A young child in foster care has a heartbreaking message to other kids going looking for their forever home as the cost-of-living crisis forces families to give children back to agencies.
Since 2017, the number of new and active foster carers has declined by 21 per cent, but the number of children entering the system has remained steady, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing.
About 45,000 children across the country are currently living in out-of-home care while there are only 8000 foster carer households with a placement.
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Families Australia CEO Jamie Crosby, the national peak body for foster care, said cost-of-living pressures were making it harder for families to take in disadvantaged and at-risk children.
“Australian families across the country are facing cost-of-living pressures and foster and kinship carers are no different,” he said.
“There are costs associated with caring for a child in care — food bills, medical bills, participation in family events and foster carers are identifying that it’s getting increasingly harder to make ends meet.”
One foster parent Richard Ayoub, who grew up in out-of-home care from the age of seven, said he understood the reality of a decrease in carers better than most.
“I probably had about 40 placements. I never had one stable home,” he said.
“Being homeless, being unwanted, not being in foster care, not having a sense of belonging and being cared for, I felt a calling to make sure each young person was given a home.”
But Ayoub said the reality of being a carer today comes at a personal cost.
“I know of maybe 15 foster carers that have had to stop because they cannot afford it, they cannot sustain it,” he said.
“At the moment between the people’s electricity, gas, phone, internet, all of those costs, I mean, electricity is double.”
Support for foster carers varies by each state.
NSW has one of the highest base rates at an average of $810 a fortnight, per child, following a 20 per cent increase at the start of the year. Victoria has the lowest at an average of $530 a fortnight.
Despite a carer’s allowance, Ayoub said he usually goes “50 to 80 percent” above the allowance when he fosters children to ensure they have what they need.
“There’s no way the money you get would be able to pay for these kids. Living is impossible,” he said.
“We are getting damaged children. Many of these children come into care after experiencing years of trauma, neglect, instability, abuse and repeated placement breakdowns.
“These children need experiences. They need to go to events, they need to be able to be integrated into the family… these kids just want to belong. Foster care is not simply about covering the basics of food, clothing and housing.”
Ayoub said while requests for additional support could be made, the administrative burden of seeking extra funding for clothes, medical bills and experiences was often overwhelming.
“It is hard to get anything. It is hard,” he said.
“When you have a child that can’t read and can’t write, why is it my job as a carer to have to tell you I need resources then fight for over a year to get approval.”
“Why do I need to tell you that my child needs braces and then have to go through six months or even 12 months of paperwork to get approval?”
“We should not have to fight for shoes and clothing.”
One foster child who spoke separately to 7NEWS said a foster home had provided them with a sense of belonging for the first time in their lives.
“I’ve never really had a home or felt like people love me,” he said.
“Now people care for me and stick up for me when I’m down.”
The boy encouraged other foster children to remain hopeful about the prospect of finding a foster home.
“Always just be respectful because you don’t know when you’re going to get adopted,” they said.
In Australia, children in out-of-home care are placed in one of three living situations — kinship care (living with family members); foster care (living with trained community members); or residential care (living in staffed group homes).
Families Australia said the best place for most young people was home-based care environments like foster care but a number of children still live in residential care.
“We know that there’s a significant amount of children and young people in residential care who would be better placed in a home-based care environment like foster care,” Crosby said.
“But they can’t be put into a home-based environment because there aren’t enough foster and kinship carers in the system so they are placed in residential care.”
Crosby said “the cost of residential care across the country is far more expensive and requires significantly more funding than appropriately supporting home-based environments such as foster care”.
In response, Ayoub said “there’s a problem when people are funded better in short-term accommodation than in long-term foster care”.
“No one blinks an eye when a kid gets placed into a hotel or another service, because it’s as if it’s unfunded,” he said.
“We’re treated as if they’re just going to keep them. That they won’t relinquish care.
“They might give you a $400 allowance. What does $400 get you? It’s ridiculous. They’re not reasonable. Yet you could place a kid in a hotel and pay $4,000 a day.”
Foster kids placed in hotels require rotating staff to watch them, which leads to a much higher cost of care.
Richard is now calling on the federal government to recognise the work of carers before he also decides to leave the system.
“Unless foster parents are paid as a job where you can actually put your 100 per cent in, they will continue to lose carers,” he said.
“Will we continue to foster after these (children) if the system doesn’t change? Probably not. But that’s the truth of it.”
Sydney foster mother, Carmel Meade said she welcomed the 20 per cent carer allowance increase in January, but said there was still a lot of work to be done to improve how kids are being cared for.
“The entire system is broken,” she said.
“I often feel we get pushback from the government when we are trying to do stuff that helps the children.”
Meade, who has three children of her own and has been fostering for the past seven years, said the children today are “coming into care an awful lot more broken”.
“The children … are staying at home with their parents for too long … they have seen way too much when they shouldn’t have seen half of what they had seen,” she said.
“I’m not suggesting we should go in and take them straight away but I don’t think we’ve got the balance right.”
Despite the challenges, Meade said she loved fostering and encouraged the federal government to think long-term.
“Fostering gives me and my family more than what we give to the foster kids. And I think we give the foster kids a lot,” she said.
“But if we invest in the care system now and if we get it right, we are saving a lot of money going forward.”
A spokesperson for NSW’s Department of Communities and Justice said there was a long way to go, but “step-by-step we are delivering improvements that are making a difference for foster carers”.
The National Foster Care Sustainability group is calling on three reforms for the federal government to undertake to create placements that are more stable.
To provide a healthcare access card to all children in care; to increase allowances across the board; and to grant carers with parental leave.
“This will recognise more formally that foster and kinship carers make a valuable contribution to our community through the care of other children,” Crosby said.
“Doing more upfront is not only the right thing for children, it strengthens the entire system.”
