Australian Youth and Health Foundation

The Australian Youth and Health Foundation (also known as the Australian Youth Foundation) is a public company, created in 1985, as the new form of the Youth Welfare Association of Australia (YWAA). In 2012 the Australian Youth and Health Foundation was based in Surry Hills, Sydney. In 2025, the Australian Youth and Health Foundation is a registered charity with the ABN 89491770460.

The YWAA was originally founded by Leslie Owen Bailey, a lingerie manufacturer and natural health enthusiast who devised the Hopewood Experiment to raise 86 babies in a controlled environment at Hopewood House in Bowral. The Australian Youth and Health Foundation continued Bailey’s work of promoting ‘natural living’ and providing care for children. Early board members included businessmen, who later moved into property development.

The Australian Youth Foundation appears to have provided education and leadership for young people. In 1999 it formed a partnership with the Queen’s Trust to provide leadership, education and mentoring to young people, under the name of the Foundation for Young Australians.

In her thesis about Hopewood, Janet Peters writes that the Foundation “is a secretive charity that, although complying with its reporting obligations, did not publish any reports setting out its activities. Nor did it provide any public relations activities that concerned the beneficiaries of its financial support” (Peters, 2022, p.185).

The organisation has joined the National Redress Scheme for people who have experienced child sexual abuse. The Redress website describes the organisation like this: “The Australian Youth & Health Foundation is now a charitable organisation which provides assistance to youth through donations to various public charitable organisations and projects.”