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…
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…
Orphanages or orphan asylums were a prominent feature of Australian urban landscapes from the early nineteenth through to the mid-twentieth centuries. Orphanages founded in both Britain and the United States from the late 18th century were voluntary organisations designed to rescue the children of the ‘deserving’ poor from being admitted to the workhouse. In Australia,…
Uniting Photographs Collection [Methodist and Presbyterian Babies’ Homes] is a collection of around 6,000 photographs, donated to Uniting by former mothercraft trainees who worked at the Methodist and Presbyterian Babies’ Homes. The photographs are of named babies and young children. The majority of the images are from the 1960s and 1970s. Access Conditions Access is…
The Northcote Children’s Home Act, no 8921, was passed in 1976 following the passing of the Northcote Trust Fund Act in 1975. Its primary purpose was to designate current employees of the Northcote Farm School as public servants and so that their employment continued as the Victorian Government took over the running of the Home….
Dec 18, 2024
Nov 15, 2024
