Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine)

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Many around them also suffered in similar ways, or silently bore some of their tragedy which remained unspoken. EMPTY CRADLES is a strong indictment of government, as well as charitable and religious organisations.

Margaret and her team reunited thousands of families before it was too late brought authorities to account and worldwide attention to an outrageous miscarriage of justice. The reality was anything like it, children's homes where the children were severely abused and treated like slaves. child migrants who were taken from their families in the UK and sent to NZ, Canada, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and the majority went to Australia.

Well worth watching and it runs as near to the book as possible except obviously it is a lot more condensed. This is just another sad example that powerful governments and powerful institutions think they can do what they like to whom they like, when they like and they can lie about it (and similar things continue to happen today), all the while it inflicts unnecessary suffering on people who deserved better. An excellent account of a social worker in England discovering a shocking secret covered up for years by the British and Australian governments.

Despite the sadness and anger at its centre, hope remains the principle message of this remarkable book. Up to 150,000 children, some as young as three years old, had been deported from children's homes in Britain and shipped off to a "new life" in distant parts of the British empire, right up until 1970.EMPTY CRADLES is a powerful testament to an ordinary woman's astonishing dedication, compassion and stubborn courage. The recent film 'Oranges And Sunshine' is an adaptation of 'Empty Cradles', and is a good complement to the book - while some elements had to be compressed or left out, the visuals and especially the acting help to illustrate what it was like for the Lost Children.

As recently as the early 1990s, when Humphreys was in the heart of her work, the British and Australian governments were busy either denying wrongdoing entirely or pointing fingers at each other.This book was an amazing insight into a long and ill conceived period of social engineering presided over by several governments and many powerful institutions and probably the most absorbing and informative books I have read in a long time. I usually look at the parts of the book I need to to do my job and then I move onto the next book, but this book was different. The way she followed her instincts to help people, do good and bring the hidden secret of child migration to the forefront of a nation's conscience. The book started with an interview between a child migrant and a social worker and documented a 23 year crusade to achieve freedom, reunion and rehabilitation for thousands of child migrants. Thankfully, some have the opportunity to reconnect with the loved ones they were torn from decades earlier.