US-developed program costing nearly $5m over two years welcomed by advocates

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The New South Wales government will pay specialised foster carers $75,000 a year to temporarily look after children with complex needs through an outsourced US-developed care program.

The program, to be delivered by a private not-for-profit company, OzChild, will be funded for a two year trial with $4.87m from the NSW government.

It’s expected about 30 children, aged between seven and 17, will go through the six-12 month program over the two-year period, with the first placed with a carer by December.

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The US-developed program, Treatment Foster Care Oregon (TFCO) targets children who are experiencing “multiple placement breakdowns” in foster care, or who are not able to be moved into foster care from residential care because of their behavioural and emotional problems, often resulting from trauma and neglect.

“Unfortunately there are some children in out-of-home care with incredibly complicated behaviours – these children often need intensive support so they can thrive through childhood and adolescence,” said NSW minister for family and community services, Pru Goward.

“The goal is to reunite children with their birth families or long-term carers.”

The specialist carers will receive a tax-free reimbursement of up to $75,000 a year, paid out as a salary, and is expected to cover most of the child’s day to day needs.

OzChild is one of the state’s biggest providers of out-of-homecare, and has also run the TFCO program for children in Victoria for the past 18 months, while Anglicare ran it for adolescents. It will run both age groups in NSW.

Dr Kathy Chapman, interim chief executive of the NSW Council of Social Services, welcomed the announcement as a step in the right direction.

“There’s something like 20,000 children in out-of-home care in NSW,” Chapman told Guardian Australia.

“We need something like 660 foster carers over the next 12 months to meet demand.

“So this payment of foster carers is absolutely a really important step to address this gap. We know the current carer allowance payments aren’t sufficient to allow proper support to foster carers, particularly if they’re caring for children with really complex needs.”

Chapman said children in foster care consistently showed better experiences and outcomes than children in residential care, and while only 30 would go through the trial program, it was a step in the right direction.

However she added the NSW government still needed to concentrate on reunification policies and building up kinship networks for Indigenous children, who are the fastest growing cohort of children taken into care.

Guardian Australia understands OzChild is working with government and key Indigenous stakeholders to develop a culturally appropriate adaption of the program, but it’s likely the first participants will be non-Indigenous children.

In June a long-sat-on report into child protection in NSW was released.

The damning independent report found the system was “ineffective and unsustainable” and its escalating costs werre “crisis-driven”. It was “failing to improve long-term outcomes for children and families” with complex needs, the report said.

The cost of providing out-of-home-care had risen dramatically since the government began outsourcing responsibility to non-government organisations.

“The average unit cost of a child in care of an NGO is $41,000 … while a child in [Facs] care is $27,000,” the report said.

More than half of children in care were with NGOs and were staying longer, it found. This was because out-of-home care received the bulk of funding, rather than measures to address family needs earlier.

Prospective TFCO foster carers – ideally people who are not working full-time and who have experience dealing with children with complex behaviours – are currently being sought. They will undergo working with children checks and intensive training for the program.

“There’s no particular make-up for a foster carer,” the chief executive of OzChild, Lisa Griffiths, said.

“It’s a strong commitment to wanting to support children and understanding it’s a very intense model. We said that in NSW we’d prefer the foster carers aren’t working.”

Once a child has been placed, carers will receive 24-hour support from specialists including child therapists, family therapists, and skills coaches, according Griffiths.

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At the same time case managers work with the child’s birth family or a permanent carer they will ideally return to at the end of the placement.

Griffiths said the average length of stay with a TFCO carer was nine to 12 months, although it had been longer in Victoria, where participating children had more complex needs.

In its most recent available annual report – 2016-17 – OzChild described implementing the TFCO program in an Australian context as “very challenging and complex” but making progress.

OzChild is owned by Children Australia Inc, also a not-for-profit.