Jacana Children's Home

The Jacana Children’s Home was established by the Salvation Army in 1976. By the early 1980s the Jacana complex accommodated a total of 24 children within three residential ‘care’ units. The Home closed in 1995.

The Jacana Children’s Home was situated in Sunset Boulevard, Jacana. The Salvation Army had purchased the land in the City of Broadmeadows, following the closure of the Catherine Booth Girls’ Home in East Kew.

There was a small ‘cluster village’ of three units spread out on the block to facilitate the units merging with the surrounding houses. One of the units was a temporary care unit. According to Jenkinson, this was ‘somewhere between small residential care units and family group homes’.

By the early 1980s the Jacana complex was accommodating a total of 24 children.

Major Doris Pengilly of the Salvation Army wrote in an article from March 1977 about Jacana being a new concept in residential care. The Salvation Army are:

moving from a normal type of mansion [Catherine Booth Home at Kew] which was converted 62 years ago for use as a congregate care Children’s Home and divided four years ago to provide group care for 36 children, to a street where families live according to the generally accepted pattern for family groups (Hops, Steps and Jumps, 1977)

Pengilly described the units built at Jacana, and the new approach taken by the Salvation Army:

These units are independent houses built next to each other and designed to comfortably provide for eight children in four bedrooms, with a kitchen, dining area and large lounge room … The children, who will all be from the North West Region, will be cared for at all times by two child care workers. Because of the close proximity of their families, it is hoped, where possible, to involve families in the program for their children.

Key staff members at Jacana were previously employed at Catherine Booth Girls’ Home in Kew, which closed in 1976. Pengilly wrote that five children previously accommodated at Catherine Booth in Kew were excitedly awaiting transfer to Jacana, as their parents lived in the nearby area.