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Church to expand foster care role
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| By Damir Govorcin
22 July, 2012 |
CatholicCare has welcomed the State Government’s overhaul of the foster care system with 38 non-government agencies taking over the former role of the Department of Community Services.
“CatholicCare is therefore delighted to be able to expand its foster care programs and will continue to work closely with the NSW Government and Community Services and other agencies to ensure positive outcomes for children, youth and families,” said its chief executive officer Bernard Boerma.
Up to 6800 children and young people in foster care will be transferred to the non-government agencies over the next four years, in what the Minister for Family and Community Services, Pru Goward, described as the “biggest reform in child protection in NSW history”.
The agencies were successful in a $123 million tender to take over responsibility for recruiting and supporting foster carers and monitoring the welfare of children, reported the Sydney Morning Herald.
The reform follows the recommendations of Justice James Wood, who held an inquiry into the state’s child protection system in 2007-08.
He found the non-government sector’s foster care programs superior to those administered by the department.
Mr Boerma said the reform required adequate funding and resourcing to ensure its success, as well as a focus on programs which restored children to families, wherever possible, and programs that aimed at preventing children coming into care in the first place.
“This reform has been a long-time coming and had been recommended by successive inquiries over the past 16 years,” he said.
“In the latest review, Justice James Wood’s special inquiry into child protection services, the recommendation was that the private sector takes control of foster care because Community Services’ workers were often preoccupied with crisis-driven work.”
Since its inception in 1941, CatholicCare has been providing a range of quality children, youth and family services, including foster care and adoptions.
CatholicCare’s founders believed that the agency was necessary to ensure that needy children, families and individuals were given dignity rather than pity, opportunity rather than “handout” and justice rather than benevolence.
“Foster care and working with families became important and enduring parts of this work,” Mr Boerma said.
“As one young person receiving services from CatholicCare foster care program stated: ‘My caseworker is an absolute delight to deal with. Her caring and loving attitude helps lessen the heartache’.”
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