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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-17 Daily Xml
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Motions

Foster and Kinship Carer Week

Ms CLANCY (Elder) (10:50): I move:

That this house—

(a) acknowledges Foster and Kinship Carer Week;

(b) appreciates the dedication of foster and kinship carers who provide love, stability and support to children and young people, making a lasting difference in their lives;

(c) recognises the significant impact carers have in improving outcomes for children and young people facing adversity;

(d) encourages South Australians to consider the rewarding experience of foster caring; and

(e) commends the Malinauskas Labor government's ongoing support for carers, including investments in carer advocacy, increased carer payments, implemented flexible respite support payments and refreshed the Statement of Commitment to foster and kinship carers.

Today, in the middle of Foster and Kinship Carer Week, I want to pay tribute to every single foster and kinship carer. I also want to thank those who have been foster or kinship carers in the past. Hearing stories of people who cared for dozens of children before needing to head into sort of foster carer retirement fills me with so much emotion and so much gratitude. We as a government, parliament and community cannot thank you enough.

Making the decision to care for a child or children in care is a big one. You are making the choice to share your home and life with a child who, in many circumstances, you have never met, and I am so grateful to the hundreds and hundreds of people in South Australia who have made that decision. Thank you for opening your hearts and your homes to a child or children who need help, who need support, who need safety, and who need unconditional love. That last one is really important. You are not robots who just meet the physical needs of a child. You connect with them deeply, because how can they feel safe with you without that connection and bond? You form that bond, whether they are with you for a weekend or a decade.

I want to recognise the pain and grief you can experience when that child leaves your care. Even if you are confident that that child is returning to their biological family and will be safe and will be loved, or to another carer who will provide a loving home, it is not easy, because you connected with that child, you did not put up an emotional barrier to protect yourself. You gave everything you could to them, including emotional safety, and saying goodbye regardless of the circumstances is really, really hard. Thank you for choosing to put children first, despite the emotional toll it can have on you.

I am on the Economic and Finance Committee and we have a current inquiry into home care for children and young people, and I was really happy to hear from Centacare at one of our hearings about the support provided to carers when a child has transitioned to another placement or been reunified. Centacare has a support worker go out and do loss and grief work to help carers heal from that. They also provide opportunities for carers to connect with one another and provide peer support to each other, because it is a unique experience that people rarely understand.

Apologies if I have already shared this story in this place before, but you can hear it again if I have. I remember being very upset at the end of a placement, not knowing if I would ever see that child again in my entire life, and a friend said, 'Well, it's like Guide Dog puppies. You always knew they wouldn't be with you forever.' Suffice to say that did not have the intended calming effect on me, but it is also true to say that no other foster carer or kinship carer would ever say that. They would never diminish this unique grief that we as foster and kinship carers can experience. So that peer support is incredibly important.

Before entering this place I was a member of a really incredibly warm, kind and supportive Facebook group. I am very grateful to my fellow foster carer, Anna, who told me about it. People did not get annoyed when every single person kept asking, 'What's the number for Bronwyn at Centrelink?' Bronwyn is this—well, I am not even sure if she is still there now—absolute legend you could call and say, 'I am having a problem with the childcare rebate' or 'I am having trouble with this.' She was an incredible help. Other Facebook groups will say, 'Search the group' or 'Have a look yourself', but this group was not like that. This group was just so lovely and warm, and they would just keep reposting Bronwyn from Centrelink's number over and over again.

I also recently met with local foster carers in my community, Steph and Tim. They shared with me that they have a monthly catch-up of local foster carers where they can share their experiences and provide support to one another. I am really looking forward to attending their next meeting in October.

Our government is committed to supporting carers, and we acknowledge the critical role you play and we play in helping children and young people to be safe and nurtured. We have listened to and learnt from those with lived experiences in the Child and Family Support System. We know that listening directly to foster and kinship carers, children and young people with care experience, and the organisations that support them helps our government to understand where improvements can be made as well as what is working well.

