Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia

Nell Musgrove is Senior Lecturer in History at the Australian Catholic University. Her research examines the history of child welfare in Australia, and her previous book, The Scars Remain (2013), examines the main alternative to foster care in Australian out of home care history: institutions.Deidre Michell is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Criminology & Gender Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She has previously published Against the Odds (2015), and her research explores the lived experience of the marginalised, such as Australian citizens who have been in state care and gone to university.

• 1. Introduction: There is no typical story of foster care.- Part I: Looking for the ‘care’ in foster care.- 2. Did anybody care? The death of John Wood Pledger.- 3. Making and breaking families.- 4. Remembering and forgetting foster care.- 5.They’re just doing it for the money.- Part II: Shaping the lives of the invisible children of the state.- 6. Foster care—philosophies, rhetoric and practices.- 7. Rediscovering foster care.- 8. Writing to heal—the emergence of foster care in literature.- 9. Are we getting better at this?.- 10. Conclusion: What can history tell us about the future of foster care?.- Index.

“The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia covers the period from the advent of regulated foster care in the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. … The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia should be required reading for everyone involved in the field of child welfare, for the salutary lessons it provides from both the past and, lamentably, the present.” (Jacqueline Z. Wilson, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 50 (1), 2019)