Foster care system is near crisis
SITTING atop a hill at Pacific Pines is a home filled with love.
There’s joy in the household of five boys and two parents, the kind of joy only a second chance can bring.
This isn’t your “average’’ family environment. They’ve been brought together through a range of complicated issues and tragedies, but the boys are loved and cared for and that’s what matters.
Jim White, or “Uncle Jim’’ as the boys call him, and his partner have opened up their home as foster carers to three brothers and another two brothers aged 10 to 18, to keep them together, to give them love and a family environment
they would not have been afforded if they ended up in the residential care system.
The Bulletin revealed last week the residential-care system is flawed, with exorbitant funding for kids living in the resie-care system and one organisation receiving upwards of $1.4 million a year to look after one Logan girl.
That’s more than 26 times the amount Mr White receives to care for five growing boys, to pay for schooling, sports and food, and to give them the life they deserve.
Mr White has been a foster carer for a decade and has been looking after the three brothers for eight years, while the other two brothers have been with him for nearly three.
“I’ll start by saying that this is the best thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Mr White said. “I couldn’t imagine those boys not being in my life.
“But there are more foster carers leaving the system than there are ones coming in. It’s at a crisis point.
“That’s why the Department of Communities are placing children in these community homes. They don’t have the foster carers to place them with.
“These kids come into care due to abuse, neglect, domestic violence, addictions, mental health issues, a whole range of things. Then they’re being further abused by the Department of Communities because their placements aren’t being properly resourced.”
He said while residential care homes received hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of dollars in funding, foster carers received meagre allowances by comparison.
“We’re being told at the moment that there is $1000 per child to support them per annum. There’s a foster carers’ allowance (about $200 per child, per week), but that doesn’t cover things like medical costs, dental, sport, family contact visits … The things kids should have growing up, the things they have a right to.”
Mr White said foster carers needed to be properly supported, otherwise further shortages were likely.
Mr White praised Department of Community staff, whom he says are