Official opening, 26 September 1917, courtesy of The Benevolent Society.
Details
The Scarba Welfare House for Women and Children at Bondi was opened in 1917 by the Benevolent Society of New South Wales as a home for women and babies. In 1920, the Board of the Benevolent Society decided to devote Scarba entirely to the care of young children and the name was changed to Scarba Welfare House for Children.
In 2006 the Benevolent Society published a history of Scarba, as part of its response to the Senate Inquiry into the Forgotten Australians. The report intended to set out the good and the bad, and acknowledge mistakes made in the care of children. The report acknowledges that it is difficult to find out what Scarba was like in the period before 1965, and few individual records of that time survive.
1917 - 1920 Scarba Welfare House for Women and Children
1920 - 1965 Scarba Welfare House for Children
1965 - 1986 Scarba House for Children
Sources used to compile this entry: 'Scarba House for Children (Historypin)', in Historypin: The Benevolent Society, The Benevolent Society, 2011, https://www.historypin.org/en/scarba-house-for-children; Rathbone, Ron, A Very Present Help: Caring for Australians Since 1813, State Library of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1994, 237 pp; Squires, Kathryn and Slater, Lisa, Living at Scarba Home for Children: A history of the Scarba Welfare House for Children (1917-1986) in the context of child welfare practice in New South Wales, Benevolent Society, Paddington, 2006, 56 pp; Thinee, Kristy and Bradford, Tracy, Connecting Kin: Guide to Records, A guide to help people separated from their families search for their records [completed in 1998], New South Wales Department of Community Services, Sydney, New South Wales, 1998, https://clan.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/connectkin_guide.pdf.
Prepared by: Naomi Parry
Created: 18 March 2011, Last modified: 10 March 2014
Last updated: 4 August 2023
Cite this: https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/nsw/biogs/NE00317b.htm
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
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