The Edwardian brick two-storey residence was initially built as a private home, and later used as nurses' quarters for the Kew Mental Hospital. In 1962, it became a state-run children's Home for 25 children, boys and girls who were wards of state.
The Gables first accommodated children in dormitories on the first floor, but in 1965 alterations were made so that the children were accommodated in three fairly self-contained units, upstairs and downstairs in the main building and in a cottage at the rear of the main building. At the same time the Home's rostered child care workers were replaced with cottage mothers.
The Home was closed in 1985 as part of the Department's rationalisation of residential child care resources. The Gables Residential Unit 101 opened on the same site in 1985 and continued to operate until around 1992.
The Gables was mentioned in the Bringing Them Home Report (1997) as an institution that housed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children removed from their families.
Last updated:
27 July 2023
Cite this: http://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/vic/E000516
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License