Signposts aims to help people who were placed in
residential, out of home care as children – or who have lived in supported
accommodation as a young person – find records and other documents related to
their time in those facilities.
Signposts contains information and contact details
for more than 200 facilities that provided some sort of residential, out-of-home
care in Western Australia from 1920, sometimes even earlier. Where possible,
historical information about the role or activities of the facilities is
included in the entry. The Department for Child Protection’s predecessors
had an active role in managing 78 of these facilities, with the remainder being
the responsibility of non-government organisations.
In addition to the entries for individual facilities,
Signposts gives contact details for organisations that had a significant
role in the management of a number of facilities and programs. Some of these
organisations continue to play an active role in the provision of services to
children and families. These listings are:
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The Anglican Church and Anglicare
-
The Australian Churches of Christ
Indigenous Ministries
-
The Baptist Union
-
The Catholic Church (MercyCare and
many other religious orders) and Djooraminda (which is now part of CentreCare)
-
Mofflyn (on behalf of the Uniting
Church agencies, including the previous Methodist and Presbyterian Churches)
-
Parkerville Children’s Home Inc
-
The Salvation Army and Salvation Army
Crossroads West
-
Yorganop
Signposts
also outlines the purpose and contact details for 33 facilities currently and
previously funded through the Commonwealth/State National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA) [previously known as the Supported Accommodation
Assistance Program (SAAP) for young people].
The information, which is included in Signposts,
comes from the agencies themselves or from the Annual Reports and more recent
administrative files of the Department for Child Protection and its
predecessors. Occasionally, published memoirs have added extra detail. While
every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided,
it is not always possible to ‘get it entirely right’ when delving back into old
records. Signposts should therefore be considered a guide to the fuller
story – a helpful pointer along the way to discovering more about the past.
Signposts starts out by suggesting how this journey
of discovery might begin, and the other sources of information that might be
followed up in the section, “Where are My Records?” It then goes on to explain
something about the different “models” of out of home care. In the language of
the Department, these are “Models of Out of Home Placement”.
The next section, “Non-Government Agencies and Facilities”
groups the facilities around significant organisations so that you can see at a
glance which facilities were aligned to which organisation. Following that,
“Other Non-Government Facilities” lists facilities that existed independently of
any larger organisation and “Departmental Facilities” are grouped together.
“Support Agencies” for people who have been in out of home
care are then listed, along with their contact details and some information
about their roles.
Signposts then provides a listing of “Records Held
by the Department for Child Protection”; “Records of the Education
Department”; “Police Records”; and “Prison Records”.
Those sections conclude the preliminary information
provided by Signposts
The next section, “List of Facilities” contains the
information that you will need to learn more about the facility in which you are
interested and to begin your search for records. In this section, the
facilities are not grouped – they are listed alphabetically. Where an
alternative name is known, it too is listed with a reference back to the main
entry. This section contains all the facilities in Signposts, with the
exception of the NAHA/SAAP facilities, which
have their own section at the end of Signposts.
Only one non-residential facility, Koorana, has been
included in Signposts. Koorana was included because of its importance to
many children who were in residential care.