Adoption and State Wards
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Click here for information on state wards or Home children raised in children's homes, orphanages or other institutions, or in foster care.
Adoption -General
Below are links for finding information on accessing adoption records for each Australian state and territory. This will include contact information of the relevant government agency or private organisation.
See also the Family History Unit fact sheets giving the major addresses of Indigenous family history organisations for each state. General Australian links are:
State by State
Australian Capital Territory
New South Wales
- Were you adopted? - NSW Dept. of Community Services
- Adoption Information - NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages
- Connecting kin : guide to records : a guide to help people separated from the families search for their records. Listing of records: NSW Government welfare agencies; Non-Government agencies; Public hospitals; NSW Government non-welfare agencies. This publication is in print form and should be available in many libraries. Please note: this guide may take a long time to download
- Adoption search and reunion - Post Adoption Resource Centre
Northern Territory
Queensland
- Adoption Information - Queensland
- Jigsaw Queensland (Queensland Post Adoption Resource Centre)
South Australia
Tasmania
- Adoption and Information Service (Dept. of Health and Human Services)
- Adoption Information (Dept. of Justice)
- Origins Tasmania
Victoria
- Adoption Records in Victoria (from Finding Your Story)
- VANISH: Victorian Adoption Network
- Public Records Office - Adoption Records
Western Australia
- Information About Adoption - WA Dept for Child Protection
- Signposts - contains information and contact details for more than 200 facilities that provided some sort of residential, out-of-home care in Western Australia from 1920, sometimes even earlier.
Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN) is a support and advocacy group for people brought up in care away from their family as state wards or Home children raised in Children's homes, orphanages or other institutions, or in foster care.
The CLAN website contains:
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a searchable listing of orphanages, children’s homes and institutions in which CLAN members grew up.
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information to assist you in locating your ward file or other personal records from when you or someone close to you was in "care" and separated from family members.
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contact and reunion links for people who have lost touch with their families after being placed in "care".
Updated: July 2007