International experts on social work, ethics, mental health, child development and human rights will gather in the US this autumn for the first ever international congress on child migration.

Britain's child migration schemes ended in 1970. The terrible human consequences for individuals and families were exposed by a Nottinghamshire social worker Margeret Humphreys who set up the the Child Migrants Trust in 1987.

The international congress forms part of the Trust's mission to develop more reflective and humane social policies for children, adults and families.

It is being convened by the Child Migrants Trust with the International Association of Former Child Migrants and their Families.

The migration schemes resulted in more than 130,000 children, some as young as three, being deported from Britain and shipped off to a "new life" in distant parts of the Empire.

Many of the migrants were treated as child slave labour. Most were told their parents were dead but often this was untrue. Many experienced degrading physical, sexual and emotional abuse throughout their childhood.

The Trust aims to reunite migrants with their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters and provide counselling to prepare individuals to meet their families for the first time after decades of painful and unnecessary separation.