Brush Farm Infants’ Home was opened by the Child Welfare Department in 1968. It was at Brush Farm at Eastwood in the Dundas Valley, next to Brush Farm Home. It accommodated 40 infants of both sexes and sometimes older children as well. Brush Farm Infants’ Home closed in 1988. On 8 November 1968 Brush Farm…
The Eastwood Home for Mothers and Babies was established in 1915 by the State Children’s Relief Board at Brush Farm House in Eastwood. Women and children who had been at the Shaftesbury Home for Mothers and Babies were moved there in 1915. Eastwood was designated for women defined as mentally deficient. Around 90 mothers and…
Brush Farm Home was established on the grounds of Brush Farm House in 1922 by the State Children’s Relief Department. It housed up to 60 girls. Over the next 60 years Brush Farm Home housed many girls with intellectual and other disabilities, and from the 1970s housed boys. Brush Farm Home closed in 1988. Brush…
Winbin, in Strathfield, sometimes referred to as Winbin Depot, was purchased by the Child Welfare Department in 1954 and converted to a children’s home. It provided short-term care for around 20 preschool-aged boys and girls. It was, at first, a disability institution. It had a kindergarten teacher on site. From 1974 four female wards lived…
St Gabriel’s was established in Castle Hill in 1922 by the Christian Brothers. It was a residential home for boys who had a hearing impairment, aged from 5 to 17 years. St Gabriel’s stopped serving as a residential school in 1973, and became a co-educational day school. In 2014 it was still a school, but…
St Edmund’s School opened in 1951 in Wahroonga and was run by the Christian Brothers. It was a residential school for boys who had a visual impairment, aged from 5 to 17 years. After 1980 the school began to include students who had other sensory impairments and other special needs.
Yarra Bay House, at Phillip Bay, was the site of a number of government-run children’s Homes from around 1917 to the mid 1980s. It was built in 1903, originally as part of the Cable Station at La Perouse. The first children’s institution at Yarra Bay House was established by the State Children’s Relief Department around…
Werrington Park was established at Werrington, near St Marys, by the Child Welfare Department in 1954. It was originally a home for boys defined as intellectually disabled and taught farming and basic life skills. Starting with 12 boys, the home held 120 by the 1970s. In 1978 Cobham Children’s Court and Remand Centre were built…
May Villa was established at Carlingford, or Dundas, by the State Children’s Relief Board in 1919. It was first a home for around 30 girls defined in 1919 as ‘feeble-minded’, but in 1920 it became a home for primary school aged boys who were also defined as ‘feeble-minded’. It had a special school attached to…
Clairvaux was established at Katoomba by the Child Welfare Department in 1969. It began as a home for boys who were described having intellectual disabilities. It has a special school on site. Clairvaux was closed down in the 1990s. Clairvaux was purchased in 1967 to increase accommodation for wards of the state and boys with…
Dec 18, 2024
Nov 15, 2024
