Caring for the Kids
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was a Village. I then became Pastor to the Slums of Inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a Country Parson and a Teacher at a One Teacher Bush School out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for thirteen years, I was a Suburban Minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And now, for more than 20 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
One the greatest agonies and one of the greatest delights in commencing as Superintendent of Wesley Mission in 1979 was the fact that I also had oversight of the Dalmar Children’s Homes where 134 children resided. There was an awesome responsibility of having the legal oversight and responsibility of 134 children, but the work of the children’s homes was bedeviled by debt, housed in old and inadequate buildings and was plagued by staff problems. The work needed immediate attention,
The main center was at our Dalmar Children’s Homes at Carlingford. It had been built as a large orphanage capable of caring for more than 100 children in the 1920’s. There were a number of cottages scattered around the grounds and a pre-school which had opened first in 1918 which was run in a very fine manner by Mrs. Yvonne Petereit for many years. The buildings were spacious and the grounds were extensive.
There was another big building in Pymble, which was like a mini orphanage where 30 children lived and that had been for sometime, until recently, under the leadership of a fine matron, Enid Kerr. This home came as a result of the generosity of a Sydney solicitor Mr. Ken Bernard-Smith who gave money for the acquisition of the property in Pymble in 1960. The old mansion was big enough for 30 children plus staff, and the grounds were attractive and gave the children plenty of space.
A smaller building had been bought in Burwood and was known as Wesley James after a generous man who had left a legacy to the Mission. This had been purchased in 1972 under the leadership of Rev. Alan Walker but was now giving us great concern particularly from inadequate staffing. One of my first jobs was to appoint Doug and Marina Greenslade a delightful married couple who became ‘Cottage Parents’ and provided great stability for a number of years. The children they cared for were the same age as my children, and a close bond developed between them so they visited our home and we visited their home.
The fourth centre was Gateway at Lewisham, which had also been opened in 1964 by Rev. Alan Walker. Children arrived at this center in a terrible condition, often in the middle of the night being brought by police, following family disputes, arguments and even murders. Staffing this center was an absolute headache. Not long after Gateway opened, we opened LifeLine and LifeLine counselors now had a resource to which they could send families in crisis.
There was one bright light on the horizon and that was the leaders of the work, Terry and Diane Freeman, a very fine dedicated Christian couple who did their best to support the staff to consolidate the work and to inspire people to help. They presided like a mother and father over this huge family of about 180 children and staff.
The great Dalmar Fete and Country Fair, which were held annually in November, raised $20,000 a year, which was much needed in those days. The Country Fair brought the children’s homes and the children into the center of concern for people who lived in the community.
I realized within weeks of becoming Superintendent that something urgent had to be done with the whole concept of childcare. The first thing was to stop the compulsory attendance of the children and staff at the 7pm Lyceum Theatre Church Service. The adults loved seeing a hundred or more children present. But the kids hated this compulsory attendance. Instead I encouraged the children to become involved in a dozen local churches in small groups where they could become integrated into the community.
The Dalmar Children’s Homes had started with the Central Methodist Mission building a “home for neglected children” in Woolloomooloo in 1884. The Mission paid for the care of some 20 neglected children who came to us from the area around Woolloomooloo and The Rocks. Strangely, the Methodist Conference refused to financially support the care of children, a position the denomination has continued to this day.
In 1900 the Central Methodist Mission obtained a fine country property at Croydon and was able to expand the work to house 32 children. This Centre was built by Parramatta Road, but the complaint was that Croydon was too far from the city for people and parents to visit the children.
In 1922 the Central Methodist Mission moved again this time right out into the country, to Carlingford, and built there children’s homes able to take 130 neglected and abused children. If Croydon was too far from the city, Carlingford was an impossible place. No one but farmers lived there. There was no electricity, no water and no made roads.
The Methodist Church must have looked at envy up Pennant Hills Road where Colonel Burns had provided property and endowed Burnside for the Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterian denomination rallied behind Colonel Burns (famous for Burns Philip Company) and strong endowments and shares meant that that work was comparatively affluent compared to the Methodist effort which struggled every year to pay its way. Only the indefatigable efforts of the ladies auxiliary enabled it to continue. The Methodist Conference gave no financial support whatever.
The Methodist Conference had a curious relationship with the Dalmar Children’s Homes. The Conference decided not to financially support the work in any way! However, individual Methodist Churches (depending upon the whim of the present Minister) Sunday School children and Women’s Auxiliaries rallied behind the Central Methodist Mission in providing care for the children. For the last 110 years the Methodist Church and Uniting Church have consistently failed to support the amazing work of caring for children in their name.
Many individual Methodist families however provided support from the time we shifted to Carlingford. The Cowlishaw, Newman, Norman, Cull, Vickery, Waterhouse and Stewart gave significant donations to build cottages for children. About 12 children would live in each cottage, usually with one or two single young women as the ‘Cottage Parents’. During the day they had the support of a domestic to do the washing and ironing, and volunteer ladies who did darning, knitting and sewing.
