About Us
Yooralla - Today
Yooralla is one of Victoria's oldest and largest non-profit community service providers. Our services support people who live with disability to do everyday things like eating, moving about, talking, showering, working and generally living independently.
Yooralla supports around 30,000 Victorians with disability every year, many on a daily basis. We work with children and adults who have acquired disabilities through road and recreational accidents, health problems, drug and alcohol abuse, and the effects of ageing, as well as people who are born with disability.
Yooralla provides an integrated range of innovative and responsive services developed and shaped in consultation with those who use them. These services include therapy and equipment, accommodation and respite, employment and recreation, and independent living skills that improve mobility, communication, and quality of life. We offer pre-school, school-aged and adult therapy services including nursing, speech pathology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and education therapy.
Yooralla - A fair go for all people with disability.
Our History
In 1918, Evangeline Ireland (Sister Faith) found a severely disabled child under a chicken coop. She had been left there while her parents were at work. Like many working class parents, they had no access to welfare or any of the support services that we take for granted today. At that time, the Education Department did not cater for children with disability.
Miss Ireland was so distressed that she established a free kindergarten in inner-suburban Melbourne for children with disability. The kindergarten was named 'Yooralla' - an Aboriginal word meaning "place of love". Because of Miss Ireland's determination and vision, many thousands of children and adults with disability and their carers have received valuable therapy, training and support.
1922
Yooralla was relocated to Drummond Street, Carlton before settling in Pelham Street, where its services expanded to include a school, becoming the first in Victoria for children with non-sensory physical disability. This was reflected with a name change to the Yooralla Hospital School and Free Kindergarten. It was kept financially afloat through public and private benefactors.
1932
Subscriptions and donations declined as a result of the Depression, causing the Yooralla Committee to seek the help of the Argus, Melbourne's major daily newspaper of the day. An initial amount of seventy-two pounds was raised through the Argus Appeal.
The Rotary Club of Melbourne donated and maintained a Horse Ambulance to transport children to and from school each day.
1942
With the rapidly deteriorating war situation in Malaya, Yooralla believed it would be unwise to keep a school for children with disability in the metropolitan area where enemy bombings could be expected. As a consequence, Yooralla evacuated the children to the Golf House at Macedon for the duration.
1945
Yooralla purchased a two-storey home known as Windsor Lodge, situated on the corner of Belmore and Balwyn Roads in Balwyn, and converted it into hostel accommodation for children with disability.
On the advice of Yooralla, the Education Department purchased the adjoining property, for the future construction of a special school.
1959
GTV 9 presented the first 25 hour Yooralla Telethon to raise money for a proposed new medical treatment block on the Balwyn site to support children at the new special school next door.
The telethon was so successful that Yooralla was able to complete the entire project which comprised a new hostel, nurses' home, kitchen, dining hall and treatment facility.
The telethon ran almost every year until 1979 and was also responsible for launching several successful celebrity careers.
1962
The Balwyn special school opened, with Yooralla providing daily therapy, attendant care and accommodation support.
1976
Yooralla built and opened its own training centre and special school in Glenroy for children in the northern and western suburbs of Melbourne. Included within the three acres of roof area and a further seven acres of carefully landscaped natural environment, was provision for a pre-school centre that was a return to the original concept of the "kindergarten for handicapped children" started by Sister Faith so many years before.
1977
Yooralla merged with the Victorian Society for Crippled Children and Adults to become the Yooralla Society of Victoria - offering more services to more people at more locations across Victoria.
1993
Yooralla began the move towards de-institutionalisation with the sale of its Balwyn site and facilities. While therapy staff remained working at the Balwyn school, residents and attendant care staff moved into newly built community residential housing in Box Hill.
1996
Yooralla sold its South Melbourne premises. Employment services moved to Footscray, the Independent Living Centre moved to Brooklyn and Head Office moved to Flinders Street.
2002
Yooralla completed the sale of two remaining accommodation facilities in Armadale, moving residents into newly built residential housing in nearby suburbs.
2006 - Yooralla Today
Now officially known as Yooralla, the organisation has become a multi-faceted, community based disability service provider, operating out of numerous houses, kindergartens, schools, and other facilities in community locations across Victoria.