It is why our wonderful Minister for Child Protection, my friend, has announced the establishment of the Carer Council, which provides advice and reports directly to the minister. This is a council made up of paid carers who have had direct experience with the Child and Family Support System and who inform the design of policy, practice and future legislative reform. Further, the Direct Experience Group, comprising families and parents with direct experience of the Child and Family Support System, provides an opportunity for care leavers and parents and family members of children in care, or those engaged in the child protection system, to have a voice in system improvement.

In our last budget, the Malinauskas Labor government committed an additional $85.1 million over four years to support children and young people in care, and an additional $3.3 million over two years to continue the Finding Families and Additionally Approved Carer programs to expand support for the placement of children and young people with family-based carers.

As I seem to do every year in this place, I once again encourage every single one of you who is listening—and I presume many are watching, up there in Hansard and maybe up there and over there—or who might read this to please consider becoming a foster carer. If you are asked to be a kinship carer, please do not discount yourself straightaway. You can do it, and you can change a child's life. Of course it is scary, but I have seen people as they are about to leave hospital holding their baby, and they seem terrified. I think it is normal to be afraid. Parents who are leaving the hospital do not get an instruction manual, but at least we as carers do get training and do get support.

So if there is even just a tiny part of you, member for Bragg, that might think that you might want to be a foster carer, please take the first step of making contact with an agency. Dip your toe in the water. When you do, you will find that there are many different types of fostering: there is emergency, short term, long term and respite. If you feel like you just could not make fostering work, maybe respite is an option for you. We are always desperate for respite carers. You can become another trusted, supportive person in a young person's life while giving their full-time carers the break they need to continue to be the best carers that they can be. You offering up every second weekend, or a weekend a month, or some time in every school holidays makes a huge difference to that child and also to everyone around them.

If I have not managed to convince you to become a carer, please consider how else you can help. Child protection is everyone's responsibility. All of us have a role to play in the child protection system, so think about what yours is. Is it volunteering with or donating to organisations like Treasure Boxes or Puddle Jumpers? Is it cooking a meal for a family down the street who you know are struggling? Is it checking in with children and young people in your life so they know they have your support? They also get to see what it is like to be community minded, and it helps you to be a good role model for them. In everything you do, please start from a place of compassion with people and not judgement. We can all do something, and we must do something, no matter how big or small.

Thank you again to every single foster and kinship carer. Your choice has made—and will continue to make—an immeasurable difference to not just the lives of the children you care for but our whole community.

The Hon. K.A. HILDYARD (Reynell—Minister for Child Protection, Minister for Women and the Prevention of Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence) (10:59): I thank so very much the member for Elder for bringing this motion to this place. I wholeheartedly thank the member for Elder and her partner for absolutely opening their home, their hearts, their lives. The member for Elder is a very beautiful friend of mine, and she is a foster mum to the best girl: a girl who brings sunshine and joy to the lives of everybody she meets.

Foster and Kinship Carer Week—indeed, every week—is a really important opportunity for us to recognise and to celebrate the dedication, the kindness and the commitment of carers across South Australia. I think that foster and kinship carers embody the very best of our community—generosity, strength and hope—as they help children and families to heal, to grow and to thrive. I am constantly inspired by the dedication of these remarkable individuals who give so much of themselves to ensure that children feel and are safe, loved, valued and supported, and absolutely know that they are not alone, and I am constantly inspired by their strength and resilience.

They are the ones who are there with children and young people at 2am, at 2pm, and at every hour in between. They are there when children, who have gone through some of the most unimaginable trauma, cannot sleep; when they find it hard to face the day ahead; for their most joyful and their hardest moments—sitting with children, meeting them wherever they are at, holding them through the dark and through the light. They are also the people who accept a call to provide emergency care to a baby or a teenager when something really, really difficult has happened in their lives, and they are also the people who are there to give those long-term carers, who are there for children 24 hours a day, some respite.

