Community Services Directorate

Out of Home Care Strategy 2015-2020

Discussion Paper

Children and young people in care

growing up strong, safe and connected

Contents Out of Home Care Strategy 2015-2020 Discussion Paper ......................................................... 1

Purpose of the Discussion Paper ............................................................................................... 3

Submissions ................................................................................................................................ 5

Context and challenges .............................................................................................................. 6

1. Empowering children and young people in decision making .......................................... 10

2. Therapeutic plan for every child and young person ........................................................ 10

3. Placement prevention ...................................................................................................... 11

4. Reunification .................................................................................................................... 12

5. To develop a framework to support the contact of children and young people with their

families ................................................................................................................................. 13

6. Professional foster care ................................................................................................... 14

7. Therapeutic residential model ......................................................................................... 15

8. Increased focus on permanency ...................................................................................... 16

9. Transition from care ......................................................................................................... 16

10. Training all carers in therapeutic care ........................................................................... 17

11. Recruitment and assessment of carers.......................................................................... 18

12. Strengthened support for kinship carers ....................................................................... 19

13. Strengthened support for foster carers ......................................................................... 20

14. Case management ......................................................................................................... 20

15: Independent advice on the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and

young people ....................................................................................................................... 21

16: Developing a cohesive, high performing service system ............................................... 21

17: Funding a sustainable out of home care service system ............................................... 22

November 2013

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Purpose of the Discussion Paper

The Community Services Directorate is currently developing a five year Out of Home Care Strategy to guide the delivery of out of home care services from July 2015 – June 2020. The main aim of the Strategy is to ensure the supply and quality of out of home care placements for children and young people in the care of the Director-General. The ACT Government is aware the current Out of Home Care Framework does not offer the flexibility to adapt to an increase in demand and in the complexity of the needs of the children and young people in care. A secondary goal is to strengthen support arrangements around the delivery of out of home care. This Discussion Paper has been released as one of a suite of consultation activities designed to support development of the Strategy. The release of the Discussion Paper signals the commencement of the second stage of a community wide consultation. The first stage saw the delivery of an Issues Paper, released in September 2013, which attempted to identify the current challenges facing the ACT’s out of home care system. The Issues Paper identified the following 10 key issues:

How do we ensure the continuing success of kinship care?

Engaging/recruiting foster carers

Professional foster care

How do we hear the voices of children and young people?

How do we hear the voices of carers?

The role of agencies in providing out of home care services

A specific focus on the placement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people

The future of residential care

Transitioning young people from formal out of home care

How can we encourage quality through accreditation and monitoring? The Issues Paper was available for community consultation throughout September 2013 and generated a robust discussion between stakeholders about the current state of the out of home care system. The feedback from the Issues Paper has been incorporated into this Paper and there are a number of direct references to stakeholders where appropriate. Other activities which will inform the development of the Strategy include:

A literature review - Schlonsky, A., Kertesz, M., Macvean, M., Petrovic, Z., Devine, B., Falkiner, J., D’Esposito, F. and Mildon, R. (2013). Evidence review: Analysis of the evidence for Out-of-Home Care. Parenting Research Centre and University of Melbourne: Victoria, Australia – this was an evidence review into national and international research in out of home care. This work was completed by the Parenting Research Centre and the University of Melbourne.

Stakeholder forums – a number of sessions were held over 2013 with out of home care agencies and Care and Protection Services staff to understand the current challenges of the system and future directions.

ACT Carer Roundtables – kinship carers and foster carers were asked their views on a number of areas to identify areas of improvement from a carer perspective.

A foster carer and kinship carer survey – kinship carers and foster carers were asked to complete a survey to gain a greater understanding of the profile of who are carers are.

A co-design process - the co-design process gave people who have experienced the out of home care system a voice in the development of the Strategy. The process heard the journey of individual people through the out of home care system and identified areas for policy improvement.

Forecasting of demand – modelling was undertaken to accurately forecast the likely numbers of children, young people and carers in out of home care.

A baseline financial study - a baseline financial study was undertaken of all out of home care agencies to better understand the financial requirements for out of home care service delivery and whether the current contract arrangements are providing value for money.

The purpose of this Paper is to seek your feedback on what the Community Services Directorate has heard from consultations to date. This Paper and your feedback will inform the options put before the ACT Government for consideration in the first half of 2014. Feedback is sought from key stakeholders about the discussion points outlined in the Paper, some of which represent major departures from current practice. Your feedback will assist in the development of the Out of Home Care Strategy 2015-2020. Key questions include:

1. Do the elements described address the main challenges facing the out of home care sector?

2. Are the service models and the support options feasible in the context of the ACT? 3. Are there alternative models that would add substantially to the proposal? 4. What elements would you prioritise? How would you direct resources? 5. Do the elements build on the strengths of the existing system? What might be the

implications for implementation? 6. Is the option of making every placement therapeutic achievable? 7. What are the workforce implications?

