IMAGE: Image shows a group of people attending the opening of Elsie Walk in Glebe 2012. This walk pays tribute to the establishment of the nearby pioneering women’s refuge. Courtesy of Clover Moore, Lord Mayor of Sydney
Period summary 1972–2001
In the early 1970s governments introduced reforms that reflected new ways of thinking about access to education, health and social welfare. Universal health care was introduced. The supporting mother’s benefits was introduced. The ‘poverty line’, the level of income below which people would not be living at an acceptable standard for Australian society, was established. It became a fundamental measure of the how well or not social security was supporting families and pensioners for the next 40 years.
In 1969 Australian women were granted equal pay. The concept of a ‘social wage’, including both superannuation and universal health care, was introduced into wage bargaining to combat wage growth and inflation.
The 1970s saw the closure of most of Australia’s benevolent institutions. Children’s homes and homes for people with mental illness or people with a disability were closed down. In 1992 all state and territory governments agreed to work towards providing as much mental health care as possible outside of the institutional setting.
In time, a number of enquiries were established that argued against removing children from their families and further urged that support be given to families to stay together. They also argued that if keeping the family together was not possible then foster care was the preferred alternative for the child. Most of the states abandoned their care facilities, with non government agencies providing services, including arranging foster care. Some larger scale facilities however, continued to operate until the 1990s in New South Wales.
This era saw a newly found emphasis on the location and servicing of welfare needs at the community level. Municipal services as well as local support and interest groups began to see a role for themselves in supplying services in response to local need.
National threads and voices
Historians have sometimes presented the story of welfare and benevolence in Australia as a linear narrative in which the narrow and penny-pinching provision of minimum sustenance gave way in the mid-twentieth century to a ‘welfare state’ under which the state provided for all. This approach is unsatisfactory on many levels. It does not take into account the differing founding stories of each of the Australian colonies and the impact of events such as economic developments, migration, transportation and British policy on the fits and starts of the development of welfare within each colony. Nor does such a linear account allow for the inclusion of differing religious, charitable and social justice impulses that have motivated governing bodies, legislators and the providers of ‘private’ charity in different eras across the past two centuries and their perception of needs at different times. Some significant sections of the Australian community are left out of linear narrative accounts. Aboriginal Australians, for instance, were excluded for the most part from many of the benefits achieved during much of the twentieth century. The achievement of a basic wage for men in the early twentieth century did little to alter life for single women, widowed or deserted wives and their children. While general living standards rose in the mid-twentieth century, there were still many people who experienced inequality and poverty. Investigations in recent decades of the experiences of the Stolen Generations, former child migrants and Forgotten Australians have revealed how, while much of the Australian population moved to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle in the twentieth century, significant numbers of children were separated from families, many enduring deprivation and abuse while in the ‘care’ of the state with consequent life-long anguish for many as a result.
Nor does the linear approach to celebrating the achievement of a ‘safety net’ of social security measures in the twentieth century allow for the fact that there were ‘safety nets’ of sorts (albeit fairly punitive ones) for many Australians in the nineteenth century. Few colonial governments were prepared to see their citizens starve. However, the measures used to prevent absolute starvation differed markedly from those achieved through social security benefits in the twentieth century. Recipients of care and assistance often endured humiliating scrutiny of their private affairs, punitive incarceration in institutions and separation from family in order to receive the most basic sustenance.
One consistent strand for much of the story of welfare in Australia is the extent to which Australian governments have attempted to promote self-reliance amongst the population and to minimise the need to rely on government or private charity for support. This has often been to the detriment of those most in need. Economic cycles, the conditions of a frontier society, the waves of immigration and the disruption of Aboriginal patterns of life interfered with the self-reliance ideal at many stages in Australia’s past, necessitating intervention by both governments and private suppliers of charity. Yet the circumstances of the founding of the Australian colonies coloured the bestowing of welfare provision and the methods in which it was received. In some colonies, such as Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia, governments provide the bulk of welfare support for much of the nineteenth century and private charity played a smaller role. Yet even in those colonies where private charity did flourish, attitudes about the provision of charity, derived from experiences in Britain, ensured that rigorous tests often applied before charity was extended. At the same time, the Christian values brought to Australia by many nineteenth century immigrants motivated them to reach out to those ‘less fortunate’ and private and religiously sponsored organisations often not only filled the gaps in government support but were also proactive in identifying and attempting to meet needs.
Changes in the broader history of the colonies and later in the states also threw into relief the needs of different groups in society in different eras, and services, often provided by voluntary charities, expanded to meet the needs of these groups. Initially, only the most incapacitated physically and mentally were regarded as being outside the sphere of the self-reliance and as being in need of support. Only slowly, as the European population of Australia diversified through waves of migration and natural growth, did the identification of the needs of disparate portions of the population expand as well. This has been a slow but constant movement over the past two centuries that has continued in recent decades as new groups have emerged to voice their demands for social equity and justice.
Frequently it has been the non-government or advocacy sector of society that has identified the needs of particular groups and attempted to meet them before governments, state and federal, have responded. Despite the adoption of (almost) universal welfare benefits in the second half of the twentieth century, this role for the not for profit sector has remained and perhaps expanded as governments withdrew from direct delivery of services in some sectors, leaving the non-government sector to administer and deliver social service programs and increasingly imposing restrictions on this delivery over time.