Carers are extraordinary. It is such a gift to meet with them, to listen to them and to learn from them. Learning from our brilliant foster and kinship carers is something that I absolutely treasure, and something that I see as utterly necessary in undertaking the role that I do with such determination to make things better for them and for the children and young people for whom they care and, indeed, for their birth families also.

That shared commitment that carer families and birth families have to the wellbeing, safety and support of children and young people shines through very strongly in all of our conversations together. They constantly reaffirm that what unites every person engaged with children in contact with the child protection and family support system is love and care for the children who most need our collective support. It is this united sense of purpose and love, of wanting to drive the change that makes a difference in children's lives, that has been foundational to the reforms that we are continuing to advance.

Our government is utterly committed to strengthening the child protection and family support system in ways that improve children's lives. We are investing and staying the course in driving reforms that prioritise stability, cultural safety and support, including for carers, because we know that, when carers are well supported, children thrive.

I am really proud of the progress that we have made in several key areas over the past few years. We have rightly increased carer payments, providing a 4.8 per cent payment increase in July 2023, as well as a $50 per fortnight increase for family-based carers providing care to children under 16 years, and this was followed by further increases in July 2024 and 2025. We established, through feedback from carers, the flexible respite carer payment of $800 annually that carers can use in whichever way works for them to have more of the support and the respite that they need.

We have established carer connect, a formal network and information session series hosted for carers. We have streamlined assessment and approval pathways, and we are strengthening post-care supports to ensure that young people have the best chance of being set up for success, sometimes through continuing their journey with carers. We have introduced a brand-new carer services team, and we are enshrining new rights for carers to be heard and a pathway to our quality of care guidelines in our new legislation.

Most importantly, we are relentlessly listening to carers about what works and what does not, and what else we need to do to directly inform the implementation of the refreshed statement of commitment, the implementation of the new Children and Young People (Safety and Support) Act 2025 and the development of new carer support models. As the member for Elder said, we have established our Carer Council. They are an extraordinary group of wise, generous carers who continue to provide crucial advice and are doing so with such strength and such wisdom. I cannot imagine our journey of reform without them, nor without the strong and effective advocacy of Connecting Foster and Kinship Carers, the peak body.

It has been absolutely beautiful to witness the interactions between the Carer Council, a representative group of foster and kinship carers, and our Direct Experience Group, an extraordinary group—the first one, I understand, that exists in Australia—of birth families, families who have had an experience in a different way of the child protection and family support system. One of the most beautiful things I have witnessed is those two groups now talking together and presenting at conferences together about how important it is that birth families and carer families, where possible, work together, surrounding the child for whom they are all there with love, understanding and a pathway to healing.

We continue to ask carers to share their ideas, rightly, on how we—government, our broader community and the sector—can do better with and for them together. The future of the child protection and family support system in this state will be shaped by the voices of all with direct experience, including carer families, to ensure that the system is well equipped to support children and young people and the remarkable and selfless foster and kinship carers who welcome them into their homes, hearts and lives.

These individuals have such a huge impact on a child or young person's life. It is so inspiring to hear the stories of children and young people who are thriving with them. Sometimes we see things like improvements at school, experiencing for the first time the joy of family holidays, reconnection with culture or trying new activities. Some are accessing much-needed therapeutic support through carer advocacy and others are reaching for their dreams as they contemplate life as an adult, knowing that there is someone there for them.

Carers are crucial to the child protection and family support system, and we very deeply value their contributions. They provide a safe space, a soft place to land, and a source of stability, love and care for children and young people who sometimes have not had this before—children who are now thriving thanks to the love, support and stability provided to them by their remarkable carers.

I echo the member for Elder's comments: if you have ever thought about caring for a child or know someone who has the capacity to provide a child or young person with love, care and support, please consider opening your heart and home to a child or young person in care. Whether it is for a weekend, a month or years, you will absolutely make a lasting difference in a child's life and you will likely absolutely make a lasting difference in your life too.