Submissions

All information (including name and contact details) contained in submissions will be made available to the public on the Community Services Directorate website unless you indicate that you would like all or part of your submission to remain in confidence. Automatically generated confidentiality statements in emails do not suffice for this purpose. Respondents who would like all or part of their submission to remain in confidence should provide this information. A request made under the Freedom of Information Act 1989 for a submission marked 'confidential' to be made available will be determined in accordance with that Act. Submissions may be lodged electronically, by post or in person. Please send your submission to: By post: By email: Out of Home Care Strategy OCYFSOoHCServices@act.gov.au Care and Protection Services Community Services Directorate In person: GPO Box 158 11 Moore Street Canberra City ACT 2601 Canberra City ACT If you have any questions about the Discussion Paper please contact the Community Services Directorate on (02) 6207 4544. All submissions must be provided by Tuesday, 10 December 2013. Unfortunately no extensions for submissions will be possible.

Context and challenges

Where have we been? Over the past 10 years the total number of children and young people in care in the ACT has continued to increase. As at 30 June 2012, there were a total of 566 children and young people in out of home care who needed a placement, compared with 224 in 2002. Many of these children will be able to return to their birth families, however, many will remain in the care system until they turn 18 years. The current care system developed from outsourcing foster care and residential care in the year 2000. A decision was made to outsource out of home care in pursuit of improved outcomes for children and young people and cost effectiveness. At the time, foster care and residential care were the two largest forms of care. Over the past 13 years the system has matured significantly with the stable of contracted non-government service providers remaining largely consistent throughout this period. A new Out of Home Care Framework was introduced in 2010 at which time changes were made to the quantum and format of allowances and contingencies and services recontracted. New legislation also commenced in 2009, the Children and Young People Act 2008. This is a large piece of legislation developed over several preceding years and it is beyond the scope of this Discussion Paper to describe all the key features of the legislation. Notably the Act reinforced the development of kinship care as a preferred option and strengthened the focus on either early restoration or permanency i.e. within two years. One of its effects has been to increase the length of time that children who are not restored quickly remain in care. The Act provides for orders of two years duration and then orders up to the age of eighteen. The most significant development in recent times has been the steady growth in kinship care which has resulted in the Community Services Directorate again becoming the provider of the largest number of care places with 292 children managed by CPS in kinship care. A preference for kinship care as the first option for children who cannot remain at home is supported by the literature which identifies that children in kinship care have better, or at least no worse, outcomes when compared to children in other forms of care (Schlonsky et al, 2013). Where are we now? The Community Services Directorate has identified the need to review and refresh its current service provision of out of home care for children and young people who cannot reside with their birth parents. The Community Services Directorate is committed to supporting the best possible service to children and young people in care within available resources. The review has been commenced following a period of significant public scrutiny of the ACT’s child protection service and out of home care service provision including reviews by the Public Advocate in 2011 and 2012 and a Performance Audit by the ACT Auditor-General released in 2013. The external reviews and audit noted a number of areas for improvement in the way the Community Services Directorate administers out of home care. Another catalyst for the Out of Home Care Strategy 2015-2020 is the Community Services Directorate’s commitment to review and refresh all Care and Protection Services policies

and procedures as part of the development of an Integrated Management System which aligns strategic direction, policies and procedures, risk management and compliance activities. The current ACT out of home care system does not appear to be delivering the desired quality outcomes for children, young people, carers and the professional workforce. The ACT is not alone in this. Research, both nationally and internationally, indicates children in care have worse life outcomes than other children in the general population. This is because children in care often experience significant trauma and abuse before they come into care and experience additional disadvantage when they are in care through placement instability, workforce deficiencies and inconsistent responses to their needs. All of this can impact a child or young person long after they have left care in terms of their ability to gain an education, succeed in employment, build meaningful relationships, acquire housing, connect with their community and lead productive lives. Workforce recruitment and retention is a major challenge in the ACT and Care and Protection Services and out of home care agencies experience difficulties attracting suitable, professionally qualified and experienced staff as well as foster carers and residential care staff. This is because of the dominance of the Commonwealth Public Service as an employer and because of the nature of the ACT population which is generally well educated and fully employed. The unemployment rate is the lowest in the nation at around four per cent and the changing needs of families with both parents needing or wanting to be in the workforce means there are fewer people who remain at home and are looking to volunteer their time to care for a child or young person. Carers are also looking for more support in their caring role in order to be more informed about how they can best assist the child or young person in their care. Carers want to be a part of the child or young person’s Care Team and want to be treated with the respect they deserve for caring and advocating for the child or young person. The engagement of external care providers in 2000 added value to the system through sharing responsibility for the care of these vulnerable children but these outsourcing arrangements also brought greater complexity to the operation of the system and the relationships between children, young people, carers, birth families, providers and Care and Protection Services by adding yet another agent into the mix. Stakeholder engagement with all of these groups has identified a range of issues with the current model, including lack of clarity around respective roles and responsibilities. Where are we going? Any change to the care system needs to consider the current Community Sector Reform

Program which is a series of projects that are being undertaken in conjunction with the ACT

community sector. The objective of the program is to increase the resilience and the

capability of the community sector to deliver services to disadvantaged Canberrans in a

complex environment that is subject to considerable and ongoing change. The Program is

funded through a combination of Government resources and a co-contribution from the

community sector.

