The Parke Crescent Family Home was opened by the government in Alice Springs in 1972. It provided accommodation for up to nine Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children from babies to teenagers under the supervision of cottage parents. The exact closing date for the Parke Crescent Family Home is unknown.
Parke Crescent Family Home was one of two Family Homes opened by the government in Alice Springs in 1972. The other was known as the Forrest Crescent Family Home. Both were named for their street addresses.
The building of Family Homes in Alice Springs was first proposed by the Welfare Branch of the Northern Territory Administration in 1967 as a result of crowded conditions in the Alice Springs Receiving Home. The Branch worried that overcrowding was making it ‘impossible to segregate difficult cases from the short and long term residents’. It aimed to develop new Homes to ‘cater for long term residents, irrespective of age, under normal home conditions’.
When the Parke Crescent Home was opened in 1972, it was run by the Welfare Division which had replaced the Welfare Branch. From the end of 1972 until 1974 the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs took over control of child welfare in the Northern Territory and was therefore responsible for all government Homes for children. From 1974 the Parke Crescent Family Home came under the control of the Community Welfare Section of the Northern Territory Administration.
The Parke Crescent Family Home was purpose-built to provide long term accommodation for up to nine children under the supervision of a Cottage Mother and her husband. Cottage Parents received with rent-free accommodation and were paid a subsidy for each child under their care as well as a supervisory allowance.
The Parke Crescent Family Home took in both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children from babies to teenagers for various periods of time, often long term. The Home had the capacity to take in a number of children from a single family.
The closing date of the Parke Crescent family Home is yet to be determined.
From
1972
To
Current
1972 -
Parke Crescent Family Home was situated at 9 Parke Cresent, Alice Springs, Northern Territory (Building Still standing)