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From institution to foster care

For more than half a century All Saints’ Children’s home was a refuge for children who had nowhere else to go.

Elizabeth Ward is a political and social historian. She wrote a master’s thesis on the All Saint’s Children’s Home in 2014.

In the first half of the 20th century many towns and cities in New Zealand had orphanages and children’s homes. Palmerston North was no exception. On July 23, 1964, the Standard ran an article about the impending closure of the All Saints’ Children’s Home.

The paper assured the readers that although the closure of the home on Pascal St might seem like a sharp break with tradition, the work of the trust which had run the home for 58 years, would continue.

The idea for opening a children’s home in Palmerston North began in September 1906 when a group of parishioners from All Saints met in the school room behind the church.

These men and women had responded to an announcement made the previous Sunday by the vicar, Charles-Harper, that he intended to open a home for orphan and destitute children, with a creche for working parents.

At the meeting Harper explained the need for a place to care for orphans or ‘those who were bereft of one or other of their parents’. He pointed out that private arrangements for care of children were done only for money and with no care for the children.

The other option was government-run industrial schools which Harper said were responsible formost of the young criminals in New Zealand.

He was also concerned about the care of the children whose mothers needed to work, citing examples of children who had been locked in houses and left to care for themselves all day.

Harper’s idea was enthusiastically embraced. Within three weeks the All Saints’ Children’s Home Trust had been established and enough funds had been raised for the trust to purchase a house.

This was on the corner of Ada and Ferguson St. The home took its first three children on October 17, 1906. By August 1908 the house had an extra wing added and in August 1909 it had 21 children.

The growth of the home suggests a need within the Palmerston North community for a facility to house children whose parent or parents may not have been able to care for them.

The opening of the Palmerston North homewas part of a wider trend in New Zealand with the number of church-run children’s homes increasing significantly in years before the First World War.

This blossoming of church involvement in the institutional care of children was probably in response to prevailing ideas about children who were perceived as neglected.

Removing them from their environment and placing them in an institution which provided ‘‘moral instruction’’ was seen as away of stopping the intergenerational poverty that people were observing in large industrial cities.

Although Palmerston North was not London, the trustees’ mission was to provide for ‘‘little ones who through no fault of their own, were unable to obtain these good things elsewhere’’.

By the 1920s the original buildingwas stretched to capacity and in 1924 a holiday home in Foxton began to be used as a permanent home, mostly for babies, preschoolers and girls.

However, the management of the two sites proved difficult and the trust board began to explore a new building.

This idea was furthered in 1927 when Hugh Akers donated a section of land on the corner of Cuba and Pascal streets to the trust. The trust commissioned Reginald Thorrold-Jaggard to design the new home and it opened in 1931.

During the 1930s and 1940s the Pascal St Home was full. The combination of the Depression and war ensured there were a steady stream of children whose families were unable to care for them.

Most children in the All Saint’s Home were there because of family breakdown. In a world with no government payments for sole parents, many had to work. The home acted as a form of childcare for these parents.

However the introduction of the family benefit in 1946 began to erode the model of childcare typified by the home because it ensured mothers had a form of income whether they worked or not.

Other changes in society also impacted the home. A philosophical shift which saw the nuclear family as the best place to nurture children meant that the state promoted policies that encouraged children to be raised in such families.

Adoption became popular, the minute books of the home note that enquiries about children available for adoption rose steadily from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s.

Societal views about solo mothers also began to change. Birth Right, an organisation dedicated to helping children whose mothers were on their own was founded in 1955 on the premise that every child had a ‘‘birth right’’ to remain with their parent.

By the late 1950s the home had very few children who stayed for long periods. It had increasingly become a place that parents used in times of crises rather than a long-term solution to family breakdown.

In March 1962 the building which could accommodate 42 children had 25. The trustees of the home were also faced with pressure from government officials who thought the model of the home was outdated and the building not fit to provide up-to-date methods of childcare.

In mid-1963 the board decided to close the home and provide ‘‘natural family or natural-family substitutes’’.

At the beginning of 1964 the board employed a social worker and began to transition to providing foster care.

After the home’s closure the trust continued to house children inwhat they called ‘‘family homes’’. The first of these was in Ngaio St and then the trust had a purpose-built facility called Harper House, named after Charles Harper.

The Pascal St Homewas sold, first to the Catholic Church and then to the Queen St Chapel. It was then bought by a private owner and used as accommodation until 2014, when it was demolished.

The original site is now occupied by the Arena Lodge and the houses in Arena Court.

The assurance provided in the Standard in 1964 proved correct.

Today the All Saints’ Children’s Home Trust is part of ACROSS which offers a wide range of services to children and families, continuing the purpose of those men and women who set up the trust in 1906.

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2022-05-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281505049842666

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