Fullarton Children's Home

The Fullarton Children’s Home was the new name given to the Salvation Army Girls’ Home in 1969 when it began to also accommodate younger boys. It was run by the Salvation Army but was licensed and regularly inspected by the government. In 1972 younger boys from the Salvation Army Boys’ Home, Kent Town, were sent to Fullarton Children’s Home. In the 1980s it also accommodated Aboriginal girls attending secondary school. The Children’s Home closed in 1986.

The Fullarton Children’s Home was the new name given to the Salvation Army Girls’ Home in 1969 when it began to also accommodate younger boys. It was run by the Salvation Army but was licensed and regularly inspected by the government.

In 1969 the Army referred to the Fullarton Children’s Home as a ‘substitute home’ for boys and girls in its promotional brochure and stated that its main focus was on keeping siblings together where possible. It reported that the need for this type of home, was brought about by ‘the actions or mis-actions of adults, not children’. The Army aimed to give children not only food and shelter but also ‘the opportunity of living in a Home where there is love, acceptance and someone to look to for direction and guidelines in living’.

Staff at the Fullarton Children’s Home stated in 1969 that they wished to form a Women’s Auxiliary for the Home because of the Aboriginal children in their care. It was their belief that; ‘there are special and peculiar difficulties that are encountered only when working with a combination of Aboriginal and white children’.

In 1972, 31 children were resident at the Home. The Salvation Army reported that most of the children were at the Home because of family or foster care breakdown, the illness of parents, or because of ‘behavioural difficulties’. Fourteen children had been referred to the Home by the department. In that same year when the Salvation Army Boys’ Home at Kent Town closed, the younger boys from there were sent to Fullarton Children’s Home.

In 1974, the Salvation Army entered into new licensing and funding agreements with the government and the newly former Residential Child Care Advisory Committee (RCCAC). The department paid for a social worker to help assess and care for children admitted to the home and each child’s case was to be subject to regular review.

During the 1980s, as part of an arrangement with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, a number of Aboriginal girls were sent to live at Fullarton while completing their final years of High School.

In the 1980s the RCCAC began to encourage non-government agencies to move away from large scale residential care. As a result, at the end of June 1986 Fullarton Children’s Home ceased to operate as a children’s home. The building was retained by the Salvation Army and is now the South Australian Divisional Headquarters.

Fullarton Children’s Home was one of the institutions that came under scrutiny for allegations of abuse during the Children in State Care Inquiry 2004-2008.