List of Categories

A
Anglican
A person or institution affiliated with the Anglican Church.
B
Baptist
A person or institution affiliated with the Baptist Church.
C
Care Provider
Care provider is an umbrella term that refers to the group or organisation responsible for providing and administering out-of-home ‘care’ for children. Although this term was not in common usage before the late 20th century, this website applies it to describe all organisations which operated ‘care’ services, no matter when they were active.
Catholic
A person or institution affiliated with the Catholic Church.
Children's Home
Children’s Home is a term used to describe institutions providing out-of-home ‘care’ for children. The term was commonly used during the period from the 1920s to the 1970s.
Church
Church is a general term which may be applied to any number of (usually Christian) religious groups. The phrase ‘the church’ usually refers to the official opinion, policy or practice of a particular denomination.
Cottage Care
Cottage care was a model of institutional 'care' which began in the United Kingdom in the late nineteenth century. Along with 'boarding out', cottage home accommodation was seen as an alternative to large scale dormitory-style accommodation (although cottage homes could house up to 40 children).
Cottage Home
Cottage homes, or family cottages, institutions which provided residential ‘care’ for children under the cottage care model.
E
Event
The term event is used to describe an occurrence of some significance within the history of child welfare.
F
Family Group Home
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 a normal family 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 given to children in large-scale institutions.
Female Rescue Home
‘Female Rescue Homes’ began as institutions associated with female rescue movement which was based on Evangelical Christian principles, and aimed to reform 'fallen women' (women engaged in prostitution) through a combination of prayer and hard work. The operations of the female rescue homes in Australia were not limited to the rescue of fallen women. Increasingly, these homes catered to single mothers and their babies. Some female rescue homes specialised in women with particular difficulties, such as alcohol and drug dependency, or women released from prison. Despite the evolution of this type of institution from the 1850s, the term 'female rescue home' was still in common use in Victoria in the mid-twentieth century.
Foster Care
Foster care is a method of out-of-home ‘care’ provided to children and young people who are temporarily or permanently unable to live with their families of origin. Foster care places such children in private family homes.
G
Glossary Term
An entry in the Find and Connect glossary.
Government Agency
A Government Agency is an organisation or service provider directly under the control of and funded by a state or federal government.
Government Department
A government department is a group of public servants organised to administer a particular area of government activity, under the control of a Minister.
Government-run
An organisation or activity for which a government (usually State, Territory or Federal) is directly responsible.
H
Half-caste Home
A ‘Half-Caste Home’ is an institution which was designed specifically to ‘train’ Aboriginal children of mixed descent.
Hostel
A hostel was one type of institution for young people, usually those leaving children's homes or reformatories, to prepare them for life after 'care'. Hostels generally catered for 'older' children and young people, from around the age of 15. They were designed to assist former residents of orphanages and children's homes with the transition to paid employment and independent living.
J
Juvenile Detention Centre
Tasmania only. Training institutions were institutions responsible for juvenile offenders or other children considered to require firm discipline.
L
Legislation
A legally binding statute of a parliament (usually State, Territory, or Federal).
Leprosarium
Usually an isolated institution providing residential accommodation and medical services to people suffering from leprosy.
Lutheran
A person or organisation affiliated with the Lutheran Church.
M
Matron
The title given to a woman responsible for the day to day running of a children’s institution.
Methodist
A person or organisation affiliated with the Methodist Church.
Mission
A faith-based organisation that provides social and other forms of support to the needy. Missions contimue to operate shelters and social services across Australia, including in cities. With Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the word mission has a specific meaning, as a residential settlement or institution,
Mission Boarding School
Mission Boarding Schools were residential schools run by missionary organisations. They were usually exclusively for Aboriginal children.
Mission Dormitory
Mission Dormitory refers to the dormitory style accommodation buildings that were often placed on Aboriginal missions to house children of school age apart from the rest of their families.
N
Non-denominational
Non-denominational organisations were (and are) Protestant organisations without any specific denominational affiliation.
P
Place
A location.
Policy
A policy is a guiding principle adopted by a group, sector or government with respect to a particular issue.
Presbyterian
A person or organisation affiliated with the Presbyterian Church.
Protestant
A person or organisation affiliated with any one of the Protestant Churches. With child welfare, services were often clustered under the umbrella terms of Protestant and Catholic.
Public Servant
A public servant is a person who works for the government, for example in a state, territory or federal department, but who is hired, rather than elected, to that position.
R
Receiving Home
A receiving home was an institution designed to provide short term ‘care’ for children before they were sent to a longer term placement (typically a foster home). From the 1950s onwards this type of institution was often called a reception centre.
Records Service
A Records Service is an organisation, or part of an organisation, which helps people find and locate records that were contain information about them and their time in ‘care’.
Repository
A storage facility.
S
School
An institution (residential or non-residential) designed to provide general education or training in a specialised area.
T
Term commonly found on child welfare records
A phrase, word or abbreviation commonly used as a shorthand notation within child welfare records.
Type of 'care'
A method of providing for children who are not living with their families.
Type of record
The different kinds of documents that have been, and are still, kept to record information related to children in 'care'. These may be maintained by a government or non-government agency, or held in an archival repository, library or in private hands.
U
Uniting Church
An amalgamation of a number of congregations of Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches.