Child Welfare Act 1947, Western Australia

The Child Welfare Act 1947 was the principal legislation governing child welfare in Western Australia, regulating the treatment of children sent to WA as unaccompanied child migrants after 1947 as well as all others in out of home care in the State. The Act repealed the State Children Act 1907 (as amended to 1941) but essentially retained the scope of the earlier legislation. Its purpose was to ‘consolidate and amend’ the laws for ‘the protection, control, maintenance and reformation of neglected and destitute children’ and related matters. New provisions included enabling penalties against a child to be withheld if it could be shown that circumstances such as a child’s upbringing or health had contributed to the offence (s.26). The Act was amended many times during the 1950s and 1960s but was not greatly changed until the Child Welfare Amendment Act (No 2) 1976 was implemented. The Child Welfare Act 1947 was eventually repealed by the Children and Community Services Act 2004 on 1 March 2006.

The Child Welfare Act 1947 governed out of home care in Western Australia from January 1948. It repealed the State Children Act 1907 and all its amendments, including the State Children Act Amendment Act 1919, the State Children Act Amendment Act 1927 and the Child Welfare Act Amendment Act 1941. The purpose of the 1947 Act was not dissimilar from the legislation’s origins in 1907: ‘to consolidate and amend the law relating to the making of better provision for the protection, control, maintenance and reformation of neglected and destitute children, and for other purposes connected therewith.’

The Act:

• Granted the Secretary of the Department the care, management and control of wards and their property, and the supervision of ‘all children nursed by foster-mothers’ (s.10.1) and to place children brought into departmental care. The department was to follow Ministerial directions and regulations in the placement of children (s.10.2) and could not overrule a children’s court recommendation for placement without Ministerial approval (s.10.2.e)
• Required the children’s court to take the child’s future welfare into account in determing where to place the child (s.25)
• Enabled an officer of the department to apprehend any child deemed ‘neglected’ or ‘incorrigible’ or ‘uncontrollable’ (s.29); and enabled the children’s court to commit children who it found to be ‘neglected’ or ‘destitute’ to either the care of the department, to an institution, or release the child on probation (s.30)
• Allowed the children’s court to ‘have regard to the antededents, character, age, health, or mental condition of the child convicted’ and the ‘nature of the offence or any special circumstances of the case’ and refrain from imposing a penalty on the child (s.26)
• Generally required that children who were ‘neglected’ or ‘destitute’ should not be placed in an industrial school (s.41.2). Industrial schools were for children who were found guilty of an offence (s.41.1). However, the court might identify ‘special circumstances’ (s.41.2) that enabled it to send a ‘neglected or destitute child’ to an industrial school, or allow the Minister to approve the transfer of a child ‘for misconduct’ from another institution to an industrial school.
• Enabled the police or any officer of the department to return a ‘ward who absconds from any institution, from his foster-parent’ or any service placement or apprenticeship to be apprehended and ‘conveyed to such institution’ of the Secretary’s choice (s.46).
• Enabled the department to determine where to place children in its care. These children could be placed in an institution, boarded out, ‘placed with some respectable person’, apprenticed or placed at service with a ‘suitable person'(ss.31, 41, 50-51)
• Required young people who were wards of the State to be released from departmental control when they reached 18 years of age. Young women could have their wardship extended to 21 years of age (s.49).

The 1947 Act continued the requirement for record-keeping from the Child Welfare Act 1947 (s.11) for children who were wards of the State and (s.149) for all institutions and licensees; foster-mothers’ record-keeping requirements (s.117) included not only children who were wards, but ‘every other child received by her’. The Child Welfare Act Amendment Act (No.2) 1976 (s.104) amended s.117 of the Child Welfare Act 1947 to require not only a register of children to be kept, but a broader requirement for ‘facilities and centres’ to keep ‘other particulars and records’ as determined by the department from time to time. All these records were to be made available for inspection by departmental officers and information from them was to be sent to the department upon request.

Although the Act was amended many times during the 1950s and 1960s, it was not greatly changed until the Child Welfare Amendment Act (No 2) 1976 was implemented with a number of modernisations.

The Child Welfare Act 1947 was eventually repealed by the Children and Community Services Act 2004.