Glendel Children's Home

Glendel Children’s Home, run by the Christian Brethren, became an approved children’s Home in 1979. It took up to 10 children, some or all of whom were wards of state. The Home seems to have closed in the early 1990s.

Glendel Children’s Home was originally in West Barrack Street, Deloraine. It was run and owned by a married couple belonging to the Christian Brethren who had children of their own. Initially the man had a job but in December 1978, he resigned it to become a full time worker at the Home. A 1982 letterhead of the Home stated that it offered ‘Christian child care’.

Glendel existed for a number of years before it became an approved children’s home under the Child Welfare Act 1960. Originally it was an ‘associate’ of Glenhaven Children’s Home. In 1978, the couple who ran Glendel applied for a licence to operate it as an approved children’s home in its own right. The Social Welfare Department granted the approval in 1979. The Christian Brethren Assembly at Deloraine formed a Board of Management to supervise the management of the Home.

By 1981, all the children at Glendel were at school. That same year, the entire Home started attending the Christian Brethren’s Riverbend Camps at Smithton annually.

In 1985, Glendel moved into a new building in Quamby Brook Road, four kilometres from Deloraine. The couple who ran it had purchased the land on which the new Home was built in 1982 but transferred ownership to Glendel Children’s Home in 1984.

Glendel Home closed as a children’s home sometime in the 1990s, prior to being converted into an aged care facility. In the course of research conducted between 2012 and 2014 for the Find & Connect web resource, we have been unable to confirm the whereabouts or existence of records from the Glendel Children’s Home. After email correspondence with Glendel Home in 2013 [i.e. the aged care home], we were informed that former residents of the Children’s Home could make enquiries to Glendel Home. However, Glendel Home closed in 2014 and at the time of writing there was no information about what happened to any records.