Ongoing Impacts - Childhood Trauma
Fear of being triggered
It can be something as small as a smell, a sound, an item or a name, that triggers a distressing memory of the institution itself, or something that happened in the institution or foster home. For example, being in a hospital ward might bring back memories of being in the dormitory of the children’s home where the abuse took place.
Ongoing mental health struggles
Apart from specific “triggers”, ongoing mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and sometimes personality disorders are common. The trauma endured as children sometimes blocked the development the emotional building blocks required to form a healthy and positive sense of self and belonging.
Highly protective of privacy and belongings
Privacy and personal belongings were often denied to children in out-of-home care. This limited the sense of control the children had over their lives and their belongings. In adulthood, this can, understandably, heighten sensitivity over privacy and belongings being threatened or removed.
Struggles with Identity
Institutionalisation commonly removed a sense of self as individuals, their sense of connection and belonging and their sense of place and worth. Sometimes children’s names were changed and some of them were only identified by numbers. Record keeping about individuals was often poor or non-existent, so many often don’t even know standard things about their identity or family history.
Difficulty connecting with others
Connection to other family members was often completely severed. The children were commonly lied to and told that their parents had died or abandoned them. This, and the treatment they endured, quite often negatively impacted their ability to form and maintain positive and loving relationships, in turn affecting their marriages and parenting as adults. Being deprived of love and positive attention meant the children suffered a profound sense of separation and abandonment. “The loss of family, usually including separation from siblings, caused grief, feelings of isolation, guilt, self-blame and confusion about their identity.”[1]
Difficulty trusting others
Naturally, trusting in people is very difficult when, too often as children, they had no one to place their trust in, or if they did, their trust was often betrayed or exploited. Government departments and authority figures still represent mistrust, given their past responsibility and role in such traumatic childhoods.
Fear of an unknown future
For many, the childhood experiences create circumstances in adulthood of greater financial disadvantage and poorer health. This directly impacts their sense of safety and security for the future.
[1] Fernandez, E., Lee, J.-S.,Blunden, H., McNamara, P., Kovacs, S. and Cornefert, P.-A. (2016). No Child Should Grow Up Like This: Identifying Long Term Outcomes of Forgotten Australians, Child Migrants and the Stolen Generations. Kensington: University of New South Wales.