Purpose of foster care services
To understand the purpose of foster care services, it helps to understand the purpose of foster care.
Foster care provides children and young people with safe, stable and nurturing home environments where they can thrive when they’re not able to live with their birth families. This may be due to a range of factors including neglect, abuse or family crisis. Foster care services help facilitate safe environments, protect vulnerable children, and work with their birth families to resolve issues that led to their child(ren) needing placement.
In addition to supporting children and young people, and working with their birth families, foster care services also support foster carers. Foster carers are vital in ensuring that children and young people are thriving in those safe and secure environments until they can be reunited with their birth families.
Core goals of foster care services
The primary goal of foster care services is to help children and their birth families achieve reunification. Reunification occurs when the Department of Child Safety believes it’s safe and appropriate. To achieve reunification, services will follow a structured process to work with the child(ren)’s birth family. Thus, helping them to overcome their challenges and rebuild their capacity to maintain healthy child wellbeing.
The other goals of foster care services are listed below.
Providing safe and stable environments for children and young people
This includes during a foster care placement and when they’re being reunified with their birth family.
It’s important for children to grow up in safe and stable home environments. A goal of foster care services is to ensure children are thriving in such environments during a care placement and once being reunited with their birth family.
Providing emotional and practical support
Agencies provide emotional and practical support to all parties involved in the child’s care, including:
Children and young people – to help them cope with their new environments and overcome past or present trauma.
Foster carers – including ongoing practical support and training to reduce carer burnout so they feel encouraged to continue showing up for the children in their care.
Birth families – to help them overcome their challenges and to feel confident in their ability to provide the necessary care and support to their children once they’ve been reunified (and after reunification).
Maintaining cultural, community and family connection
Foster care services work with all parties involved in the child’s care to help the child maintain their connection to culture, community and family.
Cultural connection – is beneficial for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in care. Not only does it help improve their life outcomes, but it can help them cope with separation and benefits their overall health and wellbeing. Cultural support for foster care at Anglicare also equips carers to respond to children’s needs in sensitive and inclusive ways.
Community connection – helps children foster a sense of identity, belonging and self-esteem. Community connections can also reduce feelings of loss and grief and contribute to stable care placements.
Family connection – like the above two points, family connection helps children in care to feel a sense of identity and can help reduce feelings of loss and anxiety. Where safe to do so, children in foster care may receive supervised visits with their birth families and are encouraged to have contact with other significant people in their social network. This may include grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles.
Promoting healthy development
Another important goal of foster care services is to support the healthy development of children and young people. This includes their social, educational, physical, emotional and spiritual development.
Collaborative approach with families and agencies
Collaboration between families and agencies is an imperative factor in child safety. As explained in the Queensland Government’s Child Safety Practice Manual, partnerships and relationships are key to achieving successful care arrangements for a child in care.1
Where possible, agencies will work with the child’s birth family and foster carers to ensure that everyone is working cohesively to support the child’s care and wellbeing. This involves supporting family connections and visits, sharing information about the child openly and honestly and using trauma-informed practices to advocate for children and their families.
In collaboration with foster carers, agencies and birth families must work together to maintain those important family relationships. This might involve:
- Encouraging safe family contact, including with external family members;
- Updating birth parents about the care or development of their children and advising them of special milestones;
- Taking photos of children and sharing arts, crafts and paintings with birth families; and/or
- Involving parents in medical decisions and doctor visits.
Child-centred and trauma-informed practices
Foster care services and agencies must adhere to child-centred and trauma-informed practices when working with foster children. While they may follow different frameworks, they must centre the child at all decisions and be trauma-informed.
Child-centred practice
Child-centred practices are important for promoting the empowerment of children to have their say in matters that affect them.
As explained in our recent blog: Foster care Queensland: hearing children’s voices, agencies must implement child-centred frameworks. This means that children have the right to participate in decisions that affect them. Furthermore, it helps to affirm their rights and interests.
It’s important for carers and agencies to listen to and pay attention to children’s verbal and non-verbal cues so that they feel empowered to share their views and thoughts freely and without consequences.
Child-centred practices are important for prioritising and promoting the rights of the child, giving them a sense of empowerment and to be active participants in decisions that affect them.
Trauma-informed practice
Many children in care may be experiencing or coping with trauma. Thus, they may exhibit a range of behaviours to cope with some of the feelings and experiences of their past.
Being trauma-informed is about recognising the impact of trauma on children and young people, responding to them with empathy and understanding, and creating environments for them to heal in.
When working with those involved in the child’s day-to-day life, foster care services train caregivers on child-centred and trauma-informed practices to help children cope with their trauma.
At Anglicare, we train our staff and carers in a few therapeutic intervention frameworks that help equip them to recognise and respond to trauma in children and young people. These frameworks include:
The Improving Lives Practice Framework – to help individuals and communities heal from trauma while promoting positive self-identity and empowerment.
Therapeutic Crisis Intervention – for professionals who work with children and families to de-escalate and manage crisis situations.
Outcomes of effective foster care services
Effective foster care services can achieve a range of desired outcomes for children and young people, their families and broader community. Here are some of the ways that they can do that:
- Working with birth families and children/ young people to achieve reunification and maintain stable placement with their birth families following reunification
- Helping children to overcome their trauma and thrive in their foster care placement
- Helping children and young people to achieve their goals during placement
- Helping children to improve their emotional wellbeing
- Helping children and young people preserve their identity and culture
- Helping young people to achieve educational and employment success
- Creating and achieving stable placement outcomes
- Supporting carers to feel valued, supported and a sense of fulfilment
- Helping children and carers to increase relationships and community connection
- For the community: creating stronger future generations, reducing crime rates, supporting community cohesion, bridging gaps in services and improving the economy.
Challenges and continuous improvement
Foster care services experience enormous strains and challenges when supporting children and families. However, they also come with opportunities for improvement. We’ve listed these challenges and opportunities for improvement below. While some agencies, like Anglicare, are prioritising or already implementing these opportunities for improvement, here are some ways that services, across the board, can be improving outcomes for children and families in the foster care system in Queensland.
Challenges | Opportunities for improvement |
| Retaining foster carers *This may be due to a range of factors including carer burnout and difficulties with meeting the complex needs of foster children. | Increasing support to foster carers and better equipping them to manage a range of factors. For instance, providing regular respite, increasing or improving training opportunities and identifying opportunities to build better relationships between agencies and carers. |
| Recruitment of foster carers *This can be attributed to a range of factors including lack of time and resources, limited financial capacity, or knowledge about foster care. | Increasing fact and knowledge sharing about foster care and debunking common myths that exist in the community. |
| Recognising and responding to complex trauma and the emotional needs of children and young people | Increase or improve training around how to understand and respond to children. Specifically, more training and cultural support for carers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. |
| Managing contact with birth families *Particularly if there are ongoing issues with the child’s birth parents, if parents aren’t available, or if children do not want to maintain contact. | Improve relationships, collaboration and communication between birth and foster families and incorporate the child’s views to get their perspective on their contact with their birth families. |
| Responding to complex social and developmental needs of children and young people | Provide more specialised training and development tailored to support the child and carer’s evolving needs and adapting methods outside of the ‘one-size-fits-all approach.’ |
| Difficulties navigating the system and bureaucratic aspects of the system | Agencies and government departments can create better more integrated support systems to ensure seamless information sharing and create a single point of contact for carers to access information and assistance. |