Archives



Education Department, State of Tasmania

The Education Department was established by the Education Act of 1885. The aim was to provide a free, compulsory, and secular education to children between the ages of seven and thirteen. In 1912, this was raised to 14. In 2013, the Department is responsible for primary and secondary education, library and information services, vocational education…

Lachlan Park Special School

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

Tascare Society for Children superseded the Tasmanian Society for the Care of Crippled Children in 1988.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…

Tasmanian Society for the Care of Crippled Children

The Tasmanian Society for the Care of Crippled Children formed in 1935 to help children with physical disabilities. The Society became the Tascare Society for Children in 1988. Crippled was a term commonly used until around the 1970s to describe people with conditions including muscular dystrophy, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, paraplegia and poliomyelitis. It was…

St Giles’ School

St Giles School, run by the Society for the Care of Crippled Children, opened in 1931. The School provided an education to the children with physical disabilities who lived at St Giles Home or attended it for treatment. Children did not live at the School. In the 1980s, the Education Department took the School over…

St Giles’ Home

St Giles Home, run by the Society for the Care of Crippled Children, opened in Newstead in 1937. It provided residential accommodation and schooling to children with physical disabilities, including wards of state. The Home closed in the 1990s. St Giles Home provided accommodation and treatment for children who had contracted polio during the 1937…

Catholic Welfare Organisation

The Catholic Welfare Organisation originated in 1940 to provide amenities to the soldiers in the Catholic hut at Brighton. At the end of World War Two, it appears to have extended its activities to other social causes. For instance, it provided support to girls leaving St Joseph’s Orphanage. The Catholic Welfare Organisation closed in about…

Parenting Centres

Parenting Centres opened in the 1990s. They are run by the Child Health and Parenting Service operated by the Department of Health and Human Services. They provide support to families with children up to the age of five. In 2014, Parenting Centres continue to operate. Parenting Centres help solve breast feeding, sleeping, and behaviour problems…

Child Health Association

The Child Health Association succeeded the Child Welfare Association in 1956. They continued to support the government’s family, child, and youth health services. In 2021 they rebranded as Families Tasmania. The association ceased operating in 2023, and its programs were transferred to various other organisations. In the 1970s, the Division of Public Health employed 53…

Child Welfare Association

The Child Welfare Association formed in 1917 with the aim of reducing the high infant mortality rate. It established baby clinics throughout Tasmania to provide mothers with free information from nurses, doctors, and volunteers about child health and mother craft. Other projects included a campaign for a pure milk supply, classes to prepare school girls…