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (11:09): I am glad to rise to indicate the opposition's support for the motion from the member for Elder today. It is good that in this Foster and Kinship Carer Week we focus on the truly loving, essential contribution that foster and kinship carers make to supporting those most vulnerable children in our state. I will come back to it shortly.

It needs to be appreciated that that is a vital human family substitute in circumstances where children are finding themselves vulnerable, often in circumstances where their parents are lacking capacity for any number of reasons and in circumstances where work can be done to bring them back to their parents. In the meantime, children are going to thrive when they are in a family environment, so we salute foster and kinship carers.

So far as public policy is concerned, and particularly in relation to the supports that the Department for Child Protection can provide to foster and kinship carers, we ought to adopt an attitude of humble service and support to those foster and kinship carers. In discharging the public obligations of the department, we should not be finding ourselves treating foster carers and kinship carers as stakeholders under the control of the department. The emphasis very much ought to be on reinforcing and serving and supporting the parent substitute role that foster and kinship carers provide.

I recognise Fiona Endacott and her leadership of the now official peak body Connecting Foster and Kinship Carers SA. The work that the peak body does to bring individual carers into better communication with the services and support that are available to them from the department continues to be important.

I want to shine a particular light on the extraordinary work, particularly over recent years, that Grandcarers for Grandchildren SA has been charting under the leadership of Mike Feszczak, who I think it is fair to say has transformed that group and taken it from strength to strength. I pay tribute to Her Excellency the Hon. Frances Adamson AC and Rod Bunten as co-patrons of Grandcarers for Grandchildren and to ambassadors Mrs Lan Le OAM and Jane Reilly OAM. I think those who are working towards building that network of grandcarers for grandchildren speaks very loudly for the role that the group is playing.

I pay particular tribute to Grandcarers for Grandchildren because the work that they are doing is so central to the point that we all agree on: the last place a child is going to want to be, benefit from or thrive in is that last resort of state care. Not only is state care hugely expensive but it is the furthest away from the family environment in which a child will have the best opportunity to thrive.

Secondly, Grandcarers for Grandchildren shines a light on the kinship role that is usually grandparents. The name has been changed recently to reflect the fact that it is a wider community than only grandparents. 'Grandcarers' is a good term, and the fact is that in that range of supports around a vulnerable child often grandparents find themselves in a uniquely complex role. It has been described as an informal role, in which a grandparent is also caring for their own child in need of support to restore capacity.

Yet we are still insufficient, in my view, in terms of our capacity to provide a thoroughgoing means by which those grandcarers can be fully supported—in the way, properly, that foster carers are financially supported for the work that they do—and that fully respects the capacity of grandparents to, in the best of cases, restore capacity for their children to return to the parenting role, and their capacity to ensure that the grandchildren are able to thrive in those difficult circumstances.

We ought to do everything that we possibly can to ensure that foster caring, grandcaring and kinship care of other kinds are celebrated as an aspirational goal for all of us in the community. For those who find themselves providing that care, whether for a member of the extended family or as a foster carer for a short, medium or long term, we should celebrate and recognise that that is extraordinarily valuable work in the interests of our state's most vulnerable children. I support the motion and commend its passage.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta) (11:17): I am very pleased to support the motion today and acknowledge Foster and Kinship Carer Week. I join with the member for Elder and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and the others who have spoken in encouraging all members of our community to consider the opportunity to serve our community, and particularly to provide the love that is much needed in the hearts and the lives of some of our most vulnerable young South Australians, by taking up the opportunity of foster and kinship care.

I think the way in which foster carers and kinship carers support our state's wellbeing cannot be overstated. There are some 4,000 children, or thereabouts, in South Australia in foster and kinship care, formerly known through the Department for Child Protection, as well as those in other informal relationships. That number of people probably underscores the significant number of children who do need support.