The Reform Program includes:

A sector development component, comprising a series of modules designed to strengthen community sector organisations. These modules are a Governance and Financial Management Initiative, Sustainability and Risk Management, Working with Government, Tendering & Procurement, Collaboration & Strategic Alliances;

A red tape reduction program designed to reduce the administrative cost of the relationship between government and the community sector. This program includes the reform of procurement, contracting and reporting, arrangements and regulatory changes designed to reduce costs;

A business cost reduction component which, separately from the red-tape reduction, works to explore the reduction of business costs such as workers’ compensation and other overheads to doing business.

The provision of support for the impact of the equal remuneration case. Bringing it back to the context of the care system - thirteen years experience in outsourcing out of home care services, the identified workforce issues and the continuing less than optimal outcomes for children and young people in care - this Discussion Paper seeks to identify where the care system should be going in to the future. As stated earlier in this Paper the main aim of the Out of Home Care Strategy 2015-2020 will be to ensure the quality and supply of out of home care placements for children and young people in the care of the Director-General. Modelling of demand for out of home care undertaken to support development of the Strategy suggests that there will be a substantial increase in children and young people in care over the course of the Strategy. There will be an additional increase in bed nights as the effects of the implementation of the Children and Young Peoples Act 2008 is realised. These projections present a significant challenge for government and out of home care providers in the current budgetary environment. They suggest the need to increase the focus on demand management strategies at both the entry point to care and in terms of the earliest possible exits from the out of home care system. Options might include preventing entry to care through placement prevention services, more effective reunification programs and increasing permanency options such as adoption that take children out of the care system.

All of the discussion points in this paper must be considered in the context of the following vision and principles.

Our vision is: Children and young people in care – growing up strong, safe and connected. Our vision is for a more child centred care system which delivers improved outcomes for children and young people by considering:

Hearing the voice of children and young people in decision making;

Keeping children and young people with their families wherever possible;

A speedy return home following entry to care, if this is possible, including increased use of in-home support services;

A preference for kinship placement where feasible;

A continuing volunteer foster care service;

Better support / care models for children with very complex needs, enabling a carer to devote themselves full time to supporting the child;

An increased commitment to ensuring permanency for all children who cannot return home particularly the early consideration of permanence for young children in line with their developmental needs;

Trauma-informed practice, including improved assessments of child need;

Support for young people in care to provide the right services as they transition to adulthood;

Equitable utilisation of available resources, aligned with objective assessments of child need;

Enhanced training and skills development for carers;

Culturally appropriate independent advice on the placements and cultural needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children;

A responsive system that flexibly meets the needs of cultural and linguistically diverse children and their families;

A stronger, more sustainable out of home care system with improved governance and regulation, information sharing and consistency in policy and practice across agencies.

1. Empowering children and young people in decision making

Through all elements of the research and stakeholder engagement activities a key theme is

about how to ensure that we hear the voice of children and young people in care. Article 12

of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the child sets out that all children and

young people have the right to give their opinion, and for adults to listen and take it

seriously.

Hearing the voice of children and young people means the genuine engagement and

empowerment of children and young people in decisions about their life. All children and

young people can be listened to regardless of their age or level of development. Young

children who can’t speak can be heard by watching their attachment with key people in

their lives and monitoring their development and wellbeing with their caregivers. Older

children can be engaged using creative activities they like to do so they can build a

relationship with the person asking them questions and they should be actively involved in

their own case planning.

Within every direction posed in this paper there is an underlying commitment to strengthen

and empower children and young people to be involved in decisions about their lives.

2. Therapeutic plan for every child and young person

Children and young people usually experience significant abuse and neglect before they enter care. This abuse and neglect can be experienced over a long period of time or occur in a single traumatic event, such as a parent’s death or incarceration. Children and young people are often brought into care with significant needs that present in many different ways through a child’s behaviour, health, education, neurobiological development, emotional resilience or developmental delays. After children and young people are placed in care they may face further disadvantage created by the care system such as disengagement from their cultural identity, multiple placements, separation from siblings, schools, friendship groups and they can be placed separately to their siblings. Research into the impact of trauma on children and young people indicates trauma related behaviours can emerge several years after the event. Carers need to be fully aware and the placement support needs to be responsive to the child or young person long after they first settle. The aim of every placement and of the case management process is to help children and young people achieve their full developmental potential and remain safe and well. Children and young people need to be supported as soon as they come into care to ensure their needs are met in a timely and consistent manner. The co-design process with young people, carers and birth families identified that in order to support children and young people they need to have a comprehensive assessment undertaken to develop a plan of action. Bromfield and Osborn (2007) identified that even brief wellbeing assessments at intake could identify children at risk of significant behavioural problems and who were in need of support during the early phases of placement, creating an opportunity for early therapeutic intervention.

