Histories of out of home ‘care’1 have traditionally fallen into four categories: in-house
productions, commissioned histories; academic studies and survivor narratives. Each of
these is problematic. A more inclusive approach, which encourages a close relationship
between historian and those who lived the experience, is offered through projects arising
from Australian government enquiries into indigenous, migrant and Australian-born
children in care. These projects challenge historians on two main fronts: They defy
historians’ ‘scholarly distance’ and require them to embrace alternative, often competing
and personally confronting, histories as they seek to incorporate care leavers’ voices in
published history. A greater challenge, though, is for historians to find effective ways to
intersect public history with public policy so that the undesirable legacies of the past do
not recur in the futures of the children who are in out of home care today.