Big changes are coming for foster care in the ACT that will benefit both children in care and the adults who look after them.
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Two of the key proposals are making a more intensive effort to keep the child at home, and employing full-time foster parents for the small number of children with the most difficult problems.
Almost 600 children in the ACT are in foster care or kinship care.
"Now that’s a lot of kids in what we consider to be an affluent, educated, well-paid community," Minister for Disability, Children and Young People Joy Burch says.
However, that number is expected to keep increasing, an Australia-wide trend.
Ms Burch is driving the changes which she describes as fundamental.
She is circulating a discussion paper outlining the proposals and will make a statement to the Legislative Assembly next week on the proposed overhaul of the system.
‘‘I think they ought to be part and parcel of the longer-term investment in out-of-home care, that’s my view, and that’s why we have raised them in this discussion paper because carers need to have their voice clearly heard," she says.
"To me, early intervention and support for those really complex kids is critical because what we have at the moment I don’t think is serving them well, so I need to find a better solution for them."
The vision outlined in the discussion paper calls for:
a significant increase in funding;
refocusing resources and attention on placement prevention or, alternatively, a speedy return home;
the option for troubled children to have the undivided attention of a professional foster carer;
devolving responsibility to out-of-home care agencies for case management of children on long-term orders; and
therapeutic assessment and planning for every child and young person.
Other jurisdictions have raised the idea of paying full-time professional carers but Ms Burch believes the ACT would be first to implement the change, if it decided to go ahead.
She is clearly inclined towards the idea, to help children with multiple issues. And that's where the intensive effort to help keep children in their family homes is also focused.
‘‘The reality is more kids are coming into care, and so if you understand the implications of that – it's well researched and documented, they have worse life outcomes, they have poorer educational outcomes, they are over-represented in homelessness and youth justice and the like – so it is right and proper that we need to give them a better life," she says.
"It’s an expensive business so we need to think what we can do better, given that it costs us a lot of money and the outcomes for the children can be improved, therefore it makes sense to completely review what we’re doing with the system."
Ms Burch says intensive work with families at risk would be beneficial in "almost putting them on notice". This would apply in the first 12 months of a court saying a child is at risk and there is a possibility of removing the child from the family.
"If you’ve got problems with drug or other complexities in your life that you can address through support, then we ask the families to work with us very intensely," she says.
"Our view of most of Canberra is that we’re educated and able to be self-caring, but for some of these complex families the idea of budgeting, good meal preparation and the commitment to educating their children, is really quite thin.
"So we work with them as a family to improve and be good parents, to keep the family together.
"It is the first plank in strengthening families, to make sure the families are supported, that the children are not taken into care and, where the children have been taken into care, we focus intensely on reunification over a shorter period of time."
While the courts have been allowing two years to determine an order regarding a child, Ms Burch wants to accelerate the process by reducing that period to one year.
"That is driven by all the research that shows kids need safety and permanence as quickly as possible," she says.
"Particularly with the young ones, if they are in multiple placements or are unsettled, the long-term effect on their thinking and their cognitive development is impacted, so the focus is on intensive work in the first 12 months.
"If that fails then we move to permanency orders more quickly and as part of those permanency orders we have an increased focus on enduring parental responsibility and adoption as well.
"We’re going to crank up the investment in enduring parental responsibility because this is all about making the kids feel that they’ve actually got a home and a family."
Ms Burch wants to change the dynamic so the foster parent or kinship carer is able to make day-to-day decisions around the care of the child.
‘‘Whilst they don’t have enduring parental responsibility – and that child might have been with them for 10 years-plus – they still have to go back to the territory parent or to the case manager and say, we want to go to New Zealand for a holiday, can we do that?" she says.
Bev Orr is a Canberra woman who, with her husband, has been the foster parent to well over 300 children over more than 35 years.
Her stunning dedication was recognised with a Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the community, in the 2009 Queen's Birthday Honours.
Speaking for the Australian Foster Care Association, she says the proposals provide an exciting opportunity to look at how the ACT community can better meet the needs of children and young people in care.
"The bottom line is, the current system does not meet their needs," she says.
"There are a lot of children and young people who have very special needs that are not being met adequately at the moment and there are some that are not being met at all. There is far greater potential in this new system for their needs to be met.
"The initiative around professional care and looking at children's needs through a therapeutic lens will hopefully mean that children will be the big winners out of this.
"If everything that is in this initiative is carried through and properly resourced, children and young people in the ACT will be far better off and they will have much better support and services to meet their specific needs."
Ms Orr says it is very encouraging the ACT government has committed to the document.
"As an overarching framework, it is great – the current system does not work for all children and it's the most vulnerable and the most needy who are missing out," she says.
"We still have to see the detail, that still has to be developed, and that will basically be where the proof of the pudding lies.
"It's going to be harder for agencies and for carers in some respects but this is about making things better for children and young people."
She says some foster parents have to go interstate at great expense to access services for children with special needs.
"If we are able to look to provide those sorts of services in Canberra in the future and support those families and others, that would be wonderful," she says.