Every child or young person should have a therapeutic plan developed when they enter care which is shared with a Care Team and regularly reviewed. The plan will give expression to the purpose for each placement. The plan will be developed with the child and young person so they have a clear voice in what happens to them. With improved planning, carers and birth families will feel more supported with a stronger sense of direction and caseworkers will be able to organise the range of specialist inputs needed to assist the child or young person. The plan will focus on supporting the child’s development, building self-regulation of emotions, establishing healthy relationships, addressing any trauma related behaviours and developing social and academic skills. Development of a therapeutic plan for every child and young person soon after they enter care is an early intervention and prevention strategy. This approach seeks to ensure issues are resolved early. Having a shared therapeutic plan will prevent placement drift and will reduce the identified impact of a changing child protection workforce. The aim of the placement will be well documented and shared, meaning there will be limited impact to the child or young person’s plan if someone leaves the Care Team. The plan would also provide carers with the information they are seeking during the early stages of placement. The therapeutic plan includes a focus on building the child or young person’s cultural identity including their connection to culture and will need to specifically address any inputs needed for children and young people with disability. The therapeutic plan will need to be supported by regular reviews, a strong Care Team and case management process, and the possible development of more specialist inputs. This will ensure the assessment of the child or young person’s needs is acted upon and any issues are followed up. The ACT Government has recently funded a Trauma Recovery Centre for children birth to 12 years affected by developmental trauma. As part of the project it is hoped to strengthen trauma informed practice across ACT service providers who deal with children. Plans are underway to offer a range of training opportunities more broadly around trauma to the ACT human services workforce.

3. Placement prevention

‘Perhaps the best way to safely decrease the number of youth in out of home care is to

prevent entry in the first place’ (Schlonsky et al, 2013).

Many children and young people who enter care are returned to the care of their birth parents within a short period leading to questions about whether the risks to the child or young person could have been alleviated so they could have remained with their parents. When children and young people are separated from their birth families there is an additional trauma as they are removed from the only world they know. Placement prevention will focus on keeping as many children and young people at home as possible, where it is safe to do so. The Victorian Government have been trialling placement prevention services and are experiencing high level success.

As a community we believe the best place for a child is with their family. As previously stated in this paper, outcomes for children and young people in care are poorer than for the children in the broader community. Preventing even a small number of children and young people from entering care will have a benefit to their lives and will also see a substantial financial benefit to the community. A key observation from the submissions made by stakeholders in response to the Issues Paper was the need to focus on placement prevention. The inclusion of placement prevention in this Discussion Paper recognises the importance of keeping children with their families and reflects our community values. In this context, placement prevention is very focused on families who are already significantly along the risk continuum. Placement prevention will act as a tertiary level response to bridge a gap between universal services (primary level response), early intervention (secondary level response) and removing children and young people from their birth parents (statutory level response). Placement prevention will be used for those families who are at extreme risk of having their children and young people placed in care. These families may face significant drug and alcohol issues, mental health, have low parenting capacity or other disabilities which impact their ability to parent. It is possible that if these families are willing to be involved with a service, the risk to their child may be reduced with high levels of support and oversight. The children and young people in these families may or may not be subject to Care Orders. Placement prevention will include skilling parents in engaging with their children, supporting parents with maintaining a safe comfortable home environment, maintaining a daily routine that ensures the safety and wellbeing of the children, developing domestic skills and supporting parents to access services such as Child and Family Centres and attendance at early education, health services and school. Intensive in home supports could be developed with a focus on building the capacity of parents, improving the physical circumstances in which children live and providing ongoing monitoring of their safety. A model could be built on a para-professional workforce with strong engagement and practical living skills.

4. Reunification

Wherever possible children and young people should live and grow up with their families. The first objective of the care system when children and young people enter care is for them to be restored back to their birth families. Many children and young people who enter care are returned to their parents within a short space of time. Unfortunately many of the children who return to the care of their birth families re-enter the care system a short time later. Breakdown in reunification represents an additional upheaval to the family and creates a sense of distress and insecurity for the child. The co-design process with young people, carers and birth families identified the need for greater reunification support. This includes helping birth families to identify what needs to change in the home life for their child to be returned, how to maintain a safe environment

when the child is returned and to identify their aspirations for their family’s future over the longer term. When there is careful planning and support reunification is more likely to succeed. Service models should be developed that actively support the timely reunification of children and young people to their families ensuring the safety, welfare and best interests of those children. The service model will encompass listening to children and young people, risk assessment, case management, parenting capacity, and inputs to address age and attachment issues and other developmental challenges. The services may include in home supports focusing on building parenting capacity and maintaining a safe and healthy home and environment. These could be the same services developed to respond to placement prevention approaches, therefore enabling utilisation of a workforce for multiple purposes. The flexible service model introduced in this paper will allow the therapeutic plan determined earlier in the case management process to transfer home with the child or young person. A reunification support model could also include a flexible use of the previous placements in a shared care arrangement whereby the carer becomes an honorary member of the extended family network, thus increasing the number of caring eyes on the child.

