The term Receiving Home refers to an institution designed to provide short term ‘care’ for children before they were sent to a longer term placement (typically a foster home). Receiving Homes could be large institutions. Sometimes children spent long periods in a Receiving Home, when suitable placements could not be found for them. Children also…
The Newcastle Shelter was established in 1906 as temporary accommodation for children awaiting hearings at the local Children’s Court, children who were on remand, or who were otherwise in the custody of the police. It operated from the private home of Miss King, who, along with her daughter, ran the shelter with support from the…
These are admission and discharge registers created by Myee and held by Museums of History NSW (State Archives). They contain basic information about children admitted to Myee, such as name and date of admission/discharge. There is a large gap in the dates of the registers, between 1945 and 1976. Access Conditions Access to these records…
The Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney is part of the worldwide Catholic Church. Catholicism arrived in Australia with the convicts and soldiers of the First Fleet in 1788, although the first Catholic ceremony was conducted by French explorer La Perouse. The first Catholic Mass on Australian soil was conducted until 1803 and the foundation stone for…
Asylum is a term used throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to refer to a place of refuge for the poor, destitute, aged and dependent, as well as for people with mental illness (historically referred to as ‘lunatics’). Asylums were generally run by charities or churches, but funded by the government. Some nineteenth century…
Benevolent Asylums were private institutions set up in the nineteenth century to house ‘destitute’ men, women and children, expectant mothers (lying-in) as well as ‘deserted wives’, ‘waifs’, ‘neglected children’ and ‘orphans’. Click here to see the full Find & Connect glossary
A Reception Centre was an institution designed to provide short term ‘care’ for children before they were sent to a longer-term placement (typically a foster Home). Children in reception centres often went through a process of ‘classification’ before being placed. The term came into use around the 1950s. Children would return to a reception centre…
Residential care (as distinct from home-based care, like foster care or kinship care) is a term used to describe the placement of children and young people in residential units. Residential care is provided by paid staff employed by a non-government agency. Residential care properties usually house three or four people at a time and these…
Family Group Home is the name given to a model of ‘care’ where small groups of children are accommodated in buildings that approximate the size and form of an average home. They began to appear in as a form of ‘care’ in Australia from the late 1940s, following concerns about the lack of individual attention…
Adolescent Community Placement (or ACP) is a term used to describe a home-based care model for young people aged 12 to 18 years who are experiencing crisis and are unable to live with their families for a range of reasons. This type of placement enables young people to reside in a home-like environment with the…