Forced adoption: The children sent to Australia | ABC Conversations Podcast

When Margaret Humphreys was working as a young social worker in Nottingham in the 1980s, she received a letter from Australia.

It was a request from a woman looking for her birth certificate, explaining she had no record of her identity because she had been shipped to Australia on her own, at four years old.

At the time, Margaret had no idea this letter would unearth something much bigger and much more terrible than she could have ever imagined.

What began as the search for a single individual's identity, turned into the uncovering of a decades-long scheme that had forcibly removed tens of thousands of children from their native Britain, and send them to the other end of the world, alone, isolated and confused.

In the forty years since receiving that letter, Margaret has worked as detective and counsellor to try and give these former child migrants some sort of link to their past, their family and their identity.

Further Information

Click here for more information about the Child Migrants Trust.

Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of forced adoption and institutionalised child abuse.