The State Children Bill Select Committee was appointed by the Legislative Council of Western Australia to consider the State’s first comprehensive child welfare legislation. The Select Committee’s report was tabled in the Legislative Council on 7 November 1907.
A Select Committee of the Legislative Council appointed to consider and report upon the Bill to promote the efficiency of certain charitable institutions was established in the Colony of Western Australia on 7 July 1874. Its task was to ‘inquire into the provisions’ of the proposed Act. The report of the Select Committee was tabled…
‘Investigation into the Administration of the Child Welfare Department of Western Australia by RH Hicks’ was a review of child welfare facilities and administrative structures that was commissioned by the Premier of Western Australia in 1953. Subsequently, the Child Welfare Department was restructured, the Seaforth Salvation Army Boys’ Reformatory was closed and a new boys’…
A Committee of Inquiry into Residential Child Care was appointed by the Minister for Community Welfare in 1976. The Committee recommended that the government should continue to partner with the voluntary sector in the delivery of out of home ‘care’. The ministerial Consultative Committee on Residential Child Care was established as a result of this…
A Royal Commission to inquire into the administration of Heathcote and other mental health hospitals was held in Western Australia in 1938. The Report of the Royal Commission does not mention children, but it does describe conditions at Heathcote and Claremont during years when children were sent there. Hospitals in the mental health system were…
A Royal Commission to inquire into the custody of people classified as ‘criminally insane’ was held in Western Australia in 1936. The Report of the Royal Commission does not mention children, but it does describe conditions at Claremont during years when children were sent there. Notably, there was no special ward for patients who were…
A ‘Royal Commission in Lunacy’ ran from 28 September 1921 to 21 September 1922. Commissioners visited and made recommendations about all the mental health institutions, and looked into the administration of the mental health system. The Royal Commission recommended that the existing ‘isolation block’ at the Claremont Hospital for the Insane should be converted into…
A ‘Select Committee to inquire into the management of the Claremont Hospital for the Insane’ was appointed by the Legislative Council in September 1919. It was wide-ranging. It heard evidence about the best treatment and accommodation for ‘mental defectives and epileptics’ in city and regional hospitals and recommended establishing a separate institution, which did not…
The ‘Royal Commission appointed to inquire into alleged cases of brutality at the Claremont Mental Hospital’ was appointed on 20 March 1950. It found children needed to be better segregated and recommended improvements to record-keeping, medical supervision and staffing. The Royal Commission was chaired by Mr Justice Adrian H. Curlewis of the Supreme Court of…
The Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly appointed to inquire into the condition of the Fremantle and Whitby Falls Lunatic Asylums found that the Fremantle Aslyum ‘was so unfitted for its purpose that its defects could not be remedied, and that there must be an entirely new building’. Whitby Falls was useful as a ‘labour…
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