Adoption reforms: Families to be paid to welcome vulnerable youngsters into their lives
EXCLUSIVE: Child protection reforms announced by the NSW Government today aim to give the state’s most vulnerable children safe, permanent homes.
NSW
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CHILD protection reforms announced by the NSW Government today aim to give the state’s most vulnerable children safe and permanent homes.
Under the new measures, $90 million will be channelled into two new internationally-recognised intervention programs that will focus on keeping families together and be delivered by non-government agencies.
A new means-tested adoption allowance will also be introduced to help improve pathways for foster families towards open adoption, when safely restoring a child to their birth parents is not possible.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian today announced parents adopting children aged 0-4 would get an allowance of $488 every fortnight, with those giving a permanent home to older teenagers to receive $738.
People adopting children with extra needs would get even more — in some cases $37,896 each year. The means-tested payments would be available to the households that qualify for the Family Tax Benefit A.
Ms Berejiklian and Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward said the $90 million in funding, over four years, will support an extra 900 children languishing in out-of-home care every year.
There are about 19,000 kids in NSW in OOHC. But new data shows adoptions are rising fast, with the department on track to finalise at least 100 this year for the first time. There were just 68 in 2015-16 financial year.
Ms Goward said she wanted the number of adoptions every year in NSW to reach “hundreds”. She said foster parents were currently already given a fortnightly allowance.
However, the payments stop if the child is adopted — a financial disincentive that means some kids are stuck in group foster homes or passed around from family to family. Some will live in about 10 foster homes before they turn 18.
“We know that when children are in a permanent home for life they have much better outcomes,” Ms Goward said.
The Saturday Telegraph revealed in December new rules that would give abusive parents two years to clean up their act or their kids would be put up for adoption or guardianship. Tough new outcomes-based contracts for the NGOs that provide OOHC are also being introduced.
The focus on adoption reform is part of a plan to reduce the number of kids in group foster homes across NSW.
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The besieged sector was thrown into the spotlight earlier this year by revelations in The Daily Telegraph about the sickening abuse occurring within facilities, including the case of teenager Girl X, who was allegedly raped at one home and then died of a drug overdose at another.
Ms Goward said residential care without “early intensive therapeutic services” was a “failed model” and “embarrassing”. “What Girl X showed was that we weren’t doing enough,” Ms Goward said.
Adopt Change chief executive Renee Carter said families needed “the best start and ongoing support” to “ensure great outcomes for their children”.
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