Life at Scarba House, 1930 - 1940, courtesy of The Benevolent Society.
Details
Scarba Welfare House for Children at Bondi was run by the Benevolent Society and was previously known as the Scarba Welfare House for Women and Children. It was a home for babies and small children, most of whom were short-term residents. In 1965, the name changed to Scarba House for Children.
In the years 1917 to 1986, between 30,000 and 40,000 children passed through Scarba.
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/NE00318b.htm
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
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