The OGS has been working on setting up a new Special Interest Group (SIG) on the topic of British Home Children. There has been considerable interest but we don’t quite have enough potential members yet to proceed. This BLOG post is intended to get your input on what you would like to get out of such a group. A few early discussions have produced the following tentative goals:

1. To bring together genealogy researchers who have like interests in British Home Children (BHC) to share their research experiences.
2. To encourage possible descendants of BHC to investigate their ancestry.
3. To raise awareness of the history and contribution of the BHC in Canada.
4. To identify resources for research on individual BHC.
5. To identify resources for research into the social conditions in the UK and Canada which influenced the lives of the BHC.

Here are a few possible projects which members could contribute to:

1. The newsletter (electronic) would include stories of members BHC ancestors. These could be as simple as a few paragraphs of text or a complete research article  with photos, genealogy trees etc.

2. Once the group has been established and has some resources we could gather together the stories published in the newsletter and issue it in the form of a booklet or book (depending upon the number available and the finances). This has been done before by other groups but this effort would be specific to our SIG members.

3. We would compile and maintain a comprehensive list of resources available for researching BHC and include this on the members only portion of the OGS web site. New books and CD’s are published regularly on BHC and there are older ones which are now out of print but may be available through libraries. Note that the OGS ‘Links’ web page already includes useful web sites on this subject.

Please post your thoughts on this group, suggest interesting projects that could be taken on and state what you would hope to get out of it.

- Phil Ellis