Ballarat charity the KIDS Foundation targeted by thieves

A Ballarat charity dedicated to helping children suffering from trauma, injury and burns has been ransacked by thieves twice in two days.

Brazen thieves broke into a Ballarat charity twice in two days to steal equipment used to care for children living with serious trauma.

After months of working from home due to Covid restrictions, the KIDS Foundation team returned to the office on Tuesday to find the place ransacked overnight.

Foundation founder and chief executive Dr Susie O’Neill said it was a “devastating” setback for the organisation.

“It will mean we have to work harder, but it’s not going to stop us,” she said.

The charity was founded in 1993 to help children living with trauma and burns, and is backed

by prime minister Scott Morrison as a parliamentary patron.

Dr O’Neill said one of the staff members had come into the Mitchell Park office the day before to prepare for staff to return to the office.

They arrived the following morning to find the power switched off and “everything that looked valuable” gone.

“They even took the coffee machine,” she said.

“They must have been very organised.

“We’ve got a very close little team, one of the girls was so excited she brought in champagne and chocolate. We decided to leave that for a happier time.”

Supplied Editorial Ballarat-based charity, the KIDS Foundation, returned to work this week to discover a trailer with around $50,000 in equipment was stolen.

Among the items stolen were hard drives containing photographs of the children the charity had helped over their 28 year history of helping children suffering from trauma, injury and burns.

“Everything else can be covered by insurance, but you can’t replace that,” Dr O’Neill said.

The following day, the team was shocked to find it had been broken into a second time with a trailer containing injury recovery camp equipment missing.

The trailer was found later on Wednesday, partially resprayed to hide the charity’s distinctive logo, and an investigation into the incident was ongoing.

Dr O’Neill said any volunteers who could help get the small team back on track would be “greatly appreciated”.
“We had a lot of work saved on those computers, it‘s a real setback,” she said.

“If anyone could help with graphic design or even uploading our work to the cloud it would really help us.

“The last two years have been hard enough, not being able to run our camps, and this is just the worst.”