5. To develop a framework to support the contact of children and

young people with their families

When children and young people come into care a contact plan is developed to provide information about when they will have contact with significant people in their lives such as their birth parents, siblings or grandparents. This plan needs to be lodged with the Children’s Court and is often developed at a time of high stress and emotion. The plan often doesn’t consider the full benefits that can be achieved by well-planned contact. Also, the decisions made at this time are not always tailored to the individual child or young person, tending to be based around the wishes of parents and significant others rather than being based on the best interests of children and young people. A well developed framework to support the contact of children and young people with their families will mean a greater emphasis on using contact to meet the child’s developmental needs, assist in their trauma recovery and listen to their wishes about how they want to maintain connections with people who are important to them. The framework will ensure there is a clear aim for the contact that supports the child’s therapeutic plan contributing to successful reunification, transition or permanence. The framework will identify specific contact types such as self managed, monitored, supported or intensive. Supported and intensive levels of contact may include services that are designed to build parenting capacity and will enhance the relationship between the parent and child. The framework will consider how best to support all parties (including carers) to be involved in the contact process. Children and young people who witness positive interactions

between significant people in their lives will be reassured and given a sense of comfort and continuity. The co-design process with young people, carers and birth families identified there are many carers and birth families who want to have contact with each other. There are many distinct advantages to this including:

birth families are able to build a relationship with the carer so they know with whom their child is living and how the child is going.

children and young people will witness role modelling about how to manage relationships with their birth family.

carers will be better able to assist children and young people in maintaining their sense of cultural identity and connection with kin by having direct exposure to the birth family.

foster carers and birth families will be able to make their own arrangements for contact that suits them and the child or young person (Thinkplace, 2013).

Resources and processes that may support effective contact include:

practical supports (e.g. bus tickets, mileage reimbursement, fuel vouchers, food costs, activity costs, blocking phone numbers when making external calls);

educative support (e.g. information on ways to encourage children, activities related to age/development of child, information on parenting strategies, different training methods); and

planning support (e.g. concise and accessible Contact Agreements and Action Plans, ideas for contact activities and outings, bus timetables).

6. Professional foster care

The current model of volunteer foster care has many strengths and has assisted many thousands of children in the ACT since self government. There is a continuing place for volunteer foster care, notwithstanding the increasing difficulty being experienced around Australia in attracting carers. It is important to children and young people to know that community members are willing to welcome the child or young person into a family and care for them, without remuneration. There are, however, a small number of children and young people who present with very complex and challenging behaviours, generally because of their exposure to abuse and neglect. These children and young people often struggle to live and function in a normal home based setting. This is coupled with carers not being able to provide enough support and attention to the child’s needs whilst juggling their own careers and other commitments. The introduction of a small pool of professional foster carers will add another option to the care system for those children and young people who will benefit from home based care, are too young to enter residential care or have ongoing complex needs such as a disability. Professional fostering can also provide a step down service to help move children out of residential settings and into home based care. Some of the stakeholder submissions in response to the Issues Paper highlighted the value of professional foster care as an additional placement type and as a way to acknowledge what many carers are already doing.

Professional carers could be trained to develop skills in relation to assisting the child or young person in their care and will be available full time. Carers will be a part of a Care Team and will be largely responsible for implementing the child or young person’s therapeutic plan with the assistance of specialist inputs. Carers will be compensated for their role through a salary. Professional carers will not engage in separate employment and may need to support the child 24/7 including in school. Carers will be more accountable for the outcomes for that child or young person and for meeting the aims of the therapeutic plan. Carers could assist in facilitating contact, provide reunification support to birth parents and/or offer more intensive support to young people as they move to adulthood. Professional foster carers could be specifically trained to meet the cultural and developmental needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people, children and young people with disability or from a culturally and linguistically diverse background. There will need to be consideration given to employment law, training and qualifications, health and safety, taxation and remuneration. The model for professional foster care will have to clearly differentiate between the roles, responsibilities and expectations of a professional carer versus a volunteer carer.

7. Therapeutic residential model

Residential care accounts for six per cent of all children and young people in care in the ACT (Report on Government Services, 2013). Residential care is often seen as a placement of last resort for very complex and challenging young people before they move to adulthood. The current models for residential care are largely unevaluated and research indicates there is little or no strong evidence that residential care home settings are able to produce outcomes that are better than alternative care arrangements (Scholonsky et al, 2013). In order for residential care to be beneficial there needs to be a clear aim and therapeutic purpose to the placement. Residential care settings should include a focus on supporting young people to develop skills to move successfully to adulthood such as practical abilities including cleaning, cooking, paying bills and budgeting to more complex social abilities such as conflict resolution, managing stressful situations and becoming socially adept in a range of settings. Alternatively, residential care could be used to stabilise a young person before they are transitioned back to their birth parent or to a carer. Residential care may be used to offer mediation and much needed time out in these situations. Whatever the purpose for the use of residential care, providers will need to be flexible in how they deliver services. The young person should not have to change placement if the goal of their therapeutic plan changes or if the young person is not ready to transition elsewhere. Residential care settings that are flexible and therapeutic will be more able to meet the individual needs of young people and be able to facilitate the therapeutic inputs for the

young person. These therapeutic inputs can then move with the young people rather than being connected to the service providing the placement.

