A shortage of emergency carers threatens to leave vulnerable children in harm’s way this Christmas, a Geelong welfare agency has warned.
The shortage was the “biggest issue” facing the child protection team working for MacKillop Family Services, the team’s manager revealed.
“We just don’t have enough homes in the region for the numbers of young kids who need help in circumstances that are beyond their control,” Darren Rose said.
“They could have been removed from an abusive situation by child protection and are already traumatised because of what they’ve been through. The last thing we want to do is to make them even more stressed by sitting in a police station or office for hours while we try to find them a safe bed for the night.
“To make things worse, often the only home we can find is out of their region. The stress and trauma from a placement breakdown is significant enough without a child feeling further isolated by being taken away from everything that is routine and familiar to them.”
MacKillop’s after-hours team works 24 hours a day, 365 days fielding a year fielding calls from police and other child-protection bodies to find emergency placements for children and youths at risk of harm.
MacKillop said it was introducing a First Call Foster Care model to help find more carers.
The model’s “standby approach” rostered new carers to ensure the availability of weekend home-based placements, the agency said.
Carers would be rostered for one week monthly, with financial compensation regardless of whether they accommodated any children.
“In addition, for each night that carers look after a child they will receive reimbursement per child,” MacKillop said.
Mr Rose called First Call Foster Care a “radical transformation”.
“This model will mean we have more home-based care emergency places for older children (because) currently most existing emergency care is only for babies.”
