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 and the Brush Farm property was…
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. Around 90 mothers and 200 children passed through Eastwood each year until it…
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, many girls with intellectual and other disabilities resided at Brush Farm Home. From the late 1970s, boys were also admitted. Brush Farm House dates…
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.
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…
Berry Training Farm was established in 1934 by the Department of Child Welfare on the former Berry State Farm. It was a farm training school. At the time it was started it received boys aged between 14 and 18 from Turner or Suttor Cottages, Brougham, Yarra Bay, Weroona or May Villa. By the 1950s it…
Dec 18, 2024
Nov 15, 2024