8. Increased focus on permanency

As per the defined care hierarchy after reunification there needs to be a greater focus on achieving permanence for children and young people who remain in long term care. Permanence helps children achieve good emotional wellbeing and supports all dimensions of their development. The co-design process with young people, carers and birth families identified the need for early permanency planning, exploring all permanency options and streamlining processes to ensure permanency is timely and accessible (ThinkPlace, 2013). Permanency, whether adoption or Enduring Parental Responsibility Orders, will benefit children who are in care long term. Permanency allows for family-like arrangements and allows children and carers to enjoy the same autonomy as other families. Early consideration of permanency supports the best possible developmental outcomes for very young children. Children and young people in permanent arrangements grow up with strong attachments to carers who they know love them and who they identify with as their family. Children and carers enjoy the same privacy and autonomy as other families in the community while remaining able to access services they may need. Carers are able to enjoy a greater sense of control over the life of their family and no longer need to be engaged with the service system. This allows the care system to focus on those carers and children that need a greater level of support. Adoption Orders and Enduring Parental Responsibility Orders represent the final transfer of all aspects of parental responsibility to the carer in the case of adoption, and most aspects in the case of Enduring Parental Responsibility, so can often be seen as a natural progression of a long term placement. Adoption is not suitable for all children as it changes their identity permanently, substituting the carers on the child’s birth certificate as if they were the birth parents of the child. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child advocates tend to oppose the adoption of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, particularly to non-Indigenous parents, as it breaks the chain of evidence about their heritage. The prospect of permanence for the child and autonomy for the family increases the attractiveness of the carer role. The foster carer and kinship carer surveys reported a high number of carers who would consider an Enduring Parental Responsibility arrangement.

9. Transition from care

Many young people who are approaching the age of 18 and the end of their time subject to a Care Order feel uncertainty as to whether they will continue to be supported, will they achieve somewhere safe to live and opportunities to grow and develop and whether they will have economic independence. Independence is a daunting and unrealistic prospect for most 18 year olds, even from advantaged backgrounds. The co-design process with young people, carers and birth families identified young people are not confident in leaving care and need ongoing supports.

The impact of life experiences mitigates against the likelihood of an 18 year old in care being ready for a high degree of self reliance without continuing support and guidance. Young people who leave the care system have much poorer outcomes than other young people when they transition to adulthood. As a parent we need to listen to our young people about what they want for their future and assist them to develop skills and resilience so they can lead full and happy lives. As a parent we would want to support our young people into their adulthood consistent with the norms of our community. We are all committed to ensuring that years of support and love contributed by carers have the intended effect of enabling a young person to achieve their potential. Young people in care can have the same opportunities as others through careful planning and preparation during the transition phase (15-18 years) and subsequently through their ongoing relationship with a network of formal and informal supports. Under a flexible service model, young people post 18 years could be better supported to remain with carers. Alternatively, young people may choose to move into independent living arrangements and should be supported to do this in a planned and proactive manner.

10. Training all carers in therapeutic care

In most care situations carers are the most significant person in the child’s day to day life. Carers become, for all intent and purposes, the child’s parent and make daily decisions about the child and their family. The majority of carers will agree children and young people in care may need additional support, especially in the early stages of placement. Children and young people in care present with their own unique behaviours that come from their experience of abuse or neglect. The ACT Government and non-government service providers need to support carers so they can look after the children and young people in their care. Carers need to be supported and equipped with skills and knowledge to provide a therapeutic style of parenting to children in care. Given placements will be therapeutic in nature there needs to be a new approach to the objectives and delivery of training. The current model of foster care training has served us well for a number of years but needs to develop in the face of the evidence base. Currently, while agencies are funded to provide training to carers, in fact, a significant proportion of this training is provided by the Directorate. Also, half the carers (kinship carers) are not attached to agencies and don’t feel supported by the current training model. The evidence base points to the teaching of positive parenting techniques to foster carers and kinship carers as being the most useful approach to support the delivery of family based care (Schlonsky et al, 2013). Having a sound and consistent parenting model across all family placements is consistent with having therapeutic goals for all placements and a consistent Care Team approach. Positive parenting models and training already exist and could be easily adapted. The training could also include a focus on caring for children and young people from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background, from a culturally diverse background or who have disability.

Currently responsibility for training is spread across the Directorate and out of home care providers. Consistency is more difficult to achieve in this environment. The stakeholder engagement forum to discuss the Issues Paper identified the option of centralising training to allow for a consistent evidenced based model for all carers. By centralising training carers and professionals across the sector will be able to speak the same language and have the same understanding of the therapeutic approach. Having a consistent approach to training will allow children to experience continuity across placements and will allow carers to experience consistency of approach by different professionals they might encounter over time. Centralising training also creates an opportunity for us to refocus the training on the needs of all carers (including kinship carers). The co-design process with young people, carers and birth families identified the lack of consistent training for foster carers and in particular the lack of training at all for kinship carers as a weakness (ThinkPlace, 2013).