Institutionalisation has been a major theme in the experience of welfare in Australia. Initially institutions were generic. However, throughout the nineteenth century there was a gradual specialisation of institutions, with distinct purposes defined by residents’ age, race, gender or disability. Despite the drawbacks of institutionalised care becoming obvious in the late nineteenth century, it remained a model of care for various segments of the population until very recent decades and it has only been in the past 50 years that the large institution has fallen from favour as a method of care, while support for individuals to function within society has become the favoured model. Although institutionalisation was often experienced as incarceration and punishment, others experienced it as a refuge from poverty, violence or neglect.
Another theme has been the ability of particular individuals at particular times in history to respond to conditions with humane impulses, and thus materially alter the life circumstances of those round them and in the wider community. Frequently, but not always, these responses were governed by Christian values of caring for one’s neighbour or by a sense of egalitarianism or social justice. Sometimes these impulses swam against the tide of public opinion.
Welfare provision has at times robbed people of their freedom and dignity, their families, their homes and their health. Conversely, it has saved people’s lives, restored them to health and helped to keep families together. Many sites associated with welfare arouse ambivalent feelings of sorrow, confusion and anger but also of familiarity and gratitude. Perhaps they are significant for all of these reasons and for the fact that they are signposts to the ways in which Australians have cared for each other in the past and today.
IMAGE: The image below is a bubble diagram illustrating the overlapping stories associated with the main story about Benevolent and other care institutions. The other overlapping stories include stories about mental health reform, education and training, hospitals and health care, Indigenous missions and other control/care provisions and social reform movements.
Reflections
The study of benevolent and other care institutions in the context of welfare history in Australia is a large and complex story. At the time of finishing this study, welfare was receiving attention in the media. Changes in the way welfare is provided reaches the heart of who we are and how we look after each other when times are good and when life is a struggle. The story is being rewritten in new ways as the government of the day tries to find new ways of distributing welfare and refining the criteria for eligibility. The essay has sought to conceptualise changes in welfare through a chronological sequence. However, there are other ways of seeing change, for instance by looking at the early all-purpose institutions such as the asylum model slowly evolving into a myriad of specialist organisations and institutions, as particular groups capture the attention of government and the charitable sector. Looking at welfare history by this method is likely to advance a more layered understanding of benevolent and care institutions.
In developing the indicators it is acknowledged that further work would be beneficial to refine and add to the list. One of the chief difficulties of the study in developing indicators and selecting a shortlist of places was that welfare history is as much about ideas and practices as it is about places. This is particularly apparent in the twentieth century where institutionalisation starts to decline and places evolve and amalgamate with larger institutions, such as hospitals. It is also acknowledged that the identification of the intangible heritage and material objects is of vital importance under the theme of welfare, and this study has not done justice to these important aspects.
Finally, a significant area for important further work on the thematic topic is a survey and study of institutions dedicated to Aboriginal services such as agencies, homes, protectorates and missions. Only minimal attention is afforded to the welfare of Aboriginal people in the essay and then largely in the context of mainstream services rather than dedicated Aboriginal services.
It has been surprising that there are relatively few people associated with welfare who have a national profile. There are many people at the state or local level who have played remarkable roles in policy and operations; however, few appear to be able to provide a strong national story. Caroline Chisholm is the exception, and several others are noted as potential candidates under Criterion H.
IMAGE: Image shows a black and white photo of the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum in 1885. Courtesy of Museum Victoria. Reg number M001147.
Next steps
The theme of welfare history in Australia and of benevolent and other care institutions is one where there is ample scope for further work and it is hoped that this study will be followed by subsequent projects in this area.
The following points are of particular importance to address in further work:
The integration of Aboriginal welfare history – both in terms of dedicated and mainstream services for Aboriginal people.
Greater representation of the post-World War II period on any indicative list. Their under-representation is not because they do not exist, but because their uses have evolved, fragmented and become absorbed into other larger institutions. They are therefore more difficult to identify using the methodology applied to this study. More work is needed to uncover these ‘typical’ highly adapted places to balance the ‘survivors’ that are most heavily represented on current heritage registers.
More attention needs to focus on objects and collections and on aspects of intangible heritage, particularly the collection of life stories. There is rich material being gathered as people seek to connect with others whose lives have been shaped by welfare. Much of this is difficult, but has the potential for us as a nation to learn from the past in order to achieve a better future.
There are particular areas where the written history presented in this report has only skimmed the surface, including immigration and other demographic changes, mutual self-help societies and societies for particular ethnic groups. Further work is needed in these areas.
The indicators would benefit from further reflection, refinement and addition. With more time available for the study this would have been possible. However, they are considered to be a good starting point in assisting the identification of places.
Further work on people of importance mentioned in the history essay will undoubtedly serve to uncover larger and richer stories than has been possible in this study. Cunningham Dax in mental health, Edward Hall Smith for the Benevolent Society and Arthur Renwick for children in care are just three national representatives of the welfare sector highlighted in this report. Other people of national import for example may include the many women both inside and outside of religious orders who have provided exemplary role models in the provision of welfare; their stories deserve to be told also.
Further work on the role and influence of the nation-wide Benevolent Society, its offshoots and influences is considered to have significant potential to uncover a national story.
IMAGE: Image shows a black and white photo of Dr. Cunningham Dax. Dr Dax pioneered the use of art therapy in the treatment of mental illness. Courtesy of the Dax Centre, Melbourne.
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