Methodist Homes for Children

The Methodist Homes for Children was the name given to the Methodist Church agency that ran two Homes in Western Australia: the Methodist Children’s Home at Victoria Park (from 1922), and the Methodist Boys’ Home in the hills east of Perth at Werribee (from 1929). Over time, a number of cottages were opened on the Victoria Park site: Mofflyn House (1925), and Wesley, Guild, Dowerin and Meckering Cottages (1952). In 1962, the Werribee property was closed and the Victoria Park became the main site known as ‘Mofflyn’. During the 1960s and 70s, the hostels and cottages opened in Perth metropole included: Cooinda, Warminda, Allandale, Bourkedale, and Meribah. In 1977, the Methodist Homes for Children became the Uniting Church Child and Family Care Services.

The Methodist Children’s Home opened in Victoria Park in 1922 and the Boys’ Home at Werribee opened in 1929. The Boys’ Home became known as ‘Werribee Farm School’ and then as ‘Allandale’.

From the mid-1950s, the Methodist Homes for Children actively participated in housing Aboriginal children from northern WA. In the Annual Report 1954/1955 (p.4), the Director, Norman Hicks, wrote that the Commonwealth Government’s policy of bringing ‘selected half caste children’ to the south-west to assimilate with the white population was ‘wise and timely’. Methodist Homes for Children told the government that they were ‘prepared to receive one in five such boys at Werribee and one girl per cottage, but not more than two per cottage at Victoria Park, of such approved selected half-caste children from Croker Island and Millingimbie or similar places’.

In 1962, after the Werribee property was closed and the land was sold, funds were used to develop more cottages in Victoria Park, where the main site (with all its cottages) became known as ‘Mofflyn’.

In the1960s and ’70s the Methodist Homes for Children opened hostels and scatter cottages in the Perth metropolitan area: Cooinda, Warminda, Allandale, Bourkedale, and Meribah.

After the Methodist Church merged with the Presbyterian and Congregational churches to become the Uniting Church in 1977, the Methodist Homes for Children became the Uniting Church Child and Family Care Services.

The Uniting Church Child and Family Care Services, which was part of the Uniting Church’s ‘caring services’, eventually became known as Mofflyn Child and Family Care Services. In 2006, Mofflyn merged with other Uniting Church agencies to become UnitingCare West.