The shifting significance of child endowment records at the National Archives of Australia

Abstract

The records in the collection of National Archives of Australia (NAA) relating to child endowment payments demonstrate how the status and significance of records are transformed by changing social and political climates. These records provide an example of the processes at play when records enter the pluralised, fourth dimension of the Records Continuum, and take on new value and meaning for different communities. This article argues that advocacy by the people whose lives are documented in records plays a crucial role in the transformation of the meaning and purposes of records, and has been an impetus for change in archival processes and practices in Australia. In this case, Care Leavers have harnessed the history of the Commonwealth paying child endowment to children’s institutions around Australia to argue successfully that the Australian government undeniably facilitated the institutional child welfare system and thus has a moral duty to help remedy the wrongs inflicted on so many in these institutions. The author argues that NAA has greatly improved the accessibility of its child endowment records, but radical transformation is required for these records to be truly reclaimed by Care Leavers.