Дети-мигранты: трагическая история и поиски правды.

Child migration scheme

Home Children was the child migration scheme founded by Annie MacPherson in 1869, under which more than 100,000 children were sent from the United Kingdom to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. The programme was largely discontinued in the 1930s but not entirely terminated until the 1970s. Later research, beginning in the 1980s, exposed abuse and hardships of the relocated children. Australia apologised in 2009 for its involvement in the scheme. In February 2010, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a formal apology to the families of children who suffered. Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney stated in 2009 that Canada would not apologise to child migrants, preferring to "recognize that sad period" in other ways. In the 18th century, labour shortages in the overseas colonies also encouraged the transportation of children for work in the Americas, and large numbers of children were forced to migrate, most of them from Scotland. This practice continued until it was exposed in 1757, following a civil action against Aberdeen merchants and magistrates for their involvement in the trade.

In 1987 British social worker Margaret Humphreys carried out an investigation leading to the exposure of the child migration scheme and the establishment of the Child Migrants Trust, with the aim of reuniting parents and children. Full details of the scheme only emerged as late as 1998 during a parliamentary inquiry in Britain, which found that many migrant children were subjected to systematic abuse in religious schools in Australia, New Zealand and other countries. In 1994 Humphreys published a book concerning her research entitled Empty Cradles. In 2010, this book detailing Humphreys' work, political obstacles, and threats on her life along with the crimes and abuse done to thousands of children by government and religious officials was depicted in the film Oranges and Sunshine.

In Australia, Child Migrant children are the 7,000 children who migrated to Australia under assisted child migration schemes and form part of a larger group known as the Forgotten Australians; a term the Australian Senate has used to describe the estimated 500,000 children who were brought up in orphanages, children's homes, institutions, or foster care in Australia, up until the early 1990s. At the urging of the Care Leavers Australia Network, the Senate Community Affairs References Committee published in August 2001 Lost Innocents: Righting the Record—Report on child migration and followed this in August 2004 with the Forgotten Australians report. Both concluded with a number of recommendations, one of which was a call for a national apology. Instead, Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd made an apology on 16 November 2009. The Australian government had contacted about 400 British child migrants for advice on how the apology should be delivered. Australia's Roman Catholic Church had publicly apologised in 2001 to British and Maltese child migrants who suffered abuse including rape, whippings, and slave labour in religious institutions. The Governor General of Canada proclaimed 2010 the "Year of the British Home Child" and, on 1 September 2010, Canada Post released a commemorative stamp to honour those who were sent to Canada.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown read, on 23 February 2010, an apology for the "shameful" child resettlement programme. He announced a £6 million fund designed to compensate the families affected by the "misguided" programme. In 2020, it was reported that the Prince's Trust was providing funds to allow people sent as children from the UK to Australia by the Fairbridge Society to make claims for compensation for sexual and physical abuse. While Australia had a national redress scheme for people sexually abused as children in institutions, those sent by the Fairbridge Society were not eligible, as the Society no longer existed. The Prince's Trust had previously been criticised for "covering its backside" by denying it had knowledge of abuse suffered by Fairbridge Society child migrants.

Home Children Canada claimed in 2011 that one in ten Canadians is a descendant of a home child. The British government's Family Restoration Fund has arranged or reimbursed travel for more than a thousand child emigrants reuniting with their families. It is administered by the Child Migrants Trust and funded by the Department of Health and Social Care.