Carlingford was so far out in the country in those days that there was no electricity to the children’s homes until 1929. All the children helped in growing vegetables in the large vegetable gardens or in chopping the wood or in bringing the cows in for milking in the milking shed. This was no different to life on any family farm. The staff throughout the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s were led by Matron Dorothy Barnett who gave 35 years of amazingly competent and dedicated Christian care. She surrounded herself with a very dedicated staff of practical country girls who loved and cared for the kids. For them, it was an escape from their own farms, and many met and married young men from the Central Methodist Mission.
After the war Mr. Donald Stewart was appointed the first Superintendent. The Mission at that time needed a male Superintendent by government legislation so that orphaned British children from the war could be brought to Australia. He set a high standard of care but died unexpectedly in 1961.
The Dalmar Children’s Homes were led by three extremely competent Superintendent’s in my time – Terry Freeman, Terry Mudie, our first fully trained psychologist to take the position, and Kerry Brownsey. Over most of the 80 years prior to this we have been served by a very large number of these fine, dedicated Christian women from country churches and who worked with 12 to 16 children as well as undertaking very heavy domestic duties. Many of these staff that served for long periods of time were greatly loved by the children and even now in retirement keep an active contact with the Old Boys and Old Girls Association of the Dalmar Children’s Home.
So when I came to Wesley Mission we had these four properties some huge debts, no support whatever the bureaucracy of the church, a changing social attitude as to how children should be raised, and a continuous problem of having to fund the operational costs with little support coming from the government or from the church as a whole.
So in 1979 I took the decision to completely examine all of our work that we were doing, our staff structures, our properties and the like and do a complete review of our assets and liabilities including the land we owned and our staff training procedures and the like. We called in an expert Geoffrey Fox and commissioned a top to bottom report. Our friend Sheila Walkerden, a trained social worker, had recently shifted to the United Kingdom and we commissioned from her a report into trends in childcare in Great Britain. My General Manager at the time, Stan Manning took a keen personal interest in the review and our desire for change.
For the previous 80 years while the Dalmar Children’s Homes never received any money from the Methodist Conference, it was enthusiastically supported where Ministers of local Methodist churches approved Sunday School scholars and Women’s Auxiliaries. Unfortunately, by 1977 when the Uniting Church came into being much of the denominational pride of the former Methodist churches in supporting their own Methodist Children’s Homes disappeared. At the same time Australia was rapidly moving into an era when there was decline in Sunday School attendance and an increase in the number of women in the Australian workforce which meant a dramatic decline in the number of women able to attend auxiliaries to help raise money for such matters as child care. These three declines I realized would end up with the children’s homes going out of business within 10 years.
With the review on our philosophy of child care and our resources underway, I realized I had to develop better means of fundraising to keep the work going in the meantime and to expand it in the new desired directions. For one thing this would mean greater support from the government. The government’s support for childcare was deplorable. The Victorian Government supported care for children at a rate of 80 cents out of every dollar spent on their care. The Queensland Government provided 100 cents in every dollar spent in caring for children and as well as provided capital grants for new buildings. The New South Wales Government was only providing 18 cents in each dollar spent and no finances for capital development. I realized that a campaign was needed to help the Government change its thoughts and policies. I immediately launched stinging attacks on the Government through newspapers, radio and television and through direct confrontation with some of the politicians concerned. I remember particularly a bruising meeting with Rex Jackson the Minister responsible for the Department of Community Services. Rex was a tough labour politician who had come up under very difficult circumstances, being cared for in a children’s home himself. He was a hard man and had to exercise government policy. My meetings with Neville Wran were also difficult and it was made very clear to me that government policy was appropriate and unlikely to be changed. We kept the pressure up and it was not long afterwards that there was an amazing change with Neville Wran announcing that children would now be subsidized to the extent of 66 cents in the dollar. It was still far below Victoria and Queensland but nevertheless it was great improvement from the old situation. However, even this increase from government support was not going to save our situation.
The answer came from a unexpected quarter. Mr. Harold W. Cottee, who with his wife Lois had been tremendous supporters of Methodist Overseas Mission Department and the Central Methodist Mission, had died. Mr. Cottee had given his names to drinks and jams that had successfully been sold across the nation and part of most Australians daily food intake. He left in his Will an orchard at Paringa in South Australia consisting of 500 acres and 80,000 trees. The orchard was plagued with problems including lack of water, poor management, root rot and leaf curl. But his highly competent and experienced son Harold S. Cottee indicated that if Wesley Mission was prepared to own the orchard and operate it with the funds going to the Dalmar Children’s Home he would give continuing oversight and care to the running of the orchard. Harold S. Cottee’s willingness to do this in memory of his father was the most God sent blessing in the history of the Dalmar Children’s Homes. It meant that the orchard, now helped by an infusion of funds from Wesley Mission, would be run competently, and sell citrus fruit with all the profits going to aid needy Sydney children. That work continues to this day.
But that was not the end of the Cottee family generosity. Although we were caring for 134 children at that stage, I was greatly disturbed by the fact that we were not doing enough to help young teenagers, either when they came out of our care or when they left their own homes and came into the streets of Sydney. There was almost weekly increase in the number of street kids in the heart of Sydney.
