Casablanca Receiving Home, run by the government, opened in about 1969. It was in Launceston. The Home provided temporary accommodation for children who were wards of state or supervised in other ways by the Social Welfare Department. In the early 1980s, it became Casablanca Family Group Home.
A married woman, known as a Receiving Home Keeper, managed Casablanca with the assistance of her husband, who was in paid employment outside the Home. In return, they received free accommodation.
The Home provided accommodation for new wards of the state or children on remand from the courts until the Department found a more permanent placement for them. The Home also took in children requiring temporary care under the Domestic Service Assistance Act and in transit between homes.
The Department changed the name in the early 1980s to Casablanca Family Group Home, apparently to emphasise its domestic environment and the fact that some children stayed in the Home longer if they got on well with the Receiving Home Keeper.
c. 1969 - c. 1980 Casablanca Receiving Home
c. 1981 - c. 2011 Casablanca Family Group Home
Sources used to compile this entry: Department of Social Welfare: report for the year ended 1981, Department of Social Welfare, Hobart, 1981; Report of the Stolen Generations Assessor, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Tasmania, 2008, https://stors.tas.gov.au/au-7-0020-00382$stream; Ombudsman Tasmania, Listen to the children: Review of claims of abuse from adults in state care as children, Office of the Ombudsman, Tasmania, Hobart, November 2004; Ombudsman Tasmania, Review of claims of abuse from adults in state care as children - Final Report - Phase 2, June 2006. Also available at https://stors.tas.gov.au/au-7-0057-00034.
Prepared by: Caroline Evans
Created: 12 January 2011, Last modified: 12 May 2017