Calls for state government to professionalise foster care to save money and give child the best start in life

Coming out of the crack and heroine epidemics of the ‘80s and ‘90s, New York City’s residential care system was at breaking point, now it has less kids in care than Queensland. The LNP should take notice.

It was during a sleepover at a family friend’s house that Lisa* was assaulted by a young boy in foster care, inflicting painful and lasting trauma.

She was a young child as well, and it wasn’t until she hit her 20s she realised the gravity of what happened, and why.

Rather than let pain rule her life, Lisa sought out her attacker who was now a permanent resident of a Queensland mental health facility.

“When I found out where he was living, I confronted him, and he told me his mother had abused him,” she said.

“I was really angry with him until I realised he was only doing what you had been taught to do.

“His mother did it to him, so he did it to other children.”

It has been more than four years since Lisa confronted her abuser and she has dedicated that time to breaking the cycle of abuse that has trapped so many young people.

Becoming a foster mum was the obvious answer and since that meeting in 2021, Lisa has provided refuge and care to 17 children.

Most came to her within days of their birth, often premature or suffering gestational complications, like foetal alcohol syndrome.

The Darling Downs mum wants to give them the best start.

“If I can bring beauty in the ashes of my experience then what happened to me won’t be in vain,” Lisa said.

It is this calling to care that helps Lisa weather the sleepless nights, the departmental bureaucracy and the uncertainly of known what happens to a child when they are returned to their family.

Changing faces of kids in care

The age group that Lisa cares for presents a challenge for the Department of Child Safety, one that the Crisafulli government said it would address in its Commission of Inquiry.

While the overall number of children aged 0-4 years on a Child Safety order has dropped from a peak of 2633 in 2022 to 2392 in 2024, the share of young children in residential care has spiked by about 150 per cent.

These are children cared for by staff on a roster system, sometimes in a group home or a hotel.

Most suffer from acute mental and physical disabilities, and require the specialist care that Lisa is trained to provide.

Foster care placements for children aged 0-4 have steadily declined, while kinship placements are up.

Across the board, residential care numbers have spiked, from 1017 in 2020 to 1776 in 2024.

Mary* is another Darling Downs foster mum who cares for very young children but said she could not recommend the role to others.

With teenage daughters of her own, her family decided they would care for infants and young children.

They started with respite and emergency care and quickly got attached to their wards.

“You take in little ones and the longer they stay the more of your heart goes to them until you love them like your own,” Mary said.

“You’re told they could go anytime. No matter how long you’ve had them, it doesn’t matter if a long-term parent might get better, a relative might come from nowhere, or a sibling is born so Child Safety wants them together.”

That repeating cycle of attachment and heartbreak has taken a toll that Lisa said was exacerbated by department bureaucracy.

“Do we feel supported? Not really. Do we get paid? No, but we do it for love,” Mary said.

Cost spike

Queensland has the largest population of children in residential care in Australia, in excess of 2000 children.

Dr Lisa Griffiths from OzChild, an independent not-for-profit foster care provider, said this number was forecast to hit 4000 in the next three years, adding $2.5bn to the department’s budget.

Dr Lisa Griffiths, chief executive, OzChild

“If the current trajectory continues, residential care placement will exceed foster care by 2028,” she said.

“Queensland’s got a wonderful opportunity through the inquiry to basically say we’ve got to do it differently, and it has been done differently in other jurisdictions.”

The top of Dr Griffiths list is to pour resources into the foster care system, to provide carers with wraparound support, such as dedicated psychologists, dietitians, and teachers to work with the child and their families to address the underlying cause of dysfunction.

OzChild already does this with a small portion of high-needs foster children through its Treatment Foster Care Oregon program and has found success.

Just over half of the children in their program are reunited with their birth parents or go into long-term kinship care.

Dr Griffiths compared Queensland’s experience to that of New York City’s in the early 2000s.

Coming out of the crack cocaine epidemic of the ‘80s and ‘90s, the city had about 50,000 children in out-of-home care.

“The city said enough was enough, it just was unsustainable and it made loads of changes,” she said.

“It invested heavily in preventive models, it went to the market and looked for the 11 best clinical interventions that could prevent children from being removed from their homes.

“One of those models is the program we run in Australia, but they also used other models to work with families to deal with drug and alcohol issues, family violence, mental health – all the things that create the issues where kids are removed.”

Jump forward 25 years and New York City with its population of 8.5 million has about 6000 children in care, while Queensland with its 5.6 million residents has about 13,000 children in care.

“More to the point, New York only has about 520 children in residential care while Queensland has about 2100,” Dr Griffiths said.

Fixing a ‘broken’ system.

The Department of Child Safety was firmly in the LNP’s sights in the lead up to last year’s elections, with big promises made to address its shortcomings.

There were pledges to fund new foster care placements and extend wrap around support, and to launch a commission of inquiry.

It terms of reference include investigating models of care and the factors contributing to the growth and reliance on a billion-dollar residential care, the system issues impeding the department ability to intervene when a child is in danger and reviewing whether the state is meeting community expectations as a ‘corporate parent’.

“Foster and Kinship Carers open their homes and their hearts to extremely vulnerable children, who have the right to feel loved, safe and secure where they live,” Child Safety Minister Amanda Camm said.

Queensland Child Safety Minister Amanda Camm, speaking at opening of the Commission of Inquiry into the Child Safety System at the Magistrates Court in Brisbane. Picture: Tertius Pickard

“These carers play a crucial role in the safety of children, who have been pushed into the child safety system, and I commend them for it.

“In my first eight months as Minister and during my time as a shadow minister I have heard an ongoing rhetoric that under the former Labor government, foster carers were treated with disdain and as an after thought.

“Residential Care was created as a short term for children aged 12-17 – having children under five in these homes, including babies is horrific. It is my intention to transition as many children as possible out of these homes and into foster or kinship care.

“The Crisafulli government has also introduced a professional foster care pilot that will see carers paid $100,000 a year, with $28.8m over four years included in this year’s budget. We will review this initiative and if successful, we will expand it.

*Names changed for privacy reasons.

Originally published as Calls for state government to professionalise foster care to save money and give child the best start in life