Foster Care Victoria

Although I agree with most of this report, I think there is room to increase funding without running the risk of attracting people for the wrong reasons, ie. money. Needless to say, there are many many differing opinions out there!

You can also listen to this story.

While Australians are reeling from a youth week dominated by confronting documentaries and reports about youth homelessness, our American friends are also amplifying stories of homeless. This blog/forum has a series of 5 minute interviews and is well worth some time to explore.

This morning on Radio National’s Life Matters two issues related to Out of Home Care were raised in very interesting ways.

The first came from a (former?) foster carer who was raising the problem of bureaucrats vs what she calls “realocrats”- those people with real experiences of the issues on the ground. Helen Kinniburgh certainly made a good case for what I think many of us have been frustrated with after seeing report after report, recommendation after recommendation without avenues for the voices of foster carers and other volunteers (and workers in various fields I should add) being heard.

While we certainly advocate for changes as we see fit, the summit would have really benefited from some of this rich experience.

The second was from CBC in Canada and looked at Grandparents who care in a kinship care arrangement. Again, I think it is vitally important for these under the radar issues to be given a platform in the hope that supports will follow.

The Youth Homelessness report has a specific section on Out of Home care (Section 9, beginning pg 225). This is part of the introduction:

Young people with a ‘care background’ are over-represented in the youth homeless population. The 2006 national census of homeless school students found that close to 15 per cent of homeless students may have had an experience in state care. In Project i’s sample of 200 young people entering SAAP services in Melbourne about one in five had been in care and protection at some point. Chamberlain and Johnson found that 42 per cent of adults and young people in SAAP have been in state care at some stage of their lives. UnitingCare Burnside (NSW) suggested several reasons for this:
Young people in care or those who have been in care have a heightened vulnerability to homelessness due to:

- lack of or disrupted familial connections;

- childhood trauma which in some cases may lead to learning disabilities and early disengagement with the education system;

- difficulty in finding foster carers for young people, particularly those with difficult behaviours arising out of their pre-care experience;

-multiple placements resulting in a lack of community connections.

 

These are just some of the reccomendations:

 

Recommendation 9.1

The NYC Inquiry recommends that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission [HREOC] consider a national inquiry into care and protection. The Inquiry should:

- review policy and practice on care and protection from a human rights perspective;

- consider new Federal-state cooperative programs and initiatives, especially early intervention and prevention in terms of family and community support;

- advise on what reforms, structures and processes are required;

- provide advice on how change might best be implemented and the scale of reforms and resources needed.

Recommendation 9.5

The NYC Inquiry recommends that all jurisdictions urgently review the level of funding provided to their care and protection programs, and develop a remedial strategy for addressing the selection, training and support of staff as well as the real need for care and protection services in the community.

 

 

Lizzy, a Foster Care Victoria Blog reader has rightly highlighted the fantastic work of the CREATE Foundation, who support young people in care and also those who are about to leave care.

The challenges confronting teenagers when they leave care were raised in the SBS Insight forum back last month. These challenges are really significant as the young people involved in the program conveyed.

CREATE is also setting up opportunties for young people leaving the system to share their stories through a blog. This seems to be a new facility and I would encourage all young people who’ve experiences foster care to get involved.     

This report is very interesting reading for anyone curious about the kinds of people who foster (demographics etc.), the most popular and most difficult ages of children to place and the intensions of foster carers into the future.

I’ve received it with mixed feelings, a lot of it I was pretty aware of, but as time goes on and each report is released, the number of carers closing in on their well earned retirement looms large, with most of our carers being 50-54 and many having fosteredt for over 10 years.    

There is a growing concern among many Victorian agencies of a need for diversity among the pool of carers. Although there is generally a lower representation of children from CALD backgrounds (Culturally And Linguistically Diverse), where there are issues of language and culture it would be ideal to have a number of carers from a similar background to be involved in fostering that child.

Why? More than for anything else, this is to help the child feel as comfortable as possible, it doesn’t take much imgination to realise that on top of the trauma of being unable to live at home,  dealing with culture shock at such a young age would be extremely frightening.

There’s a strong emphasis and importance on placing Indigenous children with Indigenous carers for these cultural continuity reasons, and as you can see from this video, that desire is spreading throughout a number of other communities.

Its just another example of the need for people from all walks of life; young, old, single, couples (married or unmarried), big families and small.