Foster Care Victoria

With These Hands is an exhibition which seeks to create a space for people to reflect upon the expereince of Child Sexual Abuse. The event will open on the 22nd of May. The Chapel on Station Gallery is located on the corner of Station St and Ellingworth Parade, Box Hill.

Sadly, many children who come into care have experienced some form of abuse, including sexual abuse. While the impacts and supports for children who have been victims of abuse is covered in the training program offered by agencies, it remains, for many carers, one of the most emotionally challenging aspects of the role.

Anyone who lives in the Manningham or Whitehorse area is invited the Information Evening tomorrow night (May 6th) at 47-53 Tunstall Rd, Doncaster East (Baptist Church), beginning at 7.30.

If you’re not in this area see out Events Listing for other locations or fill out this online form for someone to contact you from your area.

Quite a few articles have been in the news recently celebrating our carers and putting the call out for more to become involved.

Call for Big Hearts: Progress press
Enriching Experience: Maroondah Leader
and
More Kids on the Brink: Oakleigh Monash Leader

An Australian foster mum blogs about her experience and emotion about the reunification process between “Angel” and his grandmother. Her honest account shows the challenges of saying goodbye to a child in your care as well as the frustrations felt when decisions of the “best interests of the child” are out of a foster carer’s hands, while, despite this, beautifully summing up her very important and gratifying role.

Her blog is well worth a watch and it’s listed in our blogroll for future reference. We wish Angel, grandma, mum and foster mum all the best as they continue their journey together.

Ann Fraser and Anne McLeish are looking to set up a support group for grandparents caring for grandchildren in the eastern suburbs whose parents are struggling with alcohol, drugs or some other crisis. This is what’s called a kinship care arrangement and is usually a preferred option to foster care.

Often this is an informal set up which leaves the carers without finacial and other supports extended to foster carers such as reimbursements.

This issue was also raised on ABC’s Lifematters

Grandparents Victoria is the organisation to get in touch with for more information about supports and how to get involved.

Recently there seems to have been an increase in the number of babies in out of home care which for the first time, possibly ever, has put a strain on the ability to make placements for very young children.

The reasons for this trend are probably most likely to be a combination many, many things; of changes in legislation meaning that notifications of risk can be made in-utero, increases in problems generally around homelessness, gambling, drugs and alcohol and mental health issues. This is also coinciding with two other significant trends; longer stays for children in care and a declining number of carers, particularly the types of people traditionally involved in looking after babies. When we consider demographic changes to women’s workforce participation and a later retirement its not hard to see why the supply of baby carers is one of the hardest hit areas.

It quite amazing when you sit down to think about all the pieces involved in changes like this. Our job is not impossible but we are certainly kept on our toes!

I’ve just had a browse through the CREATE blogs by young people formerly in care. 

I think coming back to the perspectives of children and young people’s experiences of care is really important in reminding us what really matters. These contributions show strong and resiliant young people who should be very proud of themselves.    

Heart-felt, honest and genuine, the debut feature film from Elissa Down, is beautifully written, shot and performed.   

As with most debut films, this film was clearly a very personal exploration of Down’s own upbringing and early life which was demonstrated by her empathy and strength of story telling.

Toni Collette played a superbly as a mother coping with an autistic son through a beautiful sense of humour and optimism, humanising an often misunderstood and confronting condition. The mother’s character was admirable saying, that she thinks their family were given Charlie “because we are strong enough to cope.”

Still the film never glosses over the challenges, especially not the challenges of starting at a new school, in a new town with an autistic brother.

This is a coming of age film with a difference and succeeds uncovering layers of an often marginalised group of people and their families, by offering a human story to go beyond the stereotypes.

Although I’m usually a supporter of the rich, shared experience of going to a cinema, if you go to see The Black Balloon I suggest you take some spare tissues for your neighbours to minimise surround sniffles- this one is quite the tear-jerker.

You can watch the trailer, or post your own review in the comments.

Last night SBS’s Insight program explored questions around Child Protection and included a range of panellists, including former foster children or children who had in some way experienced the system, representatives from DOCS and DHS, case workers and psychologists. What fascinated me about this particular program was that mostly, there was a general consensus on a number of points (which doesn’t often happen on Insight!). These were that: 1) the system is not coping in most states and is therefore not meeting the needs of children 2) Victoria seems to have the strongest tradition and current system for preventative action 3) More funding is needed 4) the decisions about whether or not to remove a child are extremely difficult, so much so that two adult brothers still do not agree on whether they themselves should have been removed.

The program succeeded in amplifying to a larger audience these points, all of which anyone who works in the field could have reeled off in their sleep. I was disappointed however that the problem of the diminishing supply of foster carers was not mentioned. Even when Jenny Brockie seemed to push for fewer notifications to be left investigated and more children to be removed, no one raised the issue of a shortage of foster homes to place them in.

Brockie’s recurring question, “What are we going for the kids at risk tonight”, can only be answered in part by state departments, the bulk of the answer must come from us as a nation in terms of funding, and we as citizens of a community and our role in supporting families and children.

In the end, and in the words of a former foster child, what ‘kids at risk’ need is “even when I was, you know, a bloody annoying kid … to know that yes, there is someone out there that actually cares about them, that actually loves them and is not going to give up on them“.  

Kids at Risk can be watched online, and is also repeated on Firday at 1:30 and Monday at 3:30.   

For the past month Opinion pages in newspapers around the nation have been filled with letters, some with praise, some with disagreement, over the Prime Minister’s Apology to the Stolen Generations. For me personally it was a very significant and dignified day where we, as a nation,  finally reached a maturity in realising and taking responsibility for horrific mistakes throughout history.

Of course, the whole apology has been a contentious area, and as reported by The Age, Federal MP Sophie Mirabella was one who disagreed and who, in fact, boycotted Parliament. While Sophie Mirabella is entitled to her opinion, however, I do feel that her argument that ‘condemning the past removal of indigenous children may scare welfare officers from protecting children in future‘ misses the mark. While even recently judges and other public figures have pointed to concerns over repeating a history of separation, in publically and officially recognising the flawed policies of removal based on race, Australia now has a new frame of reference for Child Protection which is purely based on simply that; protecting children. Surely the public Apology for racial bases for removal actually alleviates the risk of decisions being made for fear of comparisons to past policies.

For foster care too, the apology draws a line and separates past policies from today’s context and the aims of foster care, which is to provide temporary care for children until they can return home.