Resource Library

This presentation was originally delivered to the International Federation of Social Workers 2020 Conference. Who Cares? Scotland discusses the history of care in Scotland.

Intended to herald in a new era of childcare, the Kilbrandon report saw Scotland make a number of changes to the care system. Changes in one area involved thousands of children and young people yet is rarely mentioned. Their experiences disappearing into the void of care file storage. Despite little research until now, David Anderson shines a light on a under-explored period of Scotland’s history.

Drawing on published memoirs, published accounts of the Black and In Care Group and an overview of debates in the 2000s about ‘transracial’ adoption this lecture seeks to give prominence to issues of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ within the modern history of the UK care system.

This lecture tells the story of the different groups that made up the beginning of the movement for change in the 1970’s, including the Leeds Ad-Lib group, Who Cares?, the National Association of Young People in Care, Black and In Care and A National Voice.

Using care records and personal correspondence, this lecture offers new insights into how children gave meaning to their experiences of care, the impact it had on their everyday lives, their feelings and how contemporary anxieties about children’s nurture shaped care practices in the past.

In the late 18th century, thousands of children were born to Indian women and white British men sent to expand the empire. Many of these children came to Britain to be raised by white foster families.

This lecture investigates the experience of one set of siblings to understand the impact of foster care, mixed heritage and birth outside marriage on individuals in the past.

This lecture features a short screening followed by a conversation with Henry Wuga MBE who came to Scotland on the Kindertransport scheme in 1939.

This lecture tells the story of the children that became de facto wards of the British state between 1808 and 1900. It looks at what happened to them and shares their accounts of their experiences.

Throughout the 19th century, Scottish missionaries ‘redeemed’ African children from the areas around mission stations. These children, often informally ‘adopted’ by the missionaries, came to Scotland to attend school or complete training. Delivered by Dr Christine Whyte, this lecture looks at the connections between empire, adoption and anti-slavery in the histories of African mission children in Scotland.

This lecture explores the life histories of Romanian Care Experienced people during the 1990s, specifically focusing on institutionalization policy in 1989; the incorporation of UNCRC; what mattered to them whilst they were in care and how the quality of the care they received impacted their transition into adulthood.

This lecture focuses on children’s everyday lives in Scottish children’s homes and their experiences in the period of the 1940s to 1970s. Specifically exploring the impact of the Children Act 1948 and what changes it brought for the children and young people in Scotland’s children’s homes.

This lecture focuses on the UK’s ‘Child Migration’ scheme, explaining what it was, how it came about and why it’s important to remember this moment of history.