Margaret Humphreys

Margaret Humphreys, CBE, OAM (born 1944) is a social worker, author and whistleblower from Nottingham, England. In 1987, she investigated and brought to public attention the British government programme of Home Children. This involved forcibly relocating poor British children to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the former Rhodesia and other parts of the Commonwealth of Nations, often without their parents' knowledge. Children were often told their parents had died, and parents were told their children had been placed for adoption elsewhere in the UK. According to Humphreys, up to 150,000 children are believed to have been resettled under the scheme, some as young as three, about 7,000 of whom were sent to Australia.

Saving money was one of the motives behind this policy. The children were allegedly deported because it was cheaper to care for them overseas. It cost an estimated £5 per day to keep a child on welfare in a British institution, but only 10% of that, ten shillings, in an Australian one.

Humphreys' research began in 1986. As a social worker involved in post-adoption support, she received a letter from a woman in Australia who said that, at the age of four, she had been shipped from the UK to a children's home in Australia, and was now looking for help in tracing her parents in Britain.