The hundreds who are in that institutional care that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition identified are supported by staff who work hard, no doubt in very difficult and challenging roles, but the opportunity for a child or a young person, particularly under the age of 18, to be in a home environment, in a family environment where there is the opportunity to feel love and safety, is tremendously important and is nigh on impossible to replicate in an environment where somebody is working their shift. With all the care and dedication that they can provide while doing so, those foster and kinship carers have that opportunity to play that role in the child's life.

The motion is broadly worthy of support and obviously we will support it. I do, however, want to highlight that there are positive endeavours by people in this house on both sides of politics who, when given the opportunity to serve in government, have done their level best to support the child protection system and, indeed, with the opportunities and the safety and the hearts and minds of those young people at the forefront of their considerations.

This government has put in place some measures, and, of course, the deputy leader has outlined those where we support them. The former government also worked hard in this space and put in place some reforms that were very important. I know the former minister fought hard to ensure that we could lift some foster care payments until children turned 21 because of the opportunity that that home could provide them for a few more years. Sometimes a home that did not have a lot of money for a few more years was tremendously important as that child was moving past school into young adulthood.

I think some of the other measures that were important are, indeed, acknowledging Catholic Education, at the encouragement of the former minister, and a number of other non-government schools now provide scholarships to children under guardianship. I think for foster carers, potentially whose own children may go to a non-government school, when they have a foster child in their home that can be a tremendously stable thing. Of course, if a foster child is in a school already, ideally you do not want to dislocate them from that school if that relationship is prospering.

But there are 4,000 children we are talking about and 4,000 unique stories, and each one of them needs to be taken very seriously. The opportunity for a couple of hundred scholarships per year provided by Catholic schools and a couple of independent schools as well does make things easier for some of those families, does make life less stigmatised, more normal and provides a greater sense of location for some of those children, and so I acknowledge that work as well.

I want to briefly mention some of the organisations. The member for Elder talked about Puddle Jumpers and Treasure Boxes. There are many non-government organisations that work in this space and I highlight, as the deputy leader did, the work of Grandcarers SA—the volunteers, the staff and the board who work very hard, particularly for that cohort who may not even necessarily be receiving foster care payments.

I think kinship care accounts for about a thousand more children in South Australia than foster care does. There are different circumstances in which that can be categorised, but of course the role that those people, whether they are grandparents or aunts or uncles or other kin, play in those children's lives and the important recognition that the department and government and we as parliamentarians should give them is worthy of being highlighted. I appreciate Grandcarers SA for the professional way in which they advocate for the cohort of grandcarers in our state who do such a tremendous job and I express my appreciation to them for that work as well.

I encourage all members of our community to consider the role they could play as foster carers, kinship carers, respite carers or other sorts of carers to support those children. There is, in my heart, a desire for government to provide a framework for all South Australians to live lives where they are supported to fulfil their potential.

Vulnerable young children, who have done nothing to contribute to the unfortunate circumstances in which they find themselves, are I think at the heart of where government needs to be considering providing that support for young people to fulfil their potential. Vulnerable young people in this circumstance, particularly those who have been unable to be placed in stable family environments, are at much greater risk of incarceration later in life, and they are at much greater risk of unemployment later in life, or not being able to fulfil their potential.

So continued endeavours by government, by organisations and NGOs such as Grandcarers SA, and by every individual in our community who can, each and every one of them, play a role that they can find time for, is the way to support those children and young people to have their best lives, and I support therefore that intent.

Ms CLANCY (Elder) (11:24): Thank you very much to everyone who has contributed and spoken on the motion. Thank you to the minister, the deputy leader and the member for Morialta. I did not expect to feel quite so emotional when doing this motion but when I made the choice to become a foster carer it changed my life for the better forever.

I do want to say that it is something that everyone should consider because it is really special to make a big difference to someone's life. If you are as lucky as I am, you might get cool presents like this bracelet that I received from my little one this morning as I was heading out the door. Thank you again to everyone for contributing and thank you so much to every foster and kinship carer in our state for everything you do. I commend the motion to the house.

Motion carried.

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