11. Recruitment and assessment of carers

The ACT has struggled to recruit enough foster carers to keep up with the upward trend of children and young people coming into out of home care. Because of this, there has been an increase in the use of residential care. All children and young people should have the opportunity to reside in a home based placement. The recruitment of carers is a difficult and challenging activity in any jurisdiction, society is changing and presents new issues for recruitment. These include higher rates of both adults in the household in the workforce with more limited time for caring, people having fewer children, people having children later in life, an increase in household breakups, people who may have been carers are needing to be carers for older relatives and children are remaining in the family home for longer. In the ACT this is further exacerbated by the transient nature of Canberrans moving in and out of the city because of work and generally high employment levels locally. Over the past few years there has been research conducted in this area. The research indicates people will have several contacts with the care system before making a final decision to become a carer. The first approach for a potential carer is crucial and the recruiter will need to quickly build a relationship offering support and understanding. If this does not occur many carers will not try again and the opportunity is lost. Once carers are engaged they are required to undertake an assessment. This assessment can be fairly time consuming and in depth. Once the assessment is completed the carers attend training and are then ready for a placement. Carers are supported in their role however they are not formally reassessed at any stage. The current assessment process varies between providers and the processes are not streamlined to ensure carers remain engaged in the process. This raises questions about whether carers should be reassessed at regular, say three yearly, intervals. At the stakeholder engagement sessions for the Issues Paper there was a proposal to centralise the recruitment and assessment of carers. This will allow for a designated team

of experts with specialist skills to nurture relationships with potential carers. The advantages of a centralised team will be a pooling of specialist knowledge and agency resources. Another suggestion from the stakeholder engagement sessions was to develop a marketing strategy that draws on current literature and takes advantage of the recruitment activities in Victoria and NSW.

12. Strengthened support for kinship carers

Over half of the children in care are placed with kinship carers. Kinship care has evolved rapidly, the numbers of children in kinship care has significantly grown over the past 10 years. The structures for supporting kinship care have not achieved the maturity of the structures that have been in place over the longer term for foster carers. The common theme across this new service system is that all out of home care placements will seek to maximise the health, development and wellbeing of the child, therefore, kinship carers need access to a range of supports to sustain them in the caring role and to help them meet the needs of the children in their care. Carers will be supported by the therapeutic plan arising from the assessment of the child. Supports can be tailored to assist the child, carer and the placement when needed. In accordance with the Children and Young People Act 2008 the ACT’s first preference is to place a child with their kin, whether that is a family member or a significant other. Research favours kin placements over nonrelated foster care or indicates that kinship care is no worse than non related foster care across a range of psychosocial and systems level outcomes particularly with respect to placement stability (Schlonsky et al, 2013). This research supports the ACT’s approach. Kinship care provides options for children as alternative placements are often difficult to source. It is also recognised children and young people who are placed with kin often are placed with people that understand and can develop their cultural and family identity. Kinship caring does have its own challenges that distinguish it from foster care. This will include the complex family dynamics, intergenerational issues, the unexpected changes in role and possible financial impacts resulting from suddenly becoming a carer. Changed expectations in child care practice over time may also affect carers. Kinship carers will need access to supports that address the particular experiences and circumstances of being a kinship carer. This might include counselling, family mediation, respite, support with contact and reunification processes, support during difficult court processes, additional guidance in accessing information that recognises that they did not receive training prior to taking on the caring role. The research also indicates that kinship carers need assistance to access services for children, to take on permanent care arrangements or to reunify children to their birth families (Schlonsky et al, 2013). Many of these supports exist already but are not accessed universally. Kinship carers will benefit from proposals to provide greater supports to sustain the placement and to meet the child or young person’s developmental needs. Kinship carers will

feel better supported personally as well as receiving more assistance in meeting the child’s needs.

13. Strengthened support for foster carers

There needs to be an increased focus on how we retain foster carers within the care system. Volunteer foster carers provide so much to the system and they need to be valued and celebrated for their contribution. Surveyed foster carers reported a strong sense of wanting to give to the community, a love of caring for children and watching them grow and develop. Some are also seeking to build or add to their own family through fostering. Foster carers currently have access to a range of services provided through out of home care agencies, however this needs to be strengthened to ensure they receive the right supports when they need them. In the carer survey, foster carers identified the following issues:

triangulation model between Care and Protection and the out of home care agencies is problematic;

the relationship between child protection, health and education needs to be strengthened;

limited sharing of information at initial placement and then throughout;

inconsistency in responses from workers. The points posed in this paper attempt to address many of the carers’ issues however, there still needs to be a greater focus on valuing and listening to carers. The development of the Care and Protection Services Integrated Management System should improve consistency in Care and Protection Services practice.

