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Mount Penang Detention Centre

Mount Penang Detention Centre in Kariong was the new name given in 1988 to what had been the Mount Penang Training School for Boys, also known as Gosford Training Home. It was run by the Department of Family and Community Services. Mount Penang Detention Centre was transferred to the Department of Juvenile Justice and renamed…

Gosford Farm Home for Boys

Gosford Farm Home for Boys was a reformatory established by the Department of Public Instruction. It was officially opened in 1913 but boys lived there from 1911, as they laboured to build it. The farm home occupied a 700 acre site on Penang Mountain (Mount Penang), near Kariong. It housed boys moved from the Brush…

Endeavour House

Endeavour House was the name given to the former Institution for Boys, Tamworth in 1976, by the Department of Youth and Community Services, to indicate the institution had been improved and reformed. However Endeavour House was also a maximum-security juvenile detention centre for boys aged between 15 and 18 who had offended in other state…

St Anne’s Group Homes

St Anne’s Group Homes were established in the 1960s on the site of St Anne’s Orphanage at Liverpool. They were for children aged 2 to 16 years. St Anne’s group homes were also opened at Dundas, Parramatta, Ryde and 9 Loloma Street, Cabramatta (the latter being the site where St Anne’s Emergency Centre was established)….

Renwick Hospital for Infants, Summer Hill

The Renwick Hospital for Infants was opened at Summer Hill by the Benevolent Society in 1921. It replaced the previous Renwick Hospital for Infants at Thomas Street in Sydney and was a lying-in hospital and a hospital for children whose parents could not afford to pay for their medical care. Renwick Hospital at Summer Hill…

Dunlea Centre

The Dunlea Centre was opened in Engadine in 2010. It had been called Boys’ Town Engadine, but became the Dunlea Centre when it included the Margaret residential unit for young women. In 2012 the Dunlea Centre provided a range of services to adolescent children and their families including life skills education and residential out of…

Methodist Church in New South Wales

The Methodist Church preached its first services in New South Wales in 1812. In the 1880s, faced with a declining congregation in Sydney, the Methodist Conference resolved to try a new style of worship, and opened the Central City Mission. The new church was so popular that, although the Methodist faith survived, the activities of…

St Michael’s Church of England War Memorial Children’s Home

St Michael’s Church of England War Memorial Children’s Home was officially opened at Kelso, a suburb of Bathurst, on 4 May 1957, by the Anglican Youth Council and Children’s Home Council of the Bathurst Anglican Diocesan Synod. There were three homes in the complex: one was for children of kindergarten age, one for older boys…

Protestant Orphan School

The Protestant Orphan School was established in Parramatta in 1850 by the New South Wales Colonial Government. It replaced, and brought together, what had been the Female Orphan School and the Male Orphan School. The Protestant Orphan School housed hundreds of children at a time. It was closed in 1881, after the boarding out system…

Female Orphan School

The Female Orphan School opened on 17 August 1801 in George Street, Sydney. It first housed 31 girls aged between seven and 14 years old, but by 1803 there were 103 inmates. In 1818, the girls were relocated to a new building on Arthur’s Hill (now Parramatta), and in 1819 the George Street site became…