St Paul's School for the Blind was run by the Villa Maria Society, which was formerly the Catholic Braille Writers' Association of Victoria from 1907 to 1948. Brother O'Neill (d.1968), a Christian Brother, was the first principal.
As this facility admitted wards from time to time, it was declared an Approved Children's Home pursuant to Section 14(1)(a) of the Children's Welfare Act 1958 in 1959 (ie a Category II Children's Home: caring for children who are physically or mentally handicapped, including wards).
St Paul's also operated two smaller residential units in Kew and Alphington which were designated Approved Children's Homes.
St Paul's no longer provides residential care to children. According to the 'Finding Records' website:
'Following greater integration of blind or vision-impaired children into mainstream schooling, the school stopped its residential service and expanded educational and therapy programs for children with multiple disabilities, including those with specialised medical needs and those on the autism spectrum (DHHS, 2016). '
We do not currently have any photographs linked to this entry. If you know of any additional photographs, please contact us.
The Find & Connect Support Service can help people who lived in orphanages and children's institutions look for their records.
Last updated:
01 April 2022
Cite this: http://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/vic/E000461
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License