The Child Migrants Trust was founded in 1987 by its Director, Margaret Humphreys CBE, AO, to address the devastating impact of British child migration schemes.

In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a Nottinghamshire Social Worker, received a letter from a woman who claimed that at the age of four she was shipped to a Children's Home in Australia, and now wanted help to find her parents or relatives in Britain.

Gradually, the enormity of child migration was exposed. Incredibly over 130,000 children had been deported from Britain and shipped off to a "new life" originally to distant parts of the Empire and, more recently, across the Commonwealth. This long history of forced migration ended in 1970. The Trust campaigns to raise public awareness of the long-term impact of child migration schemes for former Child Migrants overseas and their families in Britain.