The Anglican Diocese of Perth is part of the Western Australian Province of the Anglican Church of Australia. The Diocese of Perth has been involved in out of home ‘care’ since 1868. Its key agency, Anglicare continues to provide this service.
The Anglican Diocese of Perth is part of the Western Australian Province of the Anglican Church of Australia, which also contains the North West and Bunbury Dioceses. The Diocese of Perth has been actively involved in out of home care, beginning with traditional institutional care from 1868 and moving on to to small group care and fostering in the late twentieth century. Its key agency, Anglicare, provides and coordinates non-institutional residential child care for young people and teenagers.
The Church of England (Anglican Church) was the established church of the colonial government in Western Australia. Perth became a Diocese in 1857, having earlier been part of the dioceses of Calcutta (1829), Australia (1836) and Adelaide (1843). Matthew Blagden Hale was the first Bishop of Perth and had a reputation for being a ‘relatively enlightened’ man, who hoped for ‘reformatory’ rather than penal policies to prevail in the colony. Leaving to become Bishop of Brisbane in 1875, Bishop Hale had played a key role in the development and support of residential schools for Aboriginal children and orphanages for non-Aboriginal children in Western Australia.