in the Mother Country [England] hashowever proved that this mechanical routine, though necessary for the management ofnumbers is prejudicial to a healthy development of character, and to the rearing ofchildren as good and useful men and women (page 40).The same experience had led even earlier to the adoption of boarding-out inScotland, France, Hamburg in Germany and Massachusetts in the USA.Children placed with respectable families in their own rank of life, where they are cared for as ifthey were members of the household, lose that feeling of homelessness, isolation, and pauperism,