Villa Maria Family Group Home was opened in 1964 by the Sisters of Charity. It provided cottage accommodation to seven or eight children who had been placed there by their parents or who were wards of the state. Initially the home was in New Town, before moving to Howrah in 1968. Villa Maria was established…
Loreto Family Group Home was opened in Taroona in 1966 by the Sisters of Charity. It provided cottage accommodation to seven children who had been placed there by their parents or who were wards of the state. It was run day-to-day by two ‘house mothers’. It was a single storey 10 roomed brick house with…
The Truganini Hostel was opened as a student hostel by Aboriginal Hostels Ltd (AHL) around 1977. It provided accommodation for Aboriginal students attending school or tertiary education in Hobart. The property had previously been used by AHL as a “transients” hostel for Aboriginal people visiting Hobart. There were approximately 7 students at the hostel in…
The State Library of Tasmania opened in 1943. It includes a lending library and a reference section which holds resources for family history searches. Since 2011, it has been a part of Libraries Tasmania (formerly known as LINC Tasmania). The State Library of Tasmania began as a subscription library in 1849. In 1859, it received…
Glenara Children’s Home replaced the Northern Tasmanian Home for Boys in 1973. It provided accommodation, some of it in cottages, for girls and boys, a number of whom were wards of state. Glenara closed in 1982. By the 1970s, policy makers were increasingly opposed to institutional care for children. In line with this thinking, the…
The Blind, Deaf and Dumb Institution, run by the Society for the Blind, Deaf and Dumb, opened in North Hobart in 1898. It provided an education and industrial training to adults and children with hearing and sight disabilities. There was accommodation for the country children who attended the school on the site. The Institution closed…
Risdon Prison, run by the government, opened in 1960. Although Risdon is an adult prison, it has always held small numbers of teenagers under the age of eighteen, some of them wards of the state. In 2013, it continues to hold some young people aged 16 or 17. Risdon Prison, which replaced the convict-built Campbell…
Wingfield House, run by the Board of the Royal Hobart Hospital, opened in 1938. It was on the grounds of St John’s Park. Wingfield provided residential and outpatient aftercare to children affected by the polio epidemic of 1937 to 1938. Later it offered services to children with a range of physical disabilities. It closed in…
Lachlan Park Special School, run by the Education Department, opened in 1959 following lobbying from the New Norfolk Branch of the Retarded Children’s Welfare Association. It was located within the walls of Lachlan Park Hospital, in a former hospital ward. Education at Lachlan Park had more or less stopped by 1965. Margaret Reynolds, the former…
Tascare Society for Children superseded the Tasmanian Society for the Care of Crippled Children in 1988. It provided support to the parents of children with disabilities.Tascare Society for Children closed in 2019. The name change appears to have followed the Society’s decision in the mid-1980s to give up its medical and clinical roles in order…
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