Forefront information regarding discovering origins and identity. Nothing obvious regarding support services
Clicked on “past adoption practices in Tasmania”
Forefront information regarding the apology for forced removals
Clicked on “adoption services”
Forefront information for potential adopters. Nothing obvious regarding support services
Hard
Families SA (Department for Education and Child Development, South Australia)
Adoption links provide information for potential adopters. Nothing obvious regarding support services.
Searched “adoption support”
Top hit “past adoption support”
Links to CLAN, Benevolent, Relationships Australia SA
Clicked on Relationships Australia, information on support services for adoptees. Information about Past Adoption Support Services (PASS) but no contact information easily accessible
Medium
ACT Community Services
No obvious links to any adoption information. Clicked on the “Children, Youth & Families” link.
Found “adoption” at the bottom of the page under “human services”
Clicked on a document for support for adoptees. No information regarding support services.
Searched “post adoption support”
Came up with the same document as above. Only departmental contacts provided
Hard
Northern Territory
Searched “adoption support” resulted in text regarding applying for adoption. No links to any support or advice for post adoption. Email link and phone number ‘”or more information”
Hard
Western Australia Department for Child Protection and Family Support
Clicked the link “past adoption information & services”
Clicked the link “how can I access counseling and support services”
Provides a hyperlink to a list of non-government organisations as well as information that the department provides on free past adoption services.
Access to both current and previous AEC electoral rolls is seen as essential for those who provide search and intermediary services. Often when the person cannot be found directly, it is important to be able to search laterally by going to old AEC rolls and build up a family tree, and then search for other relatives. Service providers expressed frustration at the change in policy by the AEC that prevents purchase or access to the rolls, and note that it is easier to search in the UK—where rolls are accessible—than in Australia.
State/territory electoral rolls
Agencies can only access their own state electoral rolls and in some cases, such as NSW, not even their own rolls. The WA Government and WAEC have stated that they cannot purchase other states’ rolls. State libraries around Australia have complete AEC national electoral rolls up to 2007, some have 2009, but there are no rolls available beyond and the gap widens every year.
Telephone books and WhitePages.com
Telephone books and White Pages can be very useful for cross-referencing, but not as a primary search tool. They do not list first names, thus a search for a Joan Andrews may yield many hundreds of J. Andrews as the J may be for John, Justine, Josephine, Joe, Jack, etc. It is not feasible to write to hundreds (and for some names, thousands) of people.
Many phones are only in a partner’s name, and unless you know their name, you won’t identify them in that instance. Many people do not have a landline and may not have their mobile number in the phone book.
Ancestry.com
Commercial family history tracing websites, such as Ancestry can be very useful for historical searches and building a family tree, however it does not include information beyond 1980 and there are no records for South Australia.
Online search, e.g., Facebook
Online searching can be useful for an uncommon name. However, if it is a common name (i.e., Joan Andrews) you can yield thousands of possibilities often with no ability to filter results or link people to a current address.
Messages through Facebook must not identify adoption and are often ignored. It is possible that Facebook will charge to send messages to a person’s private inbox.
Online search sites
It is an offence under a number of state/territory adoption laws to publicly identify someone as being involved in adoption. Even if that were not the case, it can cause great distress to publicly name someone as being involved in adoption. Many mothers are not computer literate and need experienced support to deal with such a contact. Often only one party is searching.
Commercial records
Paying to use commercial debt collection sites can be useful, however they are very incomplete and out of date. It is not uncommon for 30% of letters to be returned as ‘Not at this Address’ and no-one respond as being the right person. Therefore, it is not known if the right person has received a letter but does not want contact, whether the right person has not been located on the accessible records, or whether the person is a match, but they have simply moved address and the new residents are not aware of a forwarding address.
Death notices
Death notices can be used to build up a family tree of the searched for party, however once a name has been identified, their current details still need to be discovered.
Land title searches
Conducting land title searches can sometimes be helpful, however they rarely help us to locate current details.
Ryerson Index, Trove, National Archives of Australia, historical societies in country towns
These can be useful sources to obtain information and build a family tree. However, they do not provide current contact information.
Source: Based on written submission from JIGSAW WA, and supplemented with views from stakeholder workshops. For information about the AEC Electoral Roll, see:
