Introduction

The 2013 SHCY Conference, which adopted as its theme space and place in the history of childhood, attracted several papers exploring the experiences of children in out-of-home care, a topic which has attracted increasing attention from historians in the wake of inquiries and apologies in relation to institutional abuses that have taken place in many Western nations over the past twenty years. The articles in this special issue originated in several sessions at the SHCY conference, including two panels organized by the International Network on Studies of Inquiries into Child Abuse and the Politics of Apology and Historical Representations of Children in Out-of-Home Care. Although the essays are diverse in terms of time—the nineteenth through the late twentieth century—and place—Africa, Australia, Europe, and the United States—they share an interest in the experience of care and the ways in which it has been remembered.

The early narrative of out-of-home care for children was dominated by commissioned histories, which provided spaces to glorify the role of the founders and carers and to hear the reminiscences of adults who looked back fondly on their experiences as boys and girls. Academic historians entering the field brought a more critical tone to the genre, but it was the activism of care leavers whose campaigns eventually saw governments launch official inquiries into institutional abuse that created the space in which the collective memory of out-of-home care could be challenged.

The articles produced here reflect different points in this process. Birgitte Søland, writing of America, where no national inquiry has taken place, accesses former orphanage residents whose childhood memories are essentially positive, highlighting the advantages of living in self-contained communities where their material needs were provided for. Writing of a Ugandan leprosy mission, Kathleen Vongsathorn reads across the grain of official sources to question the overwhelmingly positive image they portray but, as with Johanna Sköld’s study of the aftercare provided by a Swedish foster care provider from the nineteenth century, had little access to the survivor voices that could have challenged the official view. Lieselot De Wilde and Bruno Vanobbergen’s study of the Ghent Orphan Houses provides an insight into memory making in process as care leavers use social media to contest the meaning of their experiences.

The other essays in the collection come from post-apology environments and hence reflect the new collective memory that emerges through the inquiry process. In the Object Lesson Maria Rytter and Jacob Knage Rasmussen illustrate the way in which they used their experience as museum professionals to find the evidence which confirmed care leavers’ allegations of abuse. Shurlee Swain uses the submissions presented to Australian inquiries to show how care leavers construct themselves as survivors, balancing their memories of abuse with instances of resistance and agency, in order to construct a history of out-of-home care in which their experiences were central. However, as Nell Musgrove’s essay makes clear, this new collective memory is not inclusive, as those who grew up in foster rather than institutional care lack a place around which to organize their memories. Reflecting on the Norwegian redress process, Kjersti Ericsson shows how a collective memory constructed around victimization has no place for those whose memories of care are not universally negative, and demonizes the caregivers, not all of whom participated in the abuse.

While the spatial turn may have been influential in attracting historians to the study of the institutions that housed so many Western children in the past and continue to cater to children in the non-Western world today, for former residents, the importance of history lies in the role it plays in the construction of identity. Place can provide an anchor for the memories, both positive and negative, from which a post-care identity can be constructed, but history too has a role to play. In the post-apology era, the way in which out-of-home care is remembered has been dramatically reshaped, but, as the essays in this collection make clear, there is a need to resist the emergence of a singular accepted narrative that...