Reverend Harry Herbert, the Executive Director of UnitingCare NSW/ACT, has said that the level of institutionalisation at Westwood was 'shocking', with up to 90 girls and women being housed there by 1968. Gordon Trickett, the former head of the Methodist Department of Christian Citizenship and the head of the newly created Board of Social Responsibility of the Uniting Church, was opposed to the dehumanising institutionalisation of the sick, aged, disabled and incarcerated. He closed Westwood, Tahmoor, Iandra and Heighway House in the late 1970s.
Reverend Herbert says these closures, and the closure of the 'unsuitable model' at St Andrew's Leppington, were 'a necessary course of action', and that, since the Senate Enquiry into the Forgotten Australians he has personality dealt with cases from all these homes, including sexual assault.
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Last updated:
09 November 2021
Cite this: http://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/nsw/NE00250
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
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