Stubbs Terrace Children’s Home

Content note: This post discusses historical child welfare practices, institutional discipline and lived experiences of harm. It is shared to document history, not to retraumatise or sensationalise.

 

From June 1973 until the early 1990s, Stubbs Terrace Children’s Home in Shenton Park operated as a short-term, government-run facility for children who needed care, assessment or a safe place to stay while longer-term arrangements were worked out.

 

The site began life as Stubbs Terrace Hospital, part of Western Australia’s mental health system. In 1974, it was formally set aside under the Mental Health Act to operate as an inpatient unit specifically for children. Stays were intended to be temporary, often only weeks but sometimes a few months, while welfare staff, health professionals and families decided on the next steps.

 

Who stayed there

Children sent to Stubbs Terrace ranged from 4 to 17 years old. Some were in crisis, some required medical or psychological assessment and others were waiting for foster care, residential placement or a return home. Many had developmental or behavioural needs, including autism, though diagnoses at the time were often recorded using broad or outdated terms.

 

Stubbs Terrace was never meant to be a long-term home. Its stated purpose was to stabilise children, assess their needs and move them on. But for those who lived there, even short stays could leave lasting marks.

 

Education and daily routine

Primary school-aged children attended Graylands Primary School (later Mount Claremont), a designated placement school for children in state care. Older children attended nearby high schools such as Hollywood Senior High.

 

Life inside the home followed a strict routine. Chores, set meal times, limited recreation and constant supervision defined daily life. Small moments stood out like Friday night fish and chips, followed by a movie.

 

Discipline and isolation

Discipline at Stubbs Terrace was rigid and punitive. Children who attempted to run away or broke rules could be confined to bed for days at a time, excluded from activities or isolated from other children. Communication was restricted. Isolation rooms were used and children placed inside could see others playing outside, while being kept apart.

 

These were not abstract policies. This is how control was enforced and this is how it felt to live there.

 

Lived experience (not hearsay)

What follows is not speculation or second-hand reporting. These are experiences I lived.

 

Some staff were remembered for their kindness and calmness and those moments mattered. Others were frightening. Punishments could be humiliating, frightening and inconsistent. Fear shaped behaviour far more than care.

 

Children were punished collectively or without clear explanation. Talking after lights-out could mean being made to sit alone in a cold hallway. During movies, a child might be sent to bed even if staff weren’t certain who had spoken. Attempts by older children to comfort younger ones were often met with anger from staff, rather than understanding.

 

I witnessed moments of violence, distress and neglect that were never formally recorded and never followed up.

 

One of the hardest parts was watching other children leave. Going home or being placed elsewhere, while you remained behind. Even celebrations marked loss. A child leaving would get to choose a cake from the Women’s Weekly cake book, which the kitchen staff would make for everyone to share. While it was meant to be joyful, it often underscored who was still trapped inside.

 

It was even harder when you had formed a close friendship with a child who was leaving. The sense of loss was felt most strongly at night, when they were no longer there to talk to or play with. They were simply gone. Friendships outside the facility were never encouraged or supported, likely because both children were seen as needing treatment and parents were discouraged from allowing their children to maintain contact with others who were considered “troubled.”

 

These experiences were not written into official reports. They live instead in the memories of the children who survived them.

 

Gender-nonconforming children

Between 1975 and 1980, eight primary school-aged children were admitted to the psychiatric unit after being diagnosed with what was then called “gender disorder”. At the time, gender-nonconforming behaviour was widely treated as something that needed reparative treatment.

 

These children were hospitalised for months, often arriving already distressed, lonely and struggling at school. While staff claimed they were not suppressing gender expression, records describe prolonged periods of distress. What was framed as treatment, is now recognised as harmful and stigmatising.

 

Oversight and accountability

Concerns about institutional care were reflected in the 1984–85 Child Abuse Review Panel, which examined child protection systems across Western Australia. The review acknowledged systemic failures and the need to better understand the causes of harm, an admission that existing systems were not protecting children as intended.

 

Yet for many children, accountability came too late or not at all.

 

Closure and legacy

In 1994, the inpatient service closed and the site transitioned to outpatient and community-based child health services. Today, it forms part of the broader child and adolescent health precinct in Shenton Park.

 

Stubbs Terrace is often remembered in files, policies and timelines but it must also be remembered as a place where children lived. Where fear, confusion, friendship, punishment and survival happened.

 

Keeping these stories quiet does not honour history. It erases it.

 

This post exists so that what happened here is not remembered only through institutional language but through the voices of those who were there.