14. Case management

A common theme throughout the stakeholder engagement sessions and the ACT Carers Roundtables in 2013 was the need for greater clarity in roles and responsibilities between agency and Care and Protection Services workers. There needs to be a clear delineation of functions between child centred case management and placement support. This will bring greater clarity to children and young people and carers and provide a clearer sense of accountability between the agencies and Care and Protection Services. Currently, the ACT has a mixed model of case management of out of home care. For many children and young people in foster care, case management responsibility has been outsourced to the non-government agencies, however Care and Protection Services retains ultimate decision making about a number of issues. In relation to kinship care, Care and Protection Services do all the case management and placement support. Case management will be an important driver in developing all placements as therapeutic. Clarifying and strengthening the case management framework will provide better outcomes for children, certainty for carers and efficiencies across the system. Children and young people will benefit from a system that focuses on hearing their voices which is incorporated into coherent planning and collaboration across the Care Team.

Case management and collaboration in general rely on information sharing and increasingly the use of compatible technology. All stakeholders using the same system will greatly enhance efficiency across the sector but also provide up to date and actionable data, remove frustration and friction associated with different systems and contribute to better outcomes for children and young people. There should be a single record and a single plan for each child. Currently the systems available for shared use include LAC/LACES.

15: Independent advice on the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander children and young people

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children comprise around a quarter of children in care in the ACT. They are over-represented in care by a factor of ten. This is not unique to the ACT – Indigenous children are over-represented in all jurisdictions. The positive news is that their proportion of the care population is remaining steady unlike some other jurisdictions where the number and proportion of Indigenous children in care is ballooning. The Community Services Directorate proposes to strengthen care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people in care by commissioning independent, community based cultural advice to assist in decision making in relation to Indigenous children, particularly in relation to placements and in the development of cultural care plans. Other proposed discussion points in this Paper would also benefit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children including professional foster care which could provide for large sibling groups to be cared for together.

16: Developing a cohesive, high performing service system

The care system needs to be supported by an agreed set of arrangements informed by a shared vision, purpose and direction between non-government and government providers. The out of home care agencies need to operate as an extension of Care and Protection Services in delivering out sourced statutory functions. Systems related functions include:

A shared vision - Children and young people in care – growing up strong, safe and connected.

Governance and oversight – will lead change in the sector, strive for continuing quality improvement, drive a shared vision, remove barriers and empower the sector.

Shared policy and procedures – based on a shared vision all providers should have a consistent approach to listening to the voice of children and young people and supporting carers and placements. Children should be able to move to another agency and expect their therapeutic plan to follow with them.

Information technology systems – would support greater sharing of information, consistency in response and clarity for the Care Team.

Placement system – will allow for greater transparency in terms of access to carer availability and will encourage more innovative thinking about placements.

Performance based reporting – will focus more on whether the vision for the sector is being reached, whether children and young people are benefiting from the therapeutic placement and provide greater accountability for agencies as an extension of the statutory system.

17: Funding a sustainable out of home care service system

This strategy is required to serve the needs of children and young people in out of home care right through to 2020. In developing the Out of Home Care Strategy, government and the sector need to be positioning out of home care services to operate a modernised system, effectively and sustainably over the longer term, rather than simply replicating existing programs. At the current time human services, nationally, are undergoing a major re-think. The National Disability Insurance Scheme with its focus on flexible funding to respond to consumer choice exemplifies these changes, however much more broadly, governments are abandoning the ‘one size fits all’ approach to service delivery and experimenting with how governments can best provide flexible, responsive and individually customised services that match service provision to individual needs. These reforms have the potential to serve our citizens much more effectively, as well as efficiently. The 2013 - 2014 Community Services Directorate Strategic Plan reflects these new directions. What might this mean for out of home care services? Current service purchasing for out of home care results in a rigid set of arrangements for the majority of children and young people who have come to the attention of the care and protection system. Children are either in care, or not in care; and, if in care, are in purchased placements defined as general or intensive foster or residential care. This means, for example, if a child leaves an intensive residential placement, they not only move accommodation but generally leave behind the therapeutic supports that were provided by the organisation providing the placement. In addition the government pays full price for all contracted residential placements regardless of whether they are filled or not. To achieve the best outcomes for children and young people the child protection system needs service models that move away from highly defined placement types to a more flexible and responsive service model supported by a flexible purchasing arrangement. It can be argued that current approaches nationally are short sighted because they prioritise expenditure to children who are removed from parents, at the expense of expenditure that might keep children safely at home. For example, for some families a number of hours of ongoing, in home support may ensure the safety of children with the added benefit of parents receiving hands on positive parenting skills. In relation to children in care, a flexible service model would ensure a core level of care to all children and young people that can then be therapeutically enhanced in response to their individual needs. Services and funding will follow the child regardless of a change in placement.

The flexible service model would need to be coupled with a standardised and more comprehensive assessment of the needs of every child and young person as they enter care. This would be reviewed regularly and the input for the child or young person and the supports for the carer/service could be adjusted in accordance with a genuinely therapeutic care plan. The service model could then respond accordingly to the individual needs of the child or young person, which are likely to vary over time, by providing targeted and tailored interventions directly to the child or young person. The types of inputs could include:

therapy

tutoring

activities to promote self esteem and regulate the physiological effects of trauma

in home support

respite

cultural inputs/links

behavioural interventions. Moving towards more flexible funding arrangements could also serve to free up existing resources in order to fund the proposed approaches outlined in this Paper.