The History of St Lukes Anglicare
St Luke’s hangs in with people. We have a long history of connection and service to our communities. Between 1932 and 1978 the St Luke’s Toddlers’ Home cared for 1500 children, some of whom still return to look over the fence of the residence in Napier Street, White Hills and wonder about old times.
With the strong push towards regionalisation in the 1970’s the auspice of the agency moved from the Melbourne Diocese of the Anglican Church to the Bendigo Diocese, and St Luke’s Family Care, now known as St Luke’s Anglicare, was born in 1979. At the same time The Uniting Church was considering its responsibilities to this community and chose to actively support St Luke’s.
That’s nearly 30 years ago, and institutional care has long gone. Wellbeing of children remains our core business. We believe every child deserves a good start in life. Many of the families and children we know have experienced significant trauma. Our role is not to just babysit but to actively work with families and young people to overcome the disadvantage created by that trauma. It is our role to bring hope and create opportunities for change.
As you will see in this report, St Luke’s now provides a wide and varied menu of services. We have a staff of over 300 who, between them, work with more than a 1000 people on any day. We value the people we work with; we constantly ask ourselves and our clients how we could do better and we have never been content to sit back and just take on government funded programs.
We pride ourselves on our ability to think outside the box when working for a more just society and at the same time working for better outcomes for individuals. We are known internationally for our 20 years of ground breaking work in the strengths-based philosophy, practice frameworks and publishing. This has positioned us well to influence government policy and funding.
St Luke’s is not an island. More and more we are working in close collaboration with education, employment, community, parishes and business. We value that shared responsibility for a fairer society.
