St Andrew's Home

St Andrew’s Home was a boys’ home set up by the Presbyterian Social Services Department around 1943. Originally located at Manly, it was transferred to a 400 acre farm property at Leppington, on the Hume Highway south of Liverpool in around 1962. It catered for twenty boys aged ten to fifteen years. St Andrew’s residents were generally admitted to the home following a court appearance, either after having committed an offence or for their “care and protection”. In 1977 the Presbyterian Church became part of the new Uniting Church of Australia. At this time the Home came under the supervision of Burnside Homes for Children. In 1986 St Andrew’s was closed.

Residents of St Andrew’s Home were generally referred following an appearance before the Children’s Court on a care and protection application or in respect of some offence. Admissions followed assessment by a professional social worker, and a feature of the program was its strong community links, with residents attending local schools and participating in community activities.

Following the inauguration of the Uniting Church in Australia in 1977, the Home came under the auspice of the Uniting Church, together with Burnside Homes, with St Andrew’s being administered under the Burnside program.

The building in Leppington to which the Home moved in around 1962 won the Sir John Sulman Medal for Architectural Excellence in 1963, as an example of mid-century modernism.

After the Home was closed down in 1986, the buildings were demolished in 2015 to make way for a housing estate. Bell Tower Park in Emerald Hills Boulevard, Leppington commemorates the former Home with public art and information boards (Camden History Notes, 2021).

The records for St Andrew’s Leppington are held by Burnside.