Since becoming a foster care family in 2006 we have been a part of the story of more than thirty children’s lives.
No matter how many times you experience it, you are never really prepared for the next children that visit your house.
The sadness you feel when inseparable brothers stay with you for a few days before they are told they will be sent two different households, because nobody can look after two boys at the moment, and its your job to sort through their single bag of belongings to work out which child is allowed to take the toy with them.
The sense of awe you feel when you meet foster carers in the seventies who have five foster children including a couple with disabilities.
The frustration when you hear the stories of carers who can’t afford to pay for swimming lessons for their foster children, and the sense that, yet again, these children miss out on what most of us consider the normal things that children do these days.
As you read this piece more than forty thousand children are in out of home care in Australia. That figure has doubled in the past ten years.
If the system works well, these children should be able thrive in the same way as children who grow up in their own families. But ask most carers, and they have stories of children who have spent years not knowing where they would be living in a few months time. Already traumatised at an early age, these children who require stability are moved from house to house as the system attempts to find a permanent carer.
In Victoria alone there has been a significant increase in the number of children in care as well as a major decrease in the number of available foster carers. Last year, 616 foster carers left the system with only 442 new families being recruited.
The gap between the actual cost of providing care and the Victorian DHS reimbursement is now as much as $5,356 per year. Asking volunteers to contribute this much money, as well as providing care to the most vulnerable, often high need members of our community, gets less news time than a road project in Victoria. Our priorities seem to be very much misplaced.
The Foster Care Association of Victoria (FCAV) and Berry Street are calling on the Victorian Government to deal with five significant issues in the lead up to the