This demanded two approaches – the development of a street ministry which did not get underway for the next few years but which eventually became StreetSmart, the most effective street ministry both in Sydney and now replicated in major cities all over Australia, and a place where such street kids could stay. Someone brought to my attention the sale of a small convent in Ashfield. It had been established by a group of German nuns to provide residential care for girls on the streets of Sydney. The sisters had worked valiantly for years in providing such accommodation for young street girls. Unfortunately the same financial woes that were besetting the Dalmar Children’s Home also beset them. Without the support of congregations and donors near by, they were unable to continue. I went and visited the sisters and I was greeted as if I was the answer to their prayers. For months they had been praying for a Christian organization who would provide help for young people living on the streets and if such a Christian organization were found they would sell their convent at a very reasonable price. I indicated that had intentions of providing of care for both young males as well as females and the sisters readily accepted that. After a time of praise and singing we agreed on a price of $132,000 – a very reasonable price for a building in good repair that had 18 bedrooms in it! The sisters did not want to make a profit. They wanted to cover their losses and return to Germany knowing that all they had worked for would continue in good hands. I agreed to buy the property even though at that stage I had no money whatever.
The Mission did not have that kind of money and I didn’t know where I could borrow it. It was then that a kindly word from Harold S. Cottee indicated that his mother Lois might be able to help. With some fear and trepidation I went to Mrs. Lois Cottee with the request – would she give us $100,000 towards the purchase of an 18 bedroom house to care for street kids. Mrs. Cottee was overjoyed to be asked. She had no hesitation whatever in helping us with this new development, which would be named Cottee Lodge in honour of her husband.
As I left with my heart beating and walking six feet above the ground carrying boxes of goods that Lois had gathered for our next Spring Fair, she called out to me as I went down the stairs “$100,000? Is that all? How much is it going to cost you? I answered her from the bottom of the stairs: “Well it is going to cost $132,000, but I felt I could only ask you for $100,000.” “What a silly thing to do”, she said. “If you need $132,000 then ask me for $132,000, come back up here.” I walked up stairs, put down the cardboard boxes of goods for the Spring Fair and Lois wrote out a second cheque this time for $32,000. The two cheques together totaled $132,000 and paid the entire cost of Cottee Lodge. For more than 20 years now Cottee Lodge has continued to meet the needs of homeless young people in the Ashfield area.
That wasn’t the end of my problems however, because it was going to cost another $40,000 per annum to run it. The government was not inclined to help because they believed that street accommodation for young people was required in Kings Cross not in Ashfield. My argument with the government department was that every accommodation service that had been supplied in the Kings Cross area only provided an overnight stopping point for kids, who the next morning went out on to the street to commit crimes, to abuse drugs and to engage in prostitution. Accommodation services in the heart of Kings Cross only aided in their illegal activities. We needed to get people out of Kings Cross if ever we were going to rehabilitate them. The beautiful Cottee Lodge has proved that over and over again.
By the time the Fox Report and the Report from Sheila Walkerden from the United Kingdom had arrived, we knew that we had to move right away from the large institutions at Carlingford and Pymble and move to smaller houses. Here children in groups of 3 or 4 could be cared for. We would also develop large scale fostering programs where foster parents would concentrate on caring for one or two children at the most. This concentrated care would bring better results then what we had been achieving try to care for too many in one place.
In 1983 I opened our first house at Mount Druitt and then another one at Whalan and very quickly houses at Blaxland, Penrith, Quakers Hill, Castle Hill, Riverstone, Grantham Heights, Blacktown, Lindfield, Killara, Dulwich Hill, Tuggerah, Rouse Hill, Lakemba and many other places. As our fundraising improved we got more family group homes.
Besides this we recruited hundreds of families, many of whom had already grown children and who now still wanted to provide a second chance for children where their own families could not care for them.
This foster work is now the backbone of all that we do.
In 1993 we engaged Professor Don Wright to write a history of Dalmar’s Centenary of Care. He contacted hundreds of old boys and girls and former staff and other residents and wrote an excellent history. He also discovered that over a hundred years of caring, there were very few examples of any forms of abuse. I put this down to the fact that most of our staff were committed Christian girls who came from good country homes.
In the first 90 years of the Dalmar Children’s Home, including 10 years of my oversight, we had cared for 10,000 children. In the next 10 years, following the opening of all of these family group homes we also cared for 10,000 children.
Today every three years we care for 10,000 children.
The need for good quality family and child care is dramatically increasing. We have developed dozens of preventative programs in helping men be better fathers, parents be supported by volunteers who come in as extra hands, programs that teach parents how to drug proof their kids and a whole range of specialized programs to improve family life. These preventative programs are having good impact but the need for care for those who do not undertake the programs is still a continuing one.
Thanks to individuals, donors and generous benefactors who have left property, or parts of their estate in their will. Wesley Mission has continued the work of caring for children. Over the last 20 years more than 180 other childcare organizations have closed down or gone out of business and the individual demand onus is a continuing one.
From the day I arrived and discovered I was responsible for 134 children, the care of children has continued to be a number one priority.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.