Hollywood Children's Village, Salvation Army

Hollywood Children’s Village was the new name given in 1965 to the Salvation Army Boys’ Home (in Nedlands). Cottages were built to house the boys from this time. In 1969, after the Salvation Army Girls’ Home, Cottesloe closed, girls were admitted. Children who were wards and private children were admitted until the Village closed in 1994.

Hollywood Children’s Village was the new name given to the Salvation Army Boys’ Home, Nedlands, in 1965. At first it accommodated only boys, but girls were admitted from 1969. More than 300 children and young people were admitted between 1965 and 1991. From 1990, only teenagers were admitted. In 1991 the residential program was renamed ‘Crossroads west’. In 1994, the one remaining residential cottage at the Hollywood Children’s Village site closed. The site is now an aged care facility.

Brand House, later called Brand Cottage or just ‘Brand’, opened in 1965, with the official ceremony on 3 July. Sir David Brand was a Premier of Western Australia. Pied Piper Cottage (‘Piper’) opened in 1966 and its opening ceremony was on 23 October of that year. Each of these cottages housed up to 12 children, supervised by cottage parents. In 1966, there were 52 boys in total on the Nedlands site, so some boys were apparently still accommodated in dormitories.

Buckingham Cottage opened in 1969.

A newspaper article, ‘Families share their affection and fellowship’, written around 1969 reported that all 36 children at the Village had been referred by the Child Welfare Department and that they returned to their parents in the Christmas holidays. At that stage, the children at the Village were aged 7-15 years and according to the news item, ‘some had been at the cottage for five years and would probably stay longer’ though the aim was to reunite children with their families. A description of the facilities was given: Meals were prepared in a main kitchen and served in dining rooms with four tables in the cottages; cottage fathers worked outside the Village; children of different ages slept in one, two or three-bed rooms in each cottage; some children had part-time jobs; some had pocket-money from parents and others were given pocket-money by Village authorities.

Withnell Cottage opened on 25 January 1970. By 1996, Withnell Cottage was the headquarters of the Salvation Army Historical Society. In 2005 it was used by the aged care facility as a library and for storage.

Signposts records the location ot Cottesloe House as the Hollywood Children’s Village, Nedlands, but more recent research by Find & Connect historian, Debra Rosser has confirmed that Cottesloe House was located in Mt Lawley.

At the start of 1971, the Hollywood Children’s Village was put under the management of the Superintendent of the adjacent Salvation Army Senior Citizens’ Village. A swimming pool for children was officially opened on 27 March 1971 and the Children’s Choir sang at the ceremony.

By 1990, around half the children referred to Hollywood were over 12 years old and the Salvation Army considered the cottage parent style of accommodation unsuitable for teenagers. There was a transition to an ‘expanded youth program’, focusing on teenagers. From 18 May 1990, there were no more admissions of children to the Hollywood Children’s Village and by January 1991, there was only one residential unit at Hollywood, for teenagers. That unit was part of the Salvation Army’s Crossroads west program and the administration of Crossroads west was run from the Hollywood site.

When the residential programs for children and young people at Hollywood ceased in 1994, the buildings were used for the Salvation Army’s Eventide Home for Men.

In 1997, the buildings that had been Brand, Pied Piper and Buckingham Cottages were demolished and ‘Cottesloe Cottage’ was at that time the only remaining building from the Children’s Village. It, too, has since been demolished.

Hollywood Children’s Village, Salvation Army, was investigated by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Case Study 33: The Salvation Army children’s Homes, Australia Southern Territory.