There are currently two national inquiries into the experiences of children in out-of-home care (OOHC). One is examining how child welfare authorities respond to allegations of sexual abuse in substitute care systems, while the other is broadly analysing the strengths and weaknesses of the OOHC system.
Yet neither is specifically exploring the experiences of young people transitioning from care or their post-care outcomes, which to use a football analogy is a bit like a team which puts in a big effort during the first half of a grand final, but neglects the decisive second half. And as a report released last week shows, urgent action is required to improve the access of care leavers to further and higher education.
Fortuitously, the Commonwealth Government’s recently released welfare reform report, written by Patrick McClure, highlights the value of targeting extra resources to groups who are at high risk of long-term reliance. And specific reference is made to young people who have transitioned from state out-of-home care.
This proposal is welcome, given that the Commonwealth currently provides only a one-off Transition to Independent Living Allowance payment of financial assistance up to $1500 for young people aged 15-25 years who have departed out-of-home care or juvenile justice or indigenous kinship care arrangements within the past 24 months.
The allowance can be used to assist with payments for housing, furniture, education, employment and training, and transport. Clearly this assistance should not be limited to a one-off payment given that care leavers often have to move a number of times before they are able to attain stable housing.
To be sure, most States and Territories have passed legislation providing for assistance to care leavers up to 21 years of age. But in practice most such support is discretionary rather than mandatory, and many of the approximately 3000 young people who annually transition out of care at 18 years of age or earlier end up in unstable housing with little family or community support.
This approach seems to reflect a narrow economic judgement that additional assistance will only encourage further expensive dependency on state support. But an alternative argument holds that greater social investment in care leavers in the short to medium term – that is by approximating the ongoing support that responsible parents in the community typically provide to their children after they leave home – will actually reduce the degree of dependency and government costs in the